One New Year’s Resolution The Flyers Must Make in 2020

The Philadelphia Flyers have to improve in this area in 2020.

Gang, welcome to a brand, new decade of Philadelphia Flyers hockey. Though the team went to the Stanley Cup Finals and made the postseason around a handful of times, the 2010s will likely be looked back on as a mediocre set of years for the franchise. Why may you ask? Well, they finished out the final half of this past ten-year period by getting bounced out of the first round when they did find themselves in a playoff position and never finished higher than the third seed in the Metropolitan Division during that span. Like I said, average.

But we’re in a new year, the year of our lord and savior 2020. It’s time to put that decade behind us and focus on the season at hand. Philadelphia’s in a solid spot at the time this was written, sitting four points ahead of the Florida Panthers for the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference while being within an arms reach of the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Islanders for third and second in the Metro.

Things could always be better, though, so I thought it’d be a swell idea to give the Flyers a New Year’s Resolution as they continue in the 2020 half of the 2019-20 campaign. If you watched Tuesday nights clunker against the Los Angeles Kings, you probably already know what I’m going to say.

Flyers, as much as I love how well you play at the Wells Fargo Center, it’s time for those performances to start translating on the road. As I mentioned in this article, this six-game road trip they’re currently on was going to be an important test for this squad, and so far, Philadelphia’s sitting with a D at best for a grade.

While they beat the Anaheim Ducks in overtime, the Flyers put on a duo of duds against the San Jose Sharks and Kings, allowing a combined 11 goals against two of the worst offenses in the NHL in terms of Goals For. Sources are telling me that’s not good while also adding that This first half of the roadie was viewed as the easier part of the schedule, too, given all three teams they’ve faced sit in the basement of the Western Conference standings.

This next cluster of contests will now feature teams such as the Vegas Golden Knights, Arizona Coyotes, and Carolina Hurricanes, all of which hold playoff positions as things currently stand. Two of those three squads have excellent records at home, too, which just adds to how tough each matchup will be. That’s what made it so crucial for Philly to pick up a majority of the points against San Jose, Anaheim, and LA. Neither one of them is considered “good,” and it would’ve been ideal for the Flyers to take at least four points out of that stretch of games to set themselves up better for success going into the latter and harder matchups. Unfortunately, as you now know, things didn’t happen to go that way.

I understand that’s it’s almost always going to be harder to play on the road than at home, but if the Flyers want to make any sort of noise in the postseason and put their previous decade of mediocrity in the rearview mirror, they have to start being at the very least average when visiting an away arena.