The Flyers took a flight out west for a three-game road trip that will either keep them afloat in the late-season playoff hunt or might just pull them out of it completely if they can't collect multiple wins to keep up.

They're still alive, and still carry just enough reason to hold out hope a bit longer. But the playoff odds are still slim, and the with climb after an Eastern Conference Wild Card spot still looking a bit steep.

This could very well be a make-or-break week for the 2025-26 Flyers beginning Wednesday night against the notorious Cutter Gauthier and the Anaheim Ducks.

Here are a few thoughts ahead of it...

Bark and bite

Denver Barkey isn't going to shy away from the corners, and he isn't going to skate afraid of anyone. The 20-year-old made that crystal clear on Saturday. 

The rookie forward, at a listed 5'10" and 171 pounds, took a nasty boarding call from Columbus' Kirill Marchenko, billed at 6'3" and 201 pounds, when chasing after a chipped-in puck in the first period. 

The check into the boards, with Barkey's back turned, launched his helmet off and sent him straight down to the ice in clear pain. 

But it didn't stop him, or change how he was playing. If anything, it made him meaner.

Nearing the end of the second period, Barkey went barreling in behind the net and laid out Damon Severson in another pursuit after the puck. 

Barkey kept chasing and fighting after it. Severson got up and cross-checked him more than a few times by the end of the sequence to get tagged for two separate penalties, which had the Flyers set up well going into the third with a lengthy power play – they just fumbled it.

But Saturday's shootout loss, even though Barkey didn't appear on the scoresheet, said a lot about his game and what he can develop into. 

So far, the early returns on him have been good, and all arriving earlier than expected, but his mental makeup and fearlessness toward physicality, those are going to keep him around in the NHL for a long time as he grows.

"I mean, it's part of hockey," Barkey said postgame Saturday. "You're gonna get hit. Sometimes you might go flying or it might not feel good. It's just part of the game.

"[I was ] lucky enough to get back out there, and want to make a difference and show that you're not scared. So I think the biggest thing for me is just not shying away from that stuff."

Zegras at center stage

Trevor Zegras has been getting his look at center down the stretch.

Skating with Owen Tippett as his regular wing on the right side since the trade deadline, there's been chemistry developing and some encouraging signs that Zegras can command the ice through the middle in a larger role.

"Yeah, he's gaining traction," head coach Rick Tocchet said of Zegras as a center after last Wednesday's home win over Washington. "Like, he's coming off on reads and he's barking orders now, like who to go to and what, so yeah. I don't know what he was on the dot tonight. I think he was a little better at the faceoffs. That's something he knows he has to get better at, but I thought he had a good game tonight at center."

Zegras scored the go-ahead goal that night on a well-executed 2-on-0 rush sparked by a Tippett takeaway further back by the Philadelphia blue line.

Actually within the faceoff circle, though, has been the part of the center position where Zegras has been struggling to keep up. 

Against the Capitals, he was 2-for-7 on his draws – a 28.6-percent win rate.

In the five total games since the March 6 trade deadline, when Tocchet slotted Zegras in as a center, he's gone 12-for-50 on faceoffs overall, which is just a 24-percent success rate.

Here's a look at Zegras' faceoff results by game for the past week and change:

*Numbers via Hockey-Reference

Zegras came into the NHL as a center when he was drafted by Anaheim back in 2019, and had ambitions of finding his way back to the position when he was traded to the Flyers last summer.

In training camp, he worked with captain Sean Couturier on taking faceoffs, as that has long been a major strength to the veteran's game.

The Flyers, and Zegras himself, found a groove in the early part of the season, though, with him at the wing, so the center idea went on the back burner for a bit. 

But the team still has a dire need for high-end talent down the middle, and reached a point where they were willing to take a risk and give Zegras an extended look there.

It's just that if he's going to stick there for the long haul, he has to improve at the draw, because in the NHL, especially among the top two forward lines, those faceoffs become precious seconds of puck control that a team can't afford to repeatedly lose if they want success.

'One more save'

The lone goal Dan Vladar gave up on Saturday, until the shootout, was with chaos piled up in front of his net and with a third or fourth bounce of the puck that his Flyers teammates in front of him just couldn't clear out.

Afterward, once they lost in the shootout, he was asked in his postgame interview what he or the team could have done better. He was curt.

"I mean, I could've stopped one more puck, and we would've won 1-0," Vladar said.

If anything, that response was to shrug the question off. 

He stopped 27 of 28 Columbus shots through regulation and overtime that game, and gave the Flyers all the chance they needed. 

More often than not, when a goalie only lets up one, that's more than enough for his team to manage a win with. 

The Flyers just needed offense, and they couldn't get it.

And through this home stretch, they've been heavily leaning on Vladar to make them a save, and he's continually answered.

Vladar has started six of the Flyers' seven games through the month of March so far, to a 3-2-1 record where those only two regulation losses are the lethargic duds by the team overall against Utah (a 3-0 shutout right before the deadline) and the Rangers (a 6-2 disaster last Monday). 

Otherwise, he's only let up more than two goals once: last Saturday's 4-3 shootout win over the Penguins on the road.

Sam Ersson notched a huge win over the Capitals last Wednesday, but Vladar has emerged as the clear and near-unquestioned starting goalie here, and the name that Tocchet is going to keep calling on for however long this late-season playoff race lasts at this rate. 

But it can't come down to 'one more save' if the Flyers are going to make it. 

Vladar keeps giving them chance after chance enough. His teammates in front of him have to help him out and capitalize down the other way.

Keith Jones on the rebuild

Keith Jones, the Flyers' president of hockey operations, called in for an interview with 97.5 The Fanatic on Monday to talk about the state of the team. 

He touched on a number of topics, like an assessment of Tocchet's first year as coach, general manager Danny Brière's patient and measured approach to the deadline, and Matvei Michkov's development, but his quote on the collective direction of the Flyers' rebuild was the main one that made the rounds on social media, as seen below:

They've repeatedly stated that they want to go about their process the right way, and don't want to rush through it or cut any corners.

Fans have argued about the validity of the Flyers' rebuild philosophy under Brière and Jones for a couple of years now, and this year especially, they've had their patience tested with the goal openly out there of wanting to see on-ice improvement and maybe some meaningful (i.e. playoff) hockey for a still-developing group this season.

However, Tocchet's decision-making, Matvei Michkov's sophomore slump, the loss of Tyson Foerster to injury, and a trade deadline that wasn't as tank-minded toward the draft as some would've liked, among other things, all put stress and scrutiny upon the overall perception of the Flyers' plan. 

The reality is, until the Flyers break out into a clear and contending game of hockey, fans are going to question and argue about whether or not this is actually going to work until they're blue in the face. It's just the byproduct and nature of successive mediocre to outright bad years that have all blurred into one another. 

Every time Brière and Jones speak, though, there never seems to be panic, and there's always an emphasis on the good Flyers team they want years from now, not right now or next year.

And maybe Michkov, Zegras, Foerster (before he got hurt), Barkey, Alex Bump, Jamie Drysdale, and soon enough, Porter Martone, all being here and under the age of 25, are signs that the team is slowly coming together, and that these will all just be some harsh growing pains looking back.

But they still need to figure out that elite No. 1 center problem somehow.

You can check out 97.5's full interview with Jones on their YouTube channel HERE, or with the embed below:

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