No Rhyme or Reason to Flyers Streaky Season
By Scott Cole
If anything, this is a Flyers team that keeps you guessing. You think you can put your finger on them, and then they go turn a 180 on you and do the exact opposite. They are good and then they are bad. They make you cheer and then they frustrate the bejeezus out of you.
If any team is more bipolar than the Philadelphia Flyers, I don’t know. And this team is probably responsible for a lot of mental health issues all across the Delaware Valley. Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhh……
So what do we make of this team? How can we make any sense of them? Because here’s the thing…right now, they are the NHL’s hottest team riding a four game winning streak.
Let’s dive into what they have done.
First, they started this year pretty hot. A lot hotter than anyone gave them credit for. In October, they went 6-2-1, with the OT loss coming against Carolina. They showed that they had some offensive punch and Hart was playing out of his mind. They lost the next two games before winning two in a row in early November.
Then the injuries started to pile up. James van Riemsdyk was hurt. Then Travis Konecny and Scott Laughton were hurt. The Flyers lost 10 straight before they topped the Isles to end Novemeber. But December was not kind either. The team went 3-6-2 and looked lifeless.
And then the NHL took time off for Christmas. After a week off, the Orange Black returned to the ice and hit it running. The Flyers won four straight before compiling a 10-4-2 record before the All-Star Break. The team had clawed its way back to .500 and it looked as if the team might be able to make the playoffs after all.
February put the team back into the arms of reality. Actually, reality just kind of smacked the team in the face. The team won only two games during the month. Maybe the pressure of the upcoming trade deadline affected the play of the players. Who knows.
Since the trade deadline, the Flyers have taken off again. After starting off the month of March with a 1-5 record, Philly has gone 5-0-1. They are scoring again, just like they did after Christmas.
It makes no sense. Players have been hurt off and on all season. Right now, they are without Konecny, but they are scoring more goals than before he got hurt. However, Konecny, was the spark plug during the post-Christmas stretch. Veterans like JVR and Kevin Hayes have been hot and cold. Some of the younger players have been stepping up recently.
Sometimes the streaks are tied to injuries. Sometimes they are not. Sometimes it is because they are playing top talent. But then the Flyers beat the good teams and get hammered by the bottom dwellers; including teams that are trying to lose on purpose.
All of this makes the Flyers a hard team to assess. Are they a sucky team just playing well or are they a good team playing sucky during the bad stretches? Are teams looking past them to better opponents and are caught “napping” in a “trap game”? It’s unclear. It’s hard to tell.
The Flyers do have talent. It’s not Boston Bruins level talent. What they need is consistency. They have some raw young players and some good role players. They have a talented goaltender in Carter Hart. The team has a great coach in John Tortorella and a new GM in Daniel Briere gives hope for optimism.
As the season winds down, we’ll see what we have. Hopefully, there’s something there that can built upon. Maybe this team has a future after all.