November 30, 2024
Kyle Ross/Imagn Images
Travis Konecny yells in celebration after scoring the empty-netter that secured a 3-1 Flyers win over the Rangers on Black Friday.
The Philadelphia Flyers beat the New York Rangers on Friday.
In isolation, cool. That's two points over a division rival, a move above .500, and a third win in the past four games.
In the bigger picture, run it back two seasons ago – to March 1, 2023, to be exact.
The Flyers, they were at square one. Claude Giroux was gone, and an era that left the team in a pit of mediocrity and corresponding apathy from the city came to an an end. John Tortorella, in Year 1 as coach, was assigned the lofty task of bringing them out if it, but was frequently vocal about how it would take years to achieve. The Flyers were bad, and there was no quick fix for that.
The Rangers, they were good. They had a true star in Artemi Panarin, a Vezina-caliber goaltender in Igor Shesterkin, and had just made a big-time trade deadline buy from St. Louis for sharpshooter Vladimir Tarasenko – the move a Stanley Cup contender makes to put themselves over the edge.
The Flyers were levels below the Rangers, and it was painfully clear that night at the Wells Fargo Center.
Rangers fans had made the trip down I-95 and completely overtook the arena. It was Madison Square Garden South as "Let's Go Rangers!" and "IGOR!" chants flooded through the seats, and although the Flyers battled New York into overtime, a heavily blue and red crowd still erupted once Tarasenko buried the game-winner.
There was no interest in the Flyers. At that time, there was just no reason to care.
"We make our own bed," Tortorella said after that game, having seen and heard the crowd clearly. "We need to get this in the right direction where maybe someday those tickets are hard to come by."
But there was no quick fix for that, and someday was – still is – way off on the horizon.
Last season, Flyers home games against the Rangers looked the same way, though the circumstances had shifted a bit. Danny Brière took over in the front office as the full-time general manager and Keith Jones as the president of hockey operations, with both openly stating that the franchise was in a rebuild. Even so, the team was taking the NHL by surprise, getting by and holding on to a playoff spot through thorough, hard-checking hockey that thrived in transition all the way up until they were too banged up and exhausted to sustain it anymore.
Still, the Rangers were better. They had a Stanley Cup window open, while the Flyers had to prove themselves to everyone again, which showed through another run full of blue and red seats in South Philly whenever New York was back in town – granted, with a bit more pushback emerging from the Philly faithful.
So maybe this past Friday easily could've been the same scenario. The Flyers have more interest surrounding them now that star rookie Matvei Mickov has arrived in over from Russia, but they stumbled out of the gate this season and are still far from selling out the building night after night, in turn keeping opposing fan bases out.
Yet it wasn't.
There was still a good amount of Rangers jerseys in the bowls of the Wells Fargo Center on Black Friday, but the arena showed signs of balancing out. "Let's go Flyers!" chants led through crowd and countered the Rangers ones that emerged, but more importantly, on the ice...
The Flyers checked the Rangers into the ground.
The Flyers were faster than New York, playing a tougher and smarter game, too.
Tyson Foerster blocked a point shot that bounced back over center ice and won the race after it to set a streaking Bobby Brink up with a beautiful pass to the front of the net, one that the winger put away with a quick move to the forehand and shot that beat Shesterkin – and that's not even to mention the several other scoring chances Brink generated throughout the day in maybe one of the best games of his career so far.
Travis Konecny took off around New York defenseman Jacob Trouba and straight to the net on a breakout out of the Flyers' own zone to slip the puck five-hole through Shesterkin's pads. Then, after the Flyers held the line with nearly 60 minutes of tough, committed play in a one-goal game, and with an extra New York attacker out there, Konecny picked up a deflected puck over center ice that only he could get to then glided the match-point empty netter in as the Wells Fargo Center stood up and roared, finally, for the Flyers in a 3-1 win over the Rangers.
Finally, the Flyers were better.
They had beaten the Rangers at home for the first time since March 2021; Konecny's two crucial goals put him at a team-leading 13 and 29 total points through 24 games; Travis Sanheim continued to thrive skating the heavy defensive minutes in what's been a breakout year for him, while the young Emil Andrae has kept turning heads along the blue line in his own; and then Ivan Fedotov came through with some major saves in goal on Friday, 22 of 23 in all, in what's been a timely rebound from a rough start to the year while No. 1 netminder Sam Ersson has been out with injury.
There's still a ways to go. That's been said about the Flyers a ton already and will continue to be in the years to come.
And of course, there are the detractions that can be tagged to Friday's game and the current state of the team on the whole – the Rangers, too: New York has been struggling this year with rumors of a potential major shakeup hanging over their head, the Flyers are still in desperate need of center depth, have an ongoing problem with finishing off high-danger scoring chances, and so on.
But big picture, Friday was huge. It was a sign, even if it was a small one, that the tides are turning, that the Flyers are headed in the right direction, that they're becoming the team they want to be – both in the scope of this season and way down the line.
"We know how we need to play to win, and we're doing that right now," Brink said from the Flyers' locker room postgame.
"It's aggressive," added center Noah Cates. "Being up on our toes, and when we chip the puck out, we're on their game, we're suffocating them and just making them give it right back to us. That's how we need to play here."
Because it's how the Flyers finally beat the Rangers in their building, for a crowd that, after a couple of years of having lost a grip on it, was ready to start taking the Wells Fargo Center back.
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