“If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet I wouldn’t be more surprised than I am right now.” – Clark Griswold, Christmas Vacation
A seasonal quote seemed appropriate to start us off tonight.
Just about the entire second and third periods are worth reviewing as highlights from that contest, which will be one that sticks out in the annals several years from now.
But it’s likely that the biggest highlights beyond the highlights in that game were ones that we couldn’t see, because they happened in the Flyers locker room in between periods. Every team in the NHL is going to have a period or a game like the Flyers had in the first period. What’s important is the response we saw after the opening frame, and the Flyers mounted that response most likely after a strong conversation in the locker room following the first period, and a renewal of it following the second.
The Flyers have been headed towards a reset for a few games now – a point that every team in the league hits once or twice in a season where they have to re-establish their system and reinforce attention to detail. That point usually isn’t a period or even a game in length. It can often be for a week or two. For the Flyers, it hit a little bit vs. Nashville but came in heavy in the first period of this contest. You can’t practice reacting to these situations – they have to happen in real time, and the goal is to minimize the length, like taking all the stuff you take to try to get over a cold. Over the past two nights, the Flyers had caught a cold.
The remarkable thing is that after going through a reset like that first period, it wasn’t a complete loss. They were still able to get a point out of the game. And in the grand scheme of things, it will contribute to the rebuild. In six or seven years, when Scott Laughton’s a broadcaster and someone like Tyson Foerster is a 500-game veteran leader of this team, the Flyers are going to have a rocky start in a game that matters a great deal more than this one did, and the current young group will draw on this experience to help their locker room break out of it.
This is still a minor losing streak – one point out of four in the last two contests before the break – but it’s certainly not the end of the world and could almost be considered good timing. On way too many occasions in the years leading up to the pandemic stoppage, the Flyers would be cruising along well only to hit an All-Star break or an Olympic break or some other gap in the schedule, and they couldn’t find their mojo on the other side. The 9-1 run right before the pandemic hit was the ultimate example.
The Flyers have squeezed everything they could out of the last six weeks. They have a record of 13-4-3 for 29 points since November 10, which will be either the best or second-best in the league during that span depending on what Nashville (currently 14-6-0, 28 points) does against Dallas on Saturday. Now they’ll get five days off to rest and recover – both physically and mentally – at a time when they certainly need it before getting back to business in Vancouver on the 28th.
So enjoy the holiday with your families, and be ready for the team to hit the ground running for Flyers After Dark next week. Everything they’ve shown so far this season suggests it’ll be likely they do so.
