Rangers Will be the Flyers’ Measuring Stick this Season

Apart from the NHL’s stubborn insistence to keep awarding the loser point in games that go past regulation, every game counts the same on your 82-game docket every season. So, theoretically, we shouldn’t get too high or too low after any one game. But for the Philadelphia Flyers, the age-old rival New York Rangers will provide the stiffest test for them this season, one that will truly show us how seriously we should take this Flyers team and possibly how far they still have to go.

Of course, this all bubbles to the surface because the Flyers and Rangers will clash for the first time this season during the Flyers’ traditional ‘Black Friday’ game, one of the marquee games on the home schedule all season. Even under normal circumstances, this game sells out and seems like a bigger deal than usual, but this season will be doubly so with the Rangers and their misguided faithful invading the Wells Fargo Center.

It’s hard to remember now, but the Rangers were bad not too long ago. They essentially were what the Flyers have been for the last three years or so. They weren’t the dregs of the league, but they were caught in a tailspin with seemingly no way out, desperately in need of a rebuild. They even sent a letter to their fans saying that they were going to do it and to buckle up for a bumpy ride. But fortunes can change quickly in pro sports, and the Rangers’ cause was buoyed by the fact that Artemi Panarin and Adam Fox both decided that they only wanted to play for the Rangers. And when you can add a 90-point scorer and a Norris-caliber defenseman on manageable contracts without having to surrender any meaningful assets, your rebuild will be accelerated.

Throw in the fact that they also managed to bring all-world goaltender Igor Shesterkin over from the KHL at an opportune time five years after drafting him just in time for him to succeed Henrik Lundqvist, and the Blueshirts have all of the makings of a long-term contender. It’s something that the Flyers and most other clubs can only hope to emulate from both a roster-building as well as ‘pure dumb luck’ standpoint.

This brings us to the task at hand. The Flyers face the Rangers four times this year. Putting aside the fact that four games is a criminally low number of times to face your biggest all-time rival, these games will be true tests of where the Flyers stand as a team. Yes, the Orange and Black will no doubt win some games against other good teams this season, while they’ll also lose to some lousy ones (i.e., San Jose). Such is the randomness of the NHL. But the Rangers are the real test.

What we need to look at is how the Flyers perform in this four-game ‘series’ against the Rangers this year: November 24 and February 24 in Philadelphia, and March 26 and April 11 in New York. It’s unfortunate that the teams won’t meet for three months after Friday’s game, as it really derails any chance of bad blood or other storylines transferring over into another meeting soon after. Still, the three late-season matchups will be intriguing once we get there.

The day after Thanksgiving will mark the 317th regular season meeting between these clubs. The Flyers come in with 136 wins, 130 losses, 37 ties (remember those?), and 13 OT/shootout losses. That puts them over “hockey .500” against the Rangers, but really they’ve lost more than they’ve won. And that hasn’t always been the case, as the Rangers have won seven of the last eight meetings to flip the script on the all-time series. The Flyers’ only win during that span came in overtime, and they haven’t beaten the Rangers in regulation since April 22, 2021, a 3-2 victory at MSG. And, for the record, the Flyers haven’t beaten the Rangers by more than one goal since March 1, 2020. Hopefully these trends end at some point this season, if not in the clubs’ first meeting.

The Rangers’ 9-0 shellacking of the Flyers three seasons ago didn’t exactly start the dark times that the Flyers are still trying to crawl out of, but it’s been pointed to by a large segment of the fanbase as an embarrassing nadir in the history of the franchise. It would help then, both practically and symbolically, if the Flyers could use strong performances against the Rangers this season to help catapult themselves back to respectability.

There will be no excuses, as neither club will have played the day before any of their four matchups this season. They will give themselves their best shots this year, and it will be imperative for the Flyers to have a strong showing before we declare them to be for real. Hopefully they can get to where the Rangers are in short order, emerging from a messy situation to become true contenders. It might be asking too much for it to happen this year, but they have to go through their top all-time rival at some point in order to get there.