April 02, 2024
Eric Hartline/USA TODAY Sports
Travis Konecny and the Flyers are going to have to fight to hold on to their playoff spot.
The dying seconds of the third period Monday night made it abundantly clear how much this playoff chase means to the Philadelphia Flyers.
Down a goal to the visiting New York Islanders and with the goalie pulled for well over three minutes, the Flyers were on their last gasp in a potentially make-or-break matchup – they're all going to be from here on out – when Jamie Drysdale, with space and a lane up at the point, threaded a shot to the net.
The puck, through all the chaos in front, deflected down off the stick of Morgan Frost and then off the pads of Islanders goaltender Semyon Varlamov, straight back to Frost's feet. The Flyers center jammed the rebound through, then went sprinting off toward the boards as the horn blasted, his teammates followed, the Wells Fargo Center erupted, and the scene over at the Philadelphia bench, one of hugs and pure elation.
The Flyers came back and tied game No. 76 with nine seconds left to force overtime and claim at least one more point in an ever-tightening playoff race. They wanted this and were still clawing tooth and nail after it, even though they'd been sputtering of late.
Then in OT, they fumbled the puck in their own zone and lost 4-3, after the Islanders jumped on that slip-up immediately.
The Flyers still got a point, and it allowed them to take back third in the Metro division for at least one night, but that's not going to make life any easier for them in this final stretch of the season and last push for a postseason bid.
Flyers force OT! pic.twitter.com/zmgJy9RVD7
— NBC Sports Philadelphia (@NBCSPhilly) April 2, 2024
The Islanders nabbing their win puts them right back in the mix. The Detroit Red Wings, after beating Tampa Bay Monday night, are keeping pace in the Wild Card race. And the Washington Capitals, who are right on the Flyers' heels, can pull ahead again if they beat the Sabres Tuesday night in Buffalo.
Moreover, each of those three teams in the hunt with them has either one or three games in hand. The Flyers have a three-day gap in the schedule now following Monday night, but after going 0-3-2 with just two points in the standings over their last five games, that can hardly be considered a break. It's going to be a tense three nights of scoreboard-watching before they get back at it Friday night in Buffalo.
But they did put themselves in this hole.
| Rk) Team | W-L-OTL | Pts | GP | L10 |
| M3) Flyers | 36-29-11 | 83 | 76 | 2-5-3 |
| WC1) Lightning | 41-26-7 | 89 | 74 | 8-1-1 |
| WC2) Capitals | 36-27-10 | 82 | 73 | 6-3-1 |
| ——— | ||||
| 3) Red Wings | 37-30-8 | 82 | 75 | 4-4-2 |
| 4) Islanders | 32-27-15 | 79 | 74 | 3-6-1 |
| 5) Penguins | 33-30-11 | 77 | 74 | 5-3-2 |
M – Metro Division; WC – Wild Card
Despite pushing back to force overtime, Monday night against the Islanders marked the continuation of an increasingly concerning trend for the Flyers. It was the third straight game where they left the first period trailing, the third straight game where energy and any sense of momentum inexplicably sapped for a stretch, and a third straight game where having to constantly generate from behind left them short – and against lesser competition through the first two as well in the Canadiens on Thursday and then the Blackhawks on Saturday.
Initially, head coach John Tortorella was patient with the situation. He was hyper-aware that his team had been playing a lot of hockey, with some players having skated more than they ever had to this point in their careers, and with a few in particular – mainly defensemen Cam York and Travis Sanheim – having logged some extremely heavy minutes.
But the view was fiercely different after Monday night, especially after a second period that saw the Flyers get heavily hemmed down in their own zone following Sanheim's goal. They generated only three shots on goal for the period the other way. The Islanders took 17 and jumped all over them in transition. It took the 6-foot-7 goalie Ivan Fedotov thriving from being thrown right into the fire for his debut after Sam Ersson looked off in the first to keep them in it. The thought of fatigue was no longer a shield.
"Soft," Tortorella said postgame. "One guy played: The goalie."
"Not the whole game and not the whole group," the coach continued. "There are certain people where they don't have a clue how to play, or just don't have it in them to play in these types of situations, and this why I'm glad we're playing them because we have to figure things out as far as what we're going to become as a team here.
"That was embarrassing the second period for the Philadelphia Flyer uniform the way we played. Embarrassing. High marks as far how we came back in the third – some guys."
But they put themselves in this hole, and now they have three nights off to snap out of it and six more games left to keep themselves from getting buried.
MoneyPuck's projections have the Flyers still with a 63.1 percent chance to make the playoffs as of Tuesday morning, and on paper, they'll have a favorable three games coming back against the Sabres, Blue Jackets, and Canadiens before wrapping up with the Rangers, Devils, and Capitals, which could all carry huge postseason implications by the time those games arrive.
The points are on the table, and the Flyers desperately need them now, but grabbing as them the team they've looked like for the past week is much easier said than done.
The Flyers want the playoffs. You can tell they do just from the reaction to Frost's tying goal on Monday night alone. But there's work still to do to get there, not much more time to get it done, and certainly not helped by how they've set themselves back of late.
"You're finding things out here," Tortorella said of his team's makeup in increasingly higher stake situations. "When these games are at a whole different point, it's still regular season, right? But it's a whole different point, so we're finding things out."
And it's on the Flyers now to determine what by the end of it, with these games to keep an eye on in the race over the next few nights until they get back:
| Date | Game |
| Tue., April 2 | Capitals @ Sabres |
| Blackhawks @ Islanders | |
| Penguins @ Devils | |
| Thu., April 4 | Islanders @ Blue Jackets |
| Penguins @ Capitals | |
| Fri., April 5 | Flyers @ Sabres |
| Capitals @ Hurricanes | |
| Rangers @ Red Wings |
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