Flyers prove "quitter" label to be inaccurate with upset win

On Thursday morning, just two days after easily their most embarrassing loss of the season — a 9-3 shellacking at the hands of cellar-dweller Montreal despite being in the midst of a tight playoff race — the Philadelphia Flyers said all the right things.

“Even last game, I don’t believe we quit,” captain Sean Couturier contended. “Yeah, we were maybe stupid at times and made some dumb decisions that cost us big time. But there’s no quitting.”

“I’m not worried about the attitude. The attitude is going to be fine,” head coach John Tortorella added.

“We know the importance, and I think we’re just pressing a little too hard right now,” Travis Konecny posited.

The devastating defeat, in their retelling, was not an example of the Flyers running out of gas in the stretch run (as many theorized) or taking an underwhelming opponent too lightly (a logical assumption) or even quitting on the demanding coach in an act of mutiny. It was the result of the team caring too much, of pressing as a result of frustration due to an inability to finish on chances or get timely saves from their goalies.

“It’s easy when you’re looking for goals and trying to cheat a little more, take more risks offensively. That can cost you defensively,” Couturier said. “Sometimes when you’re not getting the bounces your way, you start to cheat a little more, get out of structure, and look for those offensive chances.”

But a friendly internal framing only goes so far, especially after a defeat as staggering as the one the Flyers suffered on Tuesday. For anyone on the outside to buy the argument that the Flyers weren’t in revolt against their coach, weren’t exhausted beyond recovery, and wouldn’t finish the season on a humiliating 11-game losing streak, the team had to respond with actions, not just words. And not just via a strong period, or a competitive loss.

With a win. One that could at least erase some of the stink of the 15 goals allowed to Montreal and Columbus over the past week.

Say what you will about the Flyers, and what their ill-timed swoon against underwhelming opponents did to their playoff hopes. But at least on this day, they backed up their talk.

Against a team that entered the night with the most standings points in the NHL, the Flyers started strong and never let up, ultimately cruising to a 4-1 victory over the New York Rangers for their first regulation win over their division rival since April of 2021, and their first win period since March 23.

And in the process, they made the most convincing case possible that all of those “quitting” narratives were dramatically overblown. A team in the process of quitting — on its season or its coach — simply doesn’t go into the home arena of a Stanley Cup favorite and take them apart.

“We talked about how we’ve played this year — not as individuals but winning games as a team — that was probably one of our better team games we’ve played in quite a while,” Tortorella noted.

So what changed? What allowed them to end their eight-game losing streak, at long last?

Surely, the embarrassment of Tuesday played a role; multiple players both before and after the game spoke of the desire to redeem themselves after such a shameful loss. Travis Konecny spoke of a “great meeting” before the game on Thursday morning between players and coaches that ensured everyone was on the same page.

But in terms of the game itself, there were two driving forces behind the upset win that distinguished this game from basically all of the preceding eight defeats:

They took an early lead. And their goaltender provided some saves.

In six out of the eight games, the Flyers did not score the first goal, putting them behind the proverbial eight-ball for the entire contest. So when Konecny took apart K’Andre Miller on a first period rush and then found a trailing Cam York for the opening goal just four minutes into the game, it gave the team a much-needed boost of confidence — a hint that just maybe, this game might actually go their way.

They even got a lucky bounce on Goal No. 2, which broke a 1-1 tie when an attempted pass by Bobby Brink went off Miller’s stick and past Jonathan Quick. But despite the miserable puck luck that the Flyers have dealt with over the past two weeks, Noah Cates didn’t jump to the Brink goal as the moment when he realized that their fortunes had turned, even when directly asked if it was then when the bench finally breathed a long-awaited sigh of relief that the hockey gods might be smiling on them once more.

“Yeah, for sure. Some big saves early, too,” Cates quickly noted. “We got that all year, and then maybe luck or whatever it was the last couple games when we weren’t getting that, and then a nice bounce.”

Cates’ quick pivot to the goaltending in his answer hints at just how much the struggles at that position were negatively impacting the psyches of the skaters. During the losing streak, Philadelphia netminders posted an unfathomably low 0.781 save percentage — essentially giving up one goal on every five shots. All that extra risk-taking that Couturier spoke of on Thursday morning was in part because of the team’s finishing problems (6.5 percent shooting efficiency over the skid), but likely moreso because they just couldn’t trust Sam Ersson or Ivan Fedotov to consistently stop the puck.

Thankfully, that wasn’t a problem on Thursday.

Ersson, from the start, was the sharp and calm version of himself that had many observers wondering back in February if the Flyers had already found their long-term Carter Hart replacement. He didn’t steal the game (24 saves on 25 shots) but he didn’t have to steal it. He just had to provide quality NHL-caliber netminding, and by the first few minutes of the second period, the skaters were once again confident they would get it.

“So you get the first goal, Erss makes a couple of saves, I think the team feels better, as far as what’s going on there,” Tortorella said. “Then we just keep our patience and let the game come to us a little bit.”

But it wasn’t just Ersson who reemerged on Thursday. Konecny — who had gone five straight without a goal — also was back in peak form, delivering the vintage performance that the Flyers so desperately needed from their best player. Not only did Konecny set up York’s goal, he also added one of his own late in the second period, finishing off a transition rush that he himself started with a forced turnover, before trailing the play and burying a wrister past Quick.

“Oh, he’s been huge. When he’s playing like that, in your face, finishing checks, it brings everyone into the battle,” Noah Cates said. “He’s such a good leader for this team when he’s playing like that.”

Unfortunately, in recent games, Konecny hadn’t been playing like that. He wasn’t lacking for effort and emotion on Tuesday, racking up seven hits and mixing it up with Jayden Struble late in the second period in response to his team’s utter collapse. But that was misdirected energy and unproductive frustration. On Thursday, Konecny was flying — but in the best way possible.

He appeared to be the embodiment of the advice he had for his teammates earlier that morning.

“Honestly, I think we’ve just got to get back to having fun,” Konecny said. “Stop worrying about the outside noise, whatever — no offense — whatever you guys are saying, writing. We’ve just got to go out and have fun.”

So did they do just that, in Konecny’s estimation?

“Yep. Just believing in one another, and no matter what was gonna happen tonight, we were gonna be there to follow it up,” he noted after the win.

That was far from a guarantee before puck drop on Thursday. Sure, they talked about the importance of having fun, and staying loose — but players had said the same things before heading away on a two-game Buffalo/Columbus road trip last weekend that ended in two losses. They made the same promises at practice on Monday, only to deliver a season-worst performance a little over 24 hours later. Due to their eight-game skid, the Flyers had completely squandered the benefit of the doubt that they had spent all season earning.

In the process of that collapse, they probably lost out on a chance at the playoffs. With Thursday’s win, they remain in the mix, but now they trail all of their rivals for the final two Eastern Conference spots in games remaining (New York, Pittsburgh, Washington, Detroit), in points (New York and Pittsburgh) or both. On Friday morning, the playoff models will still likely have the Flyers’ odds in the sub-15 percent range, even after the encouraging events of Thursday.

But in a way, this is their natural state of being. They showed over the past two weeks in their repeated flops against low-end opponents that they might not quite be ready to handle the expectation of success from the outside world. But when fans and pundits alike think the Flyers are cooked? They know exactly how to use that as fuel.

“We’re back to being the underdogs, kinda where people thought we were at (all season), counting us out. So back to kinda where we felt comfortable,” Cates noted. “Playing against one of the top teams in the league, and everyone’s doubting us, we stepped up and had a great group effort.”

It likely won’t be enough to salvage their playoff hopes. But at the very least, the Flyers ensured that the “quitter” narrative can be put to rest — and that Saturday’s 5 PM game against the New Jersey Devils will have real meaning.

That’s enough for one day’s work.

“We win, and we get to fight another day,” Tortorella said. “We’re gonna have to do the same thing (when) we play Saturday. We’re gonna have to be ready to go, and just see if we can extend this.”