Flyers at the beginning of December report | Pro Hockey News

PHILADELPHIA, Pa – The Philadelphia Flyers are in a playoff position despite taking just two points from the Carolina Hurricanes this weekend. In a hyper-competitive Eastern Conference, being in a playoff spot with more than half of the season still to be determined isn’t much of an achievement, but when your franchise hasn’t made the playoffs since 2020, you don’t take its current performance lightly.

Philadelphia is currently in the first wild card spot, tied with the Boston Bruins. Carolina has the conference’s best record with 44 points. If the playoffs started today, the Flyers’ opponent would be the Tampa Bay Lightning. Not exactly a comforting thought if you’re a Flyers fan. Yet the fan base is in a dilemma.

Yes, they want to get back to the playoffs, but not at the expense of their current rebuild. The Flyers have some solid pieces in their system, but the Flyers are well aware that they are still missing top talent. Porter Martone, Jeff Luchanko and Jack Nesbitt are nice pieces of the puzzle, but besides, there’s a reason why the Flyers rose in the trade winds of Quinn Hughes. They still need those top defenders. Not to rehash the NHL Draft, except the Flyers passing on Cale Makar will haunt the Flyers for years to come. Oh, that wasn’t the only major mishap on draft day that haunted them.

German Rudtsov was acquired the year before, when the Flyers could and should have drafted when Tage Thompson was five spots down. Someone gets the feeling that Philly will soon call Buffalo to fill their much-needed center position on the first line. Also, taking Pascal LeBerge in the second round when they could have taken Alex Debrincat (taken four spots later) makes that draft even worse. They chose Ivan Provorov over Zach Werenski and Mikko Rantanen in 2015 and you can see where the Flyers could be.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia has struggled to score on offense with the second-worst shooting on target average at 25%, 25^e ranked power play. Goaltending and a half-decent penalty killing unit have kept the Flyers in the game. They have the 5^e best goals against, tied with Minnesota.

Until the Flyers add offensive help, the team will continue to struggle in Rick Tocchet’s initial game plan. Perhaps that will come in the second half of the season, once Martone’s stint at Michigan State is over at the end of the season.

Brian Jennings covers the Philadelphia Flyers for prohockeynews.com and can be found on Twitter at @Flyersfan22.

Photo credits – Jack.Smart@prohockeynews.com

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