On the other side of the 4 Nations break, a rejuvenated Flyers team is picking up steam.
The Flyers are certainly rolling right now. They returned to action for the first time on the other side of the break on Saturday against the Oilers, and handled their top-end talent on the roster with relative ease, cruising to a 6-3 victory in the matinee. It was a commanding victory, and despite some concerns that they might drop off after that point — given the struggles in rolling over momentum that they’ve had this season — the Flyers were able to keep it rolling very nicely into Tuesday’s game, taking it to the Penguins virtually from start to finish and coming away with a 6-1 win.
There’s a lot that’s clicking well for the Flyers at the moment, a lot that’s driven this recent string of positive results, but it’s hard to find just one thing that’s made this happen, that’s acted as the switch flipping to kick start these positive results.
“I don’t know what it is,” Flyers head coach John Tortorella mused after the game. “I think we’re playing pretty good. We’re getting good goaltending and we’re scoring some goals. We got some guys back. You know, we had a lot of guys out. A lot of guys came out and we make a trade. As much as you think the guys are strong, they’re affected too. I remember those couple weeks — it was a crazy couple weeks for us there with all the injures and trading Frosty and Beezer and all the stuff going on. I just think that certainly some guys needed a break, and we talked about [Michkov] — he’s more on top of the ice skating right now. He needed a break. I’m sure of other guys and I think we have found our groove here a little early for a couple games.”
The rest is certainly a big boost for the team, a number of players pointed to it as such, but it can’t be pointed to as the only fix at work here — mind you, with fewer 4 Nations representatives on their respective rosters, both the Oilers and the Penguins are arguably more rested than the Flyers from top to bottom. So we’ll take that boost that the rest has clearly offered, but we’ll also give the team credit for how well and cohesively they’re playing at the moment, how notably someone always seems to find a way to step up in their matchup as the team needs it.
Things are going well right now, but there’s still a lot of season left to go. “As I say,” Tortorella added “you always got to try to ride the momentum as much as you can. Hopefully we go into [Pittsburgh] and play another good game” to close out the season series with the Penguins. They’ll be looking to take some revenge (and avoid letting their losing streak stretch to five games), but the Flyers can make a big statement on the level of play that they’re rising to with another strong outing. We’ll see how this one shakes out.
