The Flyers may have sold, but the players served notice Thursday that no collapse is coming

The Philadelphia Flyers have been fueled by their doubters all year long.

After all, the general consensus of the hockey world heading into the season was that the Flyers were ticketed for a lottery pick, and not one in the 10-16 range, either. Since those early prognostications came out, the players were intent upon proving that the “experts” had missed something. They’ve positively reveled in their ability to confound the skeptics.

This time, however, the skeptics were inside their own house.

On Wednesday afternoon, Flyers general manager Daniel Briere made his thoughts on the 2023-24 club very clear, shipping out key defenseman Sean Walker for a package headlined by a first round pick. It was a classic rental-for-futures trade, the kind of move made only by a GM who doesn’t believe his club is able to win anything meaningful.

Ah, the skeptics figured, this would be the moment when the Flyers, at long last, fell apart.

The defense was now a shell of its former self, with Walker gone and all of Nick Seeler, Jamie Drysdale and Rasmus Ristolainen injured. The club was on an underwhelming 3-4-2 run. The GM was telling the team with his actions that he didn’t think they were good enough to warrant keeping intact. And their schedule was about to turn brutally difficult, starting with Thursday’s road matchup with the Florida Panthers — the NHL’s top club by record.

Just another opportunity to prove the doubters wrong, apparently.

“I think we want to prove to other people, hey, we are a good team,” Ryan Poehling said after the 2-1 victory. “We can play, regardless of what others think and what’s going on.”

On Thursday, the Flyers didn’t become demoralized because their GM sold. They didn’t let their underwhelming-on-paper blueline be exposed by Florida’s high-powered attack. Instead, they skated right with the Panthers. Sure, the first period was a bit dicey, but goalie Sam Ersson (29 saves) was there to hold down the fort. And then, over the final two periods, they matched Florida — one of the Stanley Cup favorites — stride for stride, culminating in Garnet Hathaway’s dramatic gamewinning goal with 23.1 seconds left in the third period.

It probably was the most satisfying win of the Flyers’ season, and proof that this team — even without Walker — isn’t about to fall out of the Eastern Conference playoff race.

“I think it just reinforces that belief within this room, within the guys playing,” Hathaway said. “Knowing that we step up – you play your best game and the guy next to you plays his best game, we can play anyone every night, you know?”

Perhaps the Flyers were in need of the kind of jolt that they received on Wednesday. Their play had slipped in recent weeks, and especially over the past few games. They had been thoroughly outplayed by the Capitals on Friday, needed a heroic Tyson Foerster performance on Saturday to take down the lowly Senators, and then fell in a shootout to the middling Blues. It was nowhere near the level of play that would be needed to survive their upcoming gauntlet of games — nine out of ten against likely East playoff teams.

But one thing that has consistently pushed this Flyers club to up its level of play? Adversity. And after Wednesday’s Walker trade, they were facing adversity from within, in the form of their own GM choosing to break the team apart.

According to Ersson, the group used that adversity to their benefit on Thursday.

“It’s something that fuels the fire for us, and gives us more energy,” he acknowledged. “And when we play with a lot of energy, we are a very, very good team.”

Ersson isn’t wrong. They’ve shown as much in their results against high-end opponents — they’ve now beaten Florida twice, Vancouver twice, Winnipeg twice, and all of the Stars, Hurricanes, Avalanche and Oilers once. When they are fully engaged, they can play with anyone, regardless of talent or preseason expectations. And not just by the final score, either — Thursday’s battle with Florida ultimately could have went either way, with Natural Stat Trick giving the Panthers only a slight 2.45 – 2.39 edge in all-situations expected goals. The Flyers weren’t carried by lucky bounces or stellar netminding; this was as even of a game as it gets.

And the Flyers hung right with Florida statistically despite being severely undermanned. After the Walker trade and injury to Seeler — who called himself week-to-week in a video interview on Thursday morning to discuss his newly-signed four-year, $10.8 million contract — Philadelphia rolled with a second pair of 37-year old Marc Staal and youngster Egor Zamula, both of whom have spent large chunks of the season sitting as healthy scratches. The third pair? Two recent rookie callups in Ronnie Attard (17 NHL games before Thursday) and Adam Ginning (just two NHL games).

Yet the rookies didn’t merely hold their own. They legitimately impressed.

“I thought they played unbelievable,” Hathaway raved. “Seamless, I thought. If they didn’t play as well as they did, I don’t know if the game ends up in our favor.”

Others stepped up as well. There was Ersson, of course, the Flyers’ clear player of the game and recipient of the post-game dog mask. Travis Konecny returned to action and led the forward corps in ice time as he brought back his unique brand of high-energy/high-skill hockey. Sean Couturier pushed his way off the fourth line and delivered his most impactful game in weeks. The oft-criticized Staal picked up the primary assist on Hathaway’s tally, getting his distance shot through traffic to provide Hathaway with the trash to clean up in front of the net. Ryan Poehling’s early second period goal allowed the team to shake off an underwhelming open 20 minutes.

There were heroes all over the place in this one.

“Losing Sean (Walker), obviously he’s a big part of the team, on and off the ice. He’s a great guy. I got to know him well over the year. Losing him obviously sucked,” Poehling admitted. “But I think it just showed that in this organization, it’s next man up, and that’s the mentality you’ve got to have here.”

Tortorella didn’t necessarily buy that the Flyers’ performance on Thursday was driven by a desire to prove the doubters wrong. But he did unknowingly echo Hathaway’s explanation for the victory.

It’s about belief, Tortorella contended.

“I think they care. And I think they believe,” Tortorella said. “That’s the only way we’re going to keep ourselves going here, is the belief of how we play, and play as a team.”

After all, it doesn’t make sense that the Flyers will be able to keep winning games for the next five weeks given their roster. Seeler and Walker was the team’s only pairing that consistently drove play at 5-on-5, and now it’s gone. They’re depending upon a rookie goalie to carry the load. They don’t have a traditional No. 1 defenseman. Aside from Konecny and (sometimes) Owen Tippett, they lack flashy gamebreakers up front. And their GM might not even be done selling off roster players.

But the Flyers’ work all season hasn’t made sense — except as a by-product of a group that clearly has been greater than the sum of its parts. If they do indeed survive the loss of Walker and earn a playoff spot, it will be the result of leaning upon that key aspect of their identity.

“It just forces you to accept that you have to be a team,” Tortorella said. “I think that’s the biggest strength of our room – even before injuries and our trade – they know that’s what they are. That’s a belief, and I think that’s really important when you get into the short strokes of the season here coming up.”

And if they continue to play like a team, like a cohesive whole that as a unit can hang with a star-studded group like Florida and come out on top? Maybe they can keep proving the doubters wrong, all the way to the postseason.

“We’re in the playoff race regardless if we sell or not,” Hathaway noted. “So why not just take control of it?”