For the Flyers, improved play has paved a path to relevance

The Flyers have been left for dead by the fans, the media, and everyone else multiple times this season, and with good reason. A promising start to the 2025-26 NHL season was wasted thanks to a terrible January, and it appeared that the Flyers would spin wheels into the offseason after missing the playoffs for a franchise-record sixth straight year.

But, apparently, it was all premature.

Thanks to their vastly improved play since the Olympic break, including victories against playoff-bound clubs such as Minnesota and Dallas and key wins over Eastern Conference teams jockeying for a wild card spot like Washington and Detroit, the Flyers are knocking at the door of the postseason. Further, the team is primed to make its biggest season-to-season point total jump since an improbable 39-point improvement back in 2007-08. They also have an outside shot of cracking 100 points in the standings for the first time since 2012.

The Flyers seem to be returning to relevance, possibly even for the long-term, right before our eyes

Despite all this, however, the Flyers might still finish on the wrong side of the cutoff line. And that’s still the more likely outcome, actually, with their odds hovering somewhere around 30 percent according to the “experts” even after all the winning they’ve been doing recently. So brace yourselves for the distinct possibility of disappointment in that area.

Make or miss, however, the addition of Porter Martone into the fray for the stretch drive is injecting some sorely needed excitement into the club at a vital time. It would be unfair to put too much pressure on Martone from the jump, but this could be the start of a long and fruitful career, and it’s frankly awesome to bring him into games that actually matter. Those have been too few and far between for the club this past decade.

Beyond Martone, the prospect pipeline is looking solid enough that it should give the team a high floor for the foreseeable future. Of course, the big trick for getting the team into title contention will be making the right trade(s)/finding free agents to fill the glaring holes on the roster and allow everything to fall into place.

But there is a path. The Flyers aren’t part of the dregs of the league anymore. The “mushy middle” of the NHL standings page is a legitimate thing to be concerned about, but the team now appears on a trajectory where they are more likely to shoot upwards from it than to drop back toward the bottom.

As with all cases of a team getting very hot or going exceedingly cold, things tend to right themselves after a big enough sample size. This Flyers season passes muster, though, as they’ve been a playoff team for essentially 80 percent of their schedule, with only a terrible first few weeks of 2026 keeping them in their current spot. So, yeah, maybe it’s time to finally get excited, both about meaningful April games coming up and for future seasons that will involve Martone, a healthy Tyson Foerster, a newly energized Matvei Michkov, and other talent on the young end of the spectrum.

Goaltending, power play, generating shots on goal — it hasn’t been a perfect season by any means. But with just a few weeks to go, this Flyers season should be considered a success. Not only that, but the kind of success that a team can sustain and build on for future years.