Flyers-Rangers starting to grow into something organization has lacked for years: a rivalry

Sometimes, a game is just a game.

One team wins, the other loses. One packs up and goes home, the other digests the outcome for a few hours and then moves onto the next contest.

Saturday’s 2-1 loss by the Philadelphia Flyers at the hands of the New York Rangers didn’t feel like one of those games. It felt like the start of something. Something that the Flyers haven’t had since the juice went out of their early 2010s battles with the Sidney Crosby-led Pittsburgh Penguins.

A rivalry.

“I think you need more rivalries in the league,” Scott Laughton after the defeat. “It’s kinda lost within our game, and I think we need more of it.”

Saturday’s game between the Flyers and Rangers was, in short, a battle. A matchup between two of the three top teams in the Metropolitan Division, it was tight for all 60 minutes, with one team never gaining more than a one-goal edge. And the Flyers in particular came in with something to prove — they had been taken apart by these same Rangers on Black Friday, buried under a deluge of odd-man rushes in an uncharacteristically sloppy game.

The Flyers came out with purpose against the Metro-leading Rangers — who entered the game having won nine straight — despite a late Travis Konecny scratch due to an upper-body injury suffered during practice on Friday. Joel Farabee kicked off the fun by blowing up Ryan Lindgren on his first shift just a minute into the game. And then, Nicolas Deslauriers and 6’7 rookie Matt Rempe blew the roof off the building with one of the best fights of the season.

One can debate for days whether fighting should remain a prominent part of hockey, whether it’s a relic of a begone, pre-concussion awareness era, or if it’s still a necessary part of a game built around codes and comradery and chemistry. (The players certainly believe the latter.)

But the biggest reason why it remains, and the most honest justification for the continued existence of fighting in hockey is simple: it can be really, really entertaining to watch. And this scrap was about as entertaining as they come.

“That’s a good old fashioned hockey fight there,” John Tortorella noted after the game.

The Philadelphia crowd, predictably, loved it — especially when the jumbotron showed Deslauriers in the penalty box, with blood pouring out of his forehead.

“I told a couple guys after, it’s as loud as I’ve heard (the arena),” Deslauriers said.

And that’s important, because rivalries aren’t just about the players. They’re about the fans, and the weight that the respective fanbases place upon matchups between the two clubs.

No one in the Flyers organization is ever going to openly admit it, but there’s reason to theorize that the March 1 game last season against the Rangers was a turning point. The higher ups may have been able to handle angry fans on social media, and local writers ripping the front office for its lack of direction. But the national embarrassment of an army of Rangers fans celebrating an OT winner in the Flyers’ own barn? A low point which was then broadcast to the hockey world at large by a number of national podcasts?

Within a week, general manager Chuck Fletcher was gone, and the organization was — at long last — on the path to an eventual full-scale leadership shake-up, and the open, public embrace of a rebuild. That New York invasion may not have been the only factor that drove the pivot, but the timing certainly made it appear to be one of them.

Rangers fans yet again invaded a year later, with large patches of blue scattered all over the Wells Fargo Center on Saturday, even outnumbering Flyers fans in a few sections. But this time, the Philly faithful had pushback. Sure, there were “Let’s Go Rangers” chants and other New York cheers, but they were always quickly countered by vociferous booing from the home crowd. And this time, the end-of-game glee of Rangers fans was barely audible, as Flyers fans were intent at the final buzzer to drown out their happiness as best they could.

New Yorkers came and saw and even watched their team win on Saturday. But they did not conquer.

“I heard our fans most of the night,” Scott Laughton said. “I think it’s been great energy in the building from the get-go in the year. It’s a testament to the organization, for what we’ve done, and the players. Keep going like that, and getting that energy in the building, it goes a long way.”

Animosity from respective fanbases can fuel a rivalry. Think back to the rivalry between the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets from the 2000s, which became must-attend events in the City of Brotherly Love due to a desire to make sure the out-of-towners intent on taking over Citizens Bank Love received nothing remotely close to the kind of affection promised by the city’s nickname. The dueling chants at the Wells Fargo Center on Saturday came with more than a hint of that same “not in our house” hostility.

It also adds just a bit of extra motivation on the part of the home team’s players, to shut up the invaders. There’s a reason why former NHLer Jason York openly theorized that part of the reason for Ridly Greig’s controversial empty-net slapshot goal two weeks ago against the Toronto Maple Leafs was to stick it to Leafs fans who had made it a point all night long to make their presence felt in Ottawa’s home arena. It undeniably amps up the tension.

“Obviously, when you have a split in the crowd of the jerseys, you want to take advantage of that to put that on our side,” Deslauriers agreed.

That said, antagonistic fans aren’t going to be enough to fuel a rivalry, if the players on the ice can’t hold up their end of the bargain. And on Saturday, the Flyers raised hopes that they might be able to do just that in the future.

On Black Friday, the Flyers barely looked worthy of being on the same ice as the Rangers. This time, they outshot New York 40-24, and controlled the vast majority of the first and third periods. The team that was exposed by the Rangers’ speed in November was gone, replaced by a club backchecking furiously and checking relentlessly through the middle of the ice. Tortorella may have dubiously claimed after the game in a short 90-second press conference that he didn’t remember the Black Friday debacle, but Laughton was not so coy, acknowledging the team’s focus on addressing their shortcomings from three months ago.

“I think you’ve got to show them respect, some of their top guys – but not too much,” he said. “I thought we did a good job coming back through the middle. I think it was an emphasis of doing that. I thought we cleaned up pretty well.”

The Flyers’ issues on Saturday were not a product of a lack of effort, or inherently flaws in their plan of attack. It was instead of a combination of the heroics of Igor Shesterkin (40 saves) and wasted opportunities by the home team — namely Morgan Frost and Sean Couturier both missing on prime chances to tie the game with less than five minutes remaining.

“I think we controlled most of the play,” Laughton contended. “We came out hard, we finished hard.”

Laughton’s club isn’t on the Rangers’ level yet. New York still sits first in the division, winners of a franchise-record ten straight games. They’ve made the playoffs in three out of the last four seasons; the Flyers haven’t punched their ticket since 2019-20. And most importantly, Philadelphia is an ugly 1-6-2 against the Rangers head-to-head over the past three seasons. A rivalry can’t be that one-sided and be a true rivalry.

But the Rangers give the Flyers a target to reach, a summit to scale. And if this game was any indication, they’re not all that far away from reaching that peak.

“Obviously, division rivals (provide) a little boost,” Deslauriers said. “But we know they’re a good hockey team. And we believe in ourselves that we are as well.”

It’s the perfect time for the Flyers and Rangers to build some serious animosity. The Penguins are clearly on the downswing, with the long-hated-in-Philadelphia Crosby entering his golden years and the less-despised-but-also-legendary Alex Ovechkin doing the same with the diminished Capitals. The Carolina Hurricanes are very good, but they’re not a local rival for Philadelphia nor are they especially hateable. The Devils are both, but let’s be honest — their fans will never invade the Wells Fargo Center the way New York Rangers fans will.

The heydays of the Flyers and Rangers have also rarely overlapped, especially over the last 30 years. They had a brief battle during the Eric Lindros years of the 1990s — including two Flyers playoff series victories — but then the Rangers fell off for a decade, not finding their swagger again until the 2010s, just as the Flyers were falling into mediocrity, with the two sides only briefly meeting in the 2014 playoffs for a competitive seven-game first round tilt. Then, they dipped just as Philadelphia’s rebuild appeared to be bearing fruit — and jumped back into relevancy as it became clear the Flyers’ rebuild had failed after all.

Now, the Rangers are a clear-cut Metropolitan Division power, and don’t look to be going anywhere anytime soon, especially if the recent emergence of 2020 first overall pick Alexis Lafrenière out of bust status proves to be legitimate. The Flyers, on the other hand, still need to prove their strong play this season can be sustained. They certainly could crash back to earth, just as they did in the early portion of the 2020s.

But the Philadelphia team that showed up on Saturday certainly looked for real, and the back-and-forth battle in the crowd was for real as well. There’s potential for Flyers-Rangers games to turn into must-see TV over the next few seasons — two fast-paced teams with hyper-intense coaches and fanbases that straight-up don’t like each other, battling for Metropolitan Division supremacy.

“Those are the games you want to play in – Saturday at home, full crowd. Those are the games you want to play in and be a part of,” Laughton said.

The Flyers may have lost Saturday’s game. But more efforts like this, and they may just be gaining a new, true rival.