Can these Flyers follow in the footsteps of the 1995 team?

For the first half-century of their franchise history, the Philadelphia Flyers were almost always a competitive team, and a playoff regular at the very least. As we are all painfully aware, however, the club is currently in a five-year postseason dry spell, one which matches the longest in team history — a stretch that ran from 1990 through 1994.

After that '94 miss, though, the Flyers recovered to put together an 11-year streak of making the playoffs. And so, given the parallels, does the current iteration of the club have what it takes to not only stop the skid, but perhaps also put together a positive trend for the next several years?

The 1995 and 2025 teams don't directly correlate, but we might be able to see some similarities and reasons for hope if we peek under the hood.

Can the Flyers stop a 5-year streak of missing the postseason?

For starters, not only did the Flyers miss the playoffs for the fifth straight time in the spring of 1994, but they had to wait several extra months to start playing again. That was thanks to a lockout that shortened the following season to just 48 games and pushed its start date well into January of 1995. When the puck finally dropped on that season, nobody knew what to expect, but the hope was that a team like the Flyers could get off to a hot start and possibly ride that momentum through the shortened season to a playoff berth.

This was squashed almost immediately when the team started 3-6-1 under new coach Terry Murray. That doesn't sound terrible until you realize that those ten games accounted for over 20 percent of the shortened season already. That's when the Flyers did something bold and jettisoned Mark Recchi to Montreal in what is rightly viewed as one of the biggest and most important trades in Flyers history. With Eric Desjardins and John LeClair in tow, the Flyers caught fire and made the playoffs for the first time in the 1990s, getting all the way to the Eastern Conference Final.

LeClair and Desjardins would combine with Eric Lindros and Rod Brind'Amour to form the core of a team that was among the best in the league for the next several years. They never won a Stanley Cup, of course, but they returned the Flyers to the prominence that they had once enjoyed. And they rejuvenated the fanbase just in time as the team ushered in a new era when they moved from the Spectrum to the current Xfinity Mobile Arena.

Getting back to the current team, you'd be fooling yourself to say that this roster has anything close to what Eric Lindros was in 1995. With apologies to Matvei Michkov, whom many believe can be a franchise player if things break right, nobody in the league was touching what the 'Big E' could do circa 1995 when he was about to turn 22, had already scored 172 points in 126 games, and was embarking on what turned out to be a Hart Trophy-winning campaign.

In addition, nobody had the LeClair/Desjardins trade on their bingo card entering that season, showing that you can throw projections out the window sometimes because anything can happen. Maybe Danny Briere and company have a similar in-season blockbuster up their sleeve that can propel the 2025-26 Flyers? The team's current front office has shown that it will not shy away from notable moves, but can it push the envelope even further? Things are no doubt more difficult today, thanks to the salary cap, but that can't be viewed as an excuse for inaction.

As for the support cast on those 1995 Flyers, the aforementioned Brind'Amour and Mikael Renberg were important pieces, with the forward group dropping off sharply in talent after that. The defense was solid but unspectacular, thanks to the likes of Garry Galley, Dmitry Yushkevich, and rookie Chris Therien. Desjardins gave them a true No. 1, near-star blueliner to lead the group. So, in terms of depth, are today's Flyers in much worse shape?

It's hard to compare across eras, but the current Flyers seem to possess way more young talent up front, brimming with potential, than the 1995 team did. Think players like Tyson Foerster and Noah Cates. And the top four on defense — Travis Sanheim, Cam York, Jamie Drysdale, and, I suppose, Nick Seeler, given the ongoing health issues surrounding Rasmus Ristolainen — would seem to be better than the '95 Flyers sans Desjardins.

For goaltending in 1995, the Orange and Black ran with their returning starter from the previous year, the young Dominic Roussell, and veteran Ron Hextall, who was 30 years old and back with the club after two years away. They combined to lead the Flyers to the eighth-best goals against average in the league that year, which paired nicely with the team's tenth-place offense to put them comfortably in the playoffs. The netminders were good, but they didn't have to be great because the team gave them enough support, especially after the LeClair/Desjardins trade.

Could the Flyers maybe throw this kind of help Sam Ersson and Dan Vladar's way this year? If the goaltending is league average, the current team seems like it could score enough to do it, presuming further development by Michkov and an expected uptick from Trevor Zegras under new coach Rick Tocchet in his first year with the Flyers. Again, the team may be able to address their offensive needs during the season if they are willing to part with some of the future assets they've accumulated.

It's been said that history repeats itself, and it would be great if that were the case with these Flyers snapping a half-decade-long postseason drought. Some might say with skepticism that they're only a Lindros, LeClair, and Desjardins away from doing it. But that would be far too pessimistic, as the current team possesses a good deal more potential than its predecessor from (and I can't believe it's been this long) thirty years ago.

It is not unreasonable to say that the Flyers can make the playoffs as currently constructed, but they will definitely need another big piece or two to take the next step, like the 1995 team pulled off right away. Whether that happens through prospects like Porter Martone coming up, future draft picks, or a trade that nobody sees coming, it seems like it's finally time to turn the corner and bring an end to what really has been one of the most painful periods of Flyers history.

The 2025-26 team can make the same kind of good history that the 1995 Flyers did. It's time.