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The Philadelphia Flyers just had a couple solid games against some of the NHL’s very best teams, proving they can give anyone a fight.
Despite a fervent push for an equalizer, the Flyers fell to the 21-2-6 Colorado Avalanche by a score of 3-2 on Sunday afternoon. The Flyers were a Trevor Zegras penalty shot away from drawing level with the league leading Avalanche, but ultimately it wasn’t enough, and they fell in regulation like so many other teams have this year when coming up against Nathan MacKinnon and company.
But the overall performance that they put out against the Avalanche was still one that reinforced a positive early season trend. While parity has been at an all-time high in the Eastern Conference, there’s still a host of elite players stalking the two divisions, and a lot of teams that have more talent on paper than the Flyers do. Out West, the gap between good and bad is a bit bigger, and those at the top, mainly the Avs and the Stars, are proving to be a cut above everyone else up to this point.
But even in tough matchups, the Flyers have proven to be a tough nut to crack early on. Even for teams like the Hurricanes and the Devils who have proven themselves to be playoff contenders, it hasn’t been an easy time trying to break Rick Tocchet’s team down, and put them away. Much of that credit is owed to Dan Vladar’s strong start, to be certain, but even when Sam Ersson is in between the pipes like he was against Colorado, the Flyers don’t seem to get any easier to play against, even for some of the best teams in the league.
And while the Flyers did lose to both Colorado and Dallas, they still have beaten the Devils twice, won two of three against the Panthers, and taken down a solid Minnesota team as well as Montreal. It’s hard to really analyze the Flyers record against playoff teams since the league is so congested, but all of these teams were tipped to make the playoffs, and arguably all of them have more elite NHL talent, especially amongst the forwards, than the Flyers currently possess.
The Flyers seem to be a team that is greater than the sum of its parts, and can go toe-to-toe with most of the best teams in the NHL. They still haven’t allowed more than five goals in a game, avoiding those massive blowouts that sometimes snowball into a longer losing streak. They have the eighth best expected goals against in the league, get some timely saves, and take care of the puck.
That last point has proven to be key early on, as the Flyers currently hold 54% of the share of takeaways in their games, and are ninth in the NHL in giveaways. Add that to another year where the Flyers rank top 10 in blocked shots, and you get a system that does not provide the opposition with many chances to really break a game open. It doesn’t necessarily matter if a team can hold puck possession for the majority of the period, or even outshoot the Flyers by five shots or more, they are able to play a bend but don’t break style that makes them a headache to deal with. It’s proven to be an effective strategy against some high octane offenses, and if the Flyers own goalscoring talent can keep up, it’s a style that should translate even after the Olympic break when teams should be more refreshed.
And while it’s too early to start to think about the postseason, there’s an argument to be made that whoever the Flyers ran up against in a potential round one matchup, they would be hard-pressed to take four games off of a team that seems to play the same way regardless of who is on the other side.
Regardless of how stiff the competition is, the Flyers have been a tough out consistently, and with games in hand on nearly every team around them, they have put themselves in a good spot heading into the new year, in spite of missing Tyson Foerster and Cam York for multiple stretches. With a five game stretch coming up that includes the Golden Knights, a back-to-back against the Hurricanes, and the Canadiens, it is encouraging to see that the Flyers have a track record of not just rolling over when they find themselves up against the wall.
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