March 13, 2026
The flight time was scribbled on the whiteboard, and while the players of the night were doing their postgame interviews, the others were piling their equipment bags onto a cart and shuffling out of the locker room.
The Flyers had just beaten the Washington Capitals, 4-1, at Xfinity Mobile Arena, but no sooner had to hop on a plane out of Philadelphia and to Minnesota to face the Wild in the second leg of a back-to-back.
And that second game, to many, felt like it had "loss" written all over it. A complete effort to rebound from a total faceplant against the Rangers a couple of days prior, and then a quick turnaround to get on the road and go play a Minnesota team that's going all in after the Stanley Cup, that would've been a recipe for this season's Flyers – and the Flyers of the past several years – to crumble under.
Then again, this season's Flyers have also gotten pretty good at defying all explanation and expectation – for better and worse.
But for the better, they beat the Wild, 3-2, in the shootout Thursday night.
Trevor Zegras won a puck battle along the wall to send Emil Andrae flying in for the first shot and score.
Behind and on the penalty kill, Owen Tippett continued his dominant surge with a takeaway at center ice and then a missile of a slap shot that left Minnesota goaltender Jesper Wallstedt stunned as it blew by him for the tying goal.
Dan Vladar stood on his head in the Philadelphia crease again, saving 21 of 23 shots through regulation and overtime, and then making the stops on all three Minnesota skaters in the shootout before Travis Konecny picked his spot five-hole to call game.
At the start of the week, the Flyers were still technically alive in the Eastern Conference playoff hunt, but the distance between themselves and the Bruins occupying the second Wild Card spot seemed too steep to climb, doubly so after Monday night's lethargic loss to New York.
At the end of it, though, they answered with Tippett taking over, with Zegras taking strides in his look as a top-six center, and with defenseman Jamie Drysdale exhibiting some of the best skating of his career to earn consecutive wins on consecutive nights that a month ago, they wouldn't have.
And suddenly, that climb for the last Wild Card spot, and even after the Islanders for the 3-seed in the Metropolitan Division, doesn't seem so steep now.
The Flyers are alive. They have a shot again.
Will it be easy? Definitely not. But in the home stretch of the season, there's suddenly a path, and a lot of four-point swings in the standings starting with Saturday back at home in South Philly against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The Flyers have 73 points in the standings with their 31-23-11 record as of Friday morning. They trail the Bruins for the second Wild Card spot by five points (Boston has 78) and the Islanders for third in the Metro by six (New York has 79), with Columbus (77 points), Ottawa (73), and Washington (73) all in the mix, too.
They have 17 games left to make a run; two of them are against a Columbus team that has been hanging in there beginning with Saturday, three of them are against the Detroit Red Wings, who hold the first Wild Card spot by just a point over Bruins at 79, and then there's one more each against Washington and Boston, before two more East playoff contenders in Carolina and Montreal close out the regular season schedule.
Again, it's not an easy path, and it definitely carries no certainties. But for a still-developing team, the upcoming stretch can, and probably will, show what they're truly made of right now.
It's going to take everything they have, though, if they do end up coming out on the other side of this still playing into late April.
The losses have been total duds, but the Flyers are 6-3 since the Olympic break and suddenly within reach again after pulling off that back-to-back.
— Nick Tricome (@itssnick) March 13, 2026
17 games left. About 7-8 of them looking like 4-point swing games. Buckle up. pic.twitter.com/McBrDhpGpd
They're going to need Tippett to keep skating like a Mack truck downhill, they're going to need Drysdale to keep emerging as maybe their best puck-controlling defenseman, for Zegras to keep adapting into a top-six center role, and for Matvei Michkov to really start tapping into his star potential again back at right wing.
They're going to need young NHL hopefuls in Denver Barkey and Alex Bump to keep skating like they belong, for Vladar, and Sam Ersson behind him for maybe another few games, to make the consistent saves, and they'll need to really commit to their defense, because while they do have more skill to them now, they are still short of the overall talent to keep up with the clear playoff contenders without a plan.
But they do have a path, albeit with a lot of obstacles. Moving into mid-March, the Flyers are still alive. They have a shot.
The odds are slim, as MoneyPuck leaves them with just a 7.1-percent chance of making the playoffs, and there is next to no room for error.
But they can swing it, and Saturday's game against the Blue Jackets will carry a whole lot of weight in potentially making that shift.
It's been a volatile year so far for the Flyers, with ups, long stretches of downs, and days and weeks at a time where it was hard to tell where this team was really going or what they were.
But they stand here now, having just taken a critical home and road back-to-back late into the season to keep themselves in the postseason mix that, a month ago, they probably had no business winning.
And yet these Flyers keep defying all explanation and expectation, for better and worse.
Maybe this time, though, it can finally, fully, be for the better.
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