PHILADELPHIA, Pa – The Philadelphia Flyers sit in a playoff position despite only grabbing two points from the Carolina Hurricanes over the weekend. In a hyper competitive Eastern Conference, being in a playoffs spot with over half the season still to be determined isn’t much of an accomplishment but when your franchise hasn’t been making the playoffs since 2020, you don’t take the current accomplishment lightly.
Jackson Blake #53 of the Carolina Hurricanes wins the game in the overtime shootout.
Philadelphia is currently in the top wild card spot, tied with the Boston Bruins. Carolina has the conference’s best record with 44 points. If the playoffs started today the Tampa Bay Lightning would be the Flyers opponent. Not exactly a comforting thought if you’re a Flyers fan. Still, the fan base is in a quandary.
Yes, they want to get back to the playoffs, but not at the expense of their current rebuild. The Flyers have some solid pieces in there system but the Flyers are well aware they are still lacking top tier talent. Porter Martone, Jeff Luchanko, and Jack Nesbitt are nice pieces to the puzzle, but a top there is a reason they the Flyers came up in the Quinn Hughes trade winds They still need that top defensemen. Not to rehash the NHL Draft of anything but the Flyers passing on Cale Makar will haunt the Flyers for years to come. Oh that wasn’t the only major draft day mishap that’s come back to haunt them.
Taking German Rudtsov the year before when the Flyers could have and should have drafted when Tage Thompson was 5 spots later. Someone gets the feeling Philly will be calling Buffalo sometime soon to fill their much needed first line center position. Also taking Pascal LeBerge in the second round when they could have taken Alex Debrincat(taken 4 spots later) makes that draft even worse. In 2015 they selected Ivan Provorov over Zach Werenski and Mikko Rantanen and you see where the Flyers could have an should be at.
In the meantime, Philadelphia struggles to score on offense with the second worst shots on goal average at 25%, 25th ranked power play. Goaltending and a half decent penalty killing unit has kept the Flyers in games. They have the 5th best goals against, tied with Minnesota.
Until the Flyers add offensive help with team will continue to struggle in Rick Tocchet’s defense first game plan. Maybe that comes in the latter half of the season once Martone’s stay at Michigan State is over at the end of the season.
Brian Jennings covers the Philadelphia Flyers for prohockeynews.com and can be found on twitter at @Flyersfan22.
Photo credit – Jack.Smart@prohockeynews.com
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