With the NHL's Olympic break just around the corner, the Flyers are trying to do something they haven’t managed in a month: string together back-to-back wins. Thursday night’s matchup against the Senators gives them one last shot before a 19-day pause in their schedule.
It’s been a rollercoaster stretch for Rick Tocchet’s squad. A month ago, they were riding high, sitting in third place in the Metropolitan Division after a commanding 5-2 win over the Ducks.
That game marked their last set of consecutive victories. Since then, the wheels have wobbled a bit.
Before Tuesday’s 4-2 win over the Capitals, the Flyers had dropped 11 of their previous 13 games, going 2-8-3 over that span. That’s the kind of skid that can test a team’s confidence-but it’s also the kind that can teach a young group how to respond.
And that’s exactly how general manager Danny Briere is framing it.
“A little bit of a rocky patch that we've hit lately,” Briere said before the win in Washington. “I know it has upset a lot of people, but it's just the reality of a team growing.”
Briere isn’t sugarcoating the struggles, but he’s also not sounding any alarms. Earlier in the season, the Flyers were outperforming expectations, climbing the standings faster than most anticipated. Now, as they’ve come back down to earth, Briere sees a team still trying to find its true identity.
“What has happened now, the way we've been playing lately and what's happening, I also know that it's not as bad as the way we've been playing,” he said. “So we're somewhere in between all of that.”
That’s a fair assessment. Entering Thursday night, the Flyers sit at 25-20-10-good for sixth in the Metropolitan-but the division is tight.
They’re seven points behind the third-place Islanders and have two games in hand. So while they’re not in a playoff spot at the moment, they’re far from out of the race.
And it’s worth remembering: this season was never about “playoffs or bust.” From the start, Tocchet has emphasized development over desperation. Back in October, he talked about “maximizing the player” as the team’s guiding principle, and that mindset hasn’t changed.
When asked Thursday morning whether he keeps tabs on the standings or prefers to stay focused on the day-to-day, Tocchet leaned into the latter.
“A little more day to day, trying to stack good days,” he said. “For our team, there’s a lot of stuff-off-ice stuff, game stuff-stacking good days together, that’s how you kind of grow as a group.”
Still, Tocchet isn’t ignoring the standings entirely. He pointed out that the Flyers are just one point behind the two-time defending champion Panthers and four back of the Oilers, led by none other than Connor McDavid. He also noted that while the young Sharks have been getting some buzz, the Flyers are actually two points ahead of them.
“We’re a couple of points away from Edmonton and Florida; like, everything’s not a disaster,” Tocchet said. “Everybody’s saying San Jose, how great they’re doing; I think we have the same amount of points. There are a lot of positives here that we’ve got to start to build on and I think that’s the approach we’re trying to do.”
That perspective matters. This isn’t a team in crisis-it’s a team in transition.
And while the recent stretch has been tough, there’s still plenty of runway left in the season. The Flyers have shown flashes of what they can be.
The challenge now is consistency-stacking those “good days” Tocchet talks about and turning them into wins.
After Thursday’s game, the Flyers will send a handful of representatives to the Olympics: Tocchet will be behind the bench as an assistant for Team Canada, while Travis Sanheim (Canada), Dan Vladar (Czechia), and Rasmus Ristolainen (Finland) will suit up for their respective countries. Unfortunately, Rodrigo Abols (Latvia) will miss the Games due to injury.
For the rest of the Flyers, the break offers a chance to reset, regroup, and come back refreshed for the stretch run. But before that, they’ve got business to handle against Ottawa. A win would send them into the break with some momentum-and maybe, just maybe, the start of a new winning streak.