Fueled by doubters and internal trust, Philadelphia Flyers continue to obliterate expectations

For most teams, Cam Atkinson jumping Noah Juulsen in the third period on Thursday after his (clean) hit on Joel Farabee would have been a foolish move.

After all, the Philadelphia Flyers were facing a particularly difficult situation at the time. They were up 3-1 on the Western Conference-leading Vancouver Canucks on the road, but the Canucks were finally — after two underwhelming periods — firing on all cylinders.

Vancouver had scored its first goal of the game just 25 seconds into the period, and continued its onslaught in the ensuing minutes. Then, Flyers starting netminder Sam Ersson exited the contest due to dehydration, forcing a cold Carter Hart to enter the game. And now, due to the roughing penalty issued to Atkinson for sparking the “fight” with Juulsen, Hart would be facing a top-10 power play, filled with confidence after controlling the first five minutes of the period.

For most teams, Atkinson’s split-second decision would have been foolish. For this Flyers team, however? It was the only choice he could have made; a feature, not a bug.

“We’re a young team, but we’re a tight group,” Hart noted to PHLY just before the four-day holiday break. “And we believe that anything can happen with this group. The biggest thing is that we stick together, and we take things one day at a time.”

In other words, regardless of the risks, Atkinson was merely being true to the 2023-24 Flyers’ identity. It’s an identity that has helped them dramatically exceed preseason expectations, as they continued to do on Thursday night, ultimately knocking off the Canucks by a 4-1 final score — a score boosted by the shorthanded goal by Garnet Hathaway that proved to be the outcome of Atkinson’s penalty.

It was far from the first time this season that a Flyers player has reflexively jumped to the defense of a teammate after a hit. Nicolas Deslauriers did it just a few weeks ago in Nashville, hopping over the bench immediately after an unpenalized hit by Jeremy Lauzon on Owen Tippett and challenging the defenseman to a fight at center ice. That wasn’t the incident that Hart remembers best, however. He thought back to the fifth game of the season back in October, when 6’6 Stars blueliner Jani Hakanpaa bulldozed Travis Konecny and Nick Seeler delivered an immediate response.

“We didn’t like the hit,” Hart recalled. “And TK was fine. But we got guys in here that are going to step up for each other, and Seels jumped in right away, and beat the crap out of him.”

In Hart’s mind, that set the tone for the season, establishing a comradery that has been a driving force in allowing the Flyers to remain in the playoff hunt through 34 games — a scenario viewed as unthinkable by the vast majority of the outside world just a few months ago.

“To do that early in the season, that just shows that we all care about each other and we all have each other’s backs,” Hart contended.

And make no mistake: the Flyers players know exactly what the outside world thought about them entering the season. It was tough to miss. Not a single NHL.com writer had them making the playoffs. The Athletic projected they would finish fifth from the bottom in the NHL standings. The team’s own front office and ownership spent the summer proclaiming their commitment to a rebuild.

So from the start, were they out to prove everyone outside their locker room wrong?

Well, sort of.

“Prove everyone wrong? Maybe,” Scott Laughton acknowledged. “I think we wanted to prove (to) each other that we were a good team, and we were playing together. You see every list out there, of what people predicted us at, I think guys are pretty aware of that.”

It’s not like the Flyers have dartboards in the private sections of their locker room with pictures of every media member who disrespected them. But it’s clear they didn’t appreciate being dismissed by the hockey world at large before even hitting the ice.

“First of all, you know, people think we’re going to be a last place team and stuff like that,” Sean Couturier said. “I’ve been around here for a while, and take pride in wearing that jersey. It’s not something where I really want to be at the bottom of the standings, even going through a rebuild. It is personal at times, when you hear some comments like that.”

“It’s not a topic of conversation. It’s just we all know,” Hart added. “It’s just coming into the season, everybody counted us out already, without even stepping foot on the ice.”

Yet the Flyers aren’t even close to “out” yet.

Through 34 games, they sit second in the Metropolitan Division, currently holding down one of the Eastern Conference’s eight playoff spots. They’ve beaten Vancouver (fourth-best points percentage in the NHL) twice, Los Angeles (third-best), Vegas (seventh) and Colorado (eighth). They entered Thursday with the fifth-best expected goal share at 5-on-5 in the NHL, per Evolving-Hockey. This is a team with a strong process and strong results.

Yet back on December 16th, only 3.2 percent of hockey writers at The Athletic believed the Flyers would make the playoffs in the end. Not a single writer on the panel chose John Tortorella — who at the very least would be a lock nominee for the Jack Adams Award given to the league’s best coach if the Flyers secure a playoff berth — as their choice for the trophy.

The doubt surrounding the Flyers’ legitimacy remains. And in a way, they thrive on it. They’ve adopted the underdog mask — popularized by the Philadelphia Eagles during their 2018 playoff run after starting QB Carson Wentz was lost for the season — as their postgame celebration tradition, and have no issue continuing to stay under the radar.

“Right now, it seems like no one’s really paying attention to us,” Couturier noted. “We kind of don’t mind it, we just go along with our business, have fun coming to the rink, and building something special.”

If anything, it’s less the bearish preseason predictions and general disbelief of their current success that bothers them. It’s the open antipathy to that success on the part of sections of their own fanbase which irks them far more — or at least it does Carter Hart, who hinted as much after the team’s big win in Colorado early in December, with his “I don’t think anybody wants us to win” postgame comment.

Hart confirmed last week that he’s had firsthand experience with that particular sentiment.

“I’ve had people come up to me at the mall, and tell me to tank when I’m out trying to buy shoes,” Hart said. “That’s the shit that I hate. We’re all competitors here. We want to win.”

But every team “wants” to win — even teams that end up at the bottom of the NHL standings. And back in September, the Flyers did look like a team that was probably going to be bad. They had missed the playoffs in three consecutive seasons. They lacked star-level talent up front. Their blueline corps consisted of unproven youngsters, veterans coming off poor seasons, and players with long-established track records of third-pair level play. On paper, the roster looked ugly.

Now, there are clear-cut reasons why the Flyers have exceeded expectations thus far, reasons that can’t simply be chalked up to improved team vibes. Sean Couturier has returned in full force to be the 1C that the Flyers have lacked for the past two seasons. Travis Sanheim and Sean Walker have not merely bounced back after rough seasons — they’re delivering career-best, impact-level results. Rookies like Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink have unexpectedly proven to be effective NHL contributors in Year 1.

But even with those positive developments, this remains a team without superstars. It’s still a club with a top-four on defense of Sanheim, Walker, Cam York and Nick Seeler. It’s still a team that — at least thus far — has been greater than the sum of its parts. After all, even with the unexpected contributions of players like Couturier and Sanheim and Walker and Foerster and Brink, the Flyers don’t have as much raw talent as Carolina, or New Jersey, or Edmonton — all teams that currently trail Philadelphia in the standings.

So how are they doing it? Perhaps that intangible team comradery, fueled by plays like the Atkinson fight, could be part of it.

“I think that’s the biggest thing, is the belief in the room and guys’ belief in one another,” Laughton posited. “You build that and you go from there. But you look at the guy next to you and you realize he’s putting it on the line for you, and it goes a long way in the room.”

Right now, there isn’t one single thing driving the Flyers. There’s a bit of the “no one believes in us” spite, sure. There’s the frustration with tank-minded fans who still would rather the team lose out to ensure another top-5 draft pick. There’s the roster surprises. And perhaps there’s also an element of youthful naivete, as Sean Couturier has repeatedly theorized.

“I don’t know if we’re young, or it seems like we don’t really realize what’s at stake, maybe,” Couturier said. “I don’t know, it seems like we don’t care and we just go out and work our balls off and just play.”

But the Flyers are convinced that team chemistry is playing a big part in this, too: the belief that they protect each other, they support each other, and they defend each other, both from the outside world’s critiques, and the on-ice discretions of opponents.

‘We all we got, we all we need,’ in other words. If no one outside of the Flyers’ locker room is going to have their backs, then that leaves only the players to do so.

Which is why it was never an option for Atkinson to let Juulsen’s hit go unpunished, precarious in-game situation notwithstanding. Doing so would have meant turning his back on what the players believe to be a key element of their surprising success.

“We believe that anything can happen with this group. And like I said before, the biggest thing is that we stick together, and we take things one day at a time,” Hart said.

So far, so good.