On Saturday, the Flyers conquered one of this season's greatest demons. They came into the Wells Fargo Center for the home matinee, fought tooth and nail for a crucial two points in the playoff race, and actually got them. They finally beat the Boston Bruins, something they hadn't been able to do all season.
Then on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, with another major two points on the line, they nearly toppled another. The game was a rollercoaster, the seven-goal third period especially, and here the Flyers were matching a high-powered and Metro Division-leading New York Rangers team shot for shot.
They fell behind three times during that last regulation frame, and answered three times to force overtime and claim at least a point, but their fortune stopped there. Against the Rangers' offensive killers in Atermi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck, and Adam Fox, head coach John Tortorella opted to try and match that with a more preventative measure in Ryan Poehling, Noah Cates, and Travis Sanheim.
It backfired immediately. The Flyers never touched the puck in OT, Fox found the back of the net in 36 seconds, the Rangers remained as the juggernaut rival left unbeaten, and while Philly still left the night holding on to third in the Metro, the Washington Capitals had also beaten the Detroit Red Wings simultaneously to pull within just a single point behind them and with two games in hand.
The Flyers are finally out of the gauntlet phase of this final stretch in their schedule, but there aren't necessarily any more breaks or much room to breathe.
Take that point from Tuesday night, for sure, but they could've really used the whole two there and are going to need a lot more if they're going to survive this last push to make the bid into the postseason.
The race is a full-on sprint now, a close one too, and while the Flyers have shown that they can and will skate with anyone, the silver linings are only going to mean less and less with each passing and increasingly crucial game. They need results.
"I liked the game for the most part," Scott Laughton said postgame Tuesday night. "Again, I thought we played pretty well, but like I said before, this time of year, the moral victories don't really do it. We need to pick up some points here. We got one, but I thought we were in control of it and should've gotten two."
"We knew this was coming up on the schedule and what we were facing," Laughton continued. "Handled it pretty well, I thought, but yeah, you don't get the result. We're all in this game to win and we didn't get on the right side of it tonight, so go to Montreal tomorrow and we gotta play a good road game there and get back at it."
Beginning on March 7 in Florida, the Flyers' schedule consisted almost wholly of playoff contenders between the Panthers (twice), Lightning, Maple Leafs (twice), Bruins (twice), Hurricanes, and Rangers. Their lone breather in that slate was against the NHL-worst Sharks, a 3-2 win at home, but otherwise, the Flyers were near required to be on the top of their game every single night to have a chance.
Overall, they left that 10-game endurance run 4-4-2, with a few big wins if not impressive performances put up throughout, but with a couple of outright clunkers and some questionable decisions thrown in there as well – the most curious and scrutinized of them right now being the team's overtime deployment.
Tuesday night in New York, the Flyers played it conservative and it bit them. They also took that same approach just shy of a week before on the road against Carolina, sending Poehling out there with Sanheim and Tyson Foerster to start, and while there was some trade off in that contest, it also ended with the Flyers only taking one after Brent Burns and Seth Jarvis took a 2-on-1 the other way.
Tortorella didn't make himself available for any questions about it after the overtime loss to the Rangers, instead sending associate coach Brad Shaw out to offer the explanation.
"Poehls has been one of our best two-way players for the last probably 2-3 months, so he's got a chance to win the faceoff and plus he's responsible at both ends of the rink," Shaw said. "He's played well offensively and defensively, so he's earned the right to get out there. It obviously didn't end the way we wanted. I think he's the right guy to put out there. They've got two of their best offensive guys and one of the best offensive defensemen in the league in Fox out there as well, so we have guys that we feel can play both ends of the rink really well. It didn't work out."
And stopped a stellar and relentless effort short.
Now you just have to hope the team can shrug that part off and keep building on it going into their final nine games and a relatively easier stretch coming up that begins with the Canadiens in Montreal on Thursday night.
Still, it's a race, a close one, and this late into the game, one that will hardly offer any breaks.
"It's hard," Shaw said. "We have to respect every team we're playing. Once you do that, you tend to buy into how we have to play, the discipline, the puck management type game that has given us a ton of success lately against really good opponents. That works against everybody. We have to realize that and stick to that gameplan as often as we can."
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