‘We believed in each other’: Former Flyers look back on breaking through a six-game winless streak to start the season

Martin Biron was a little nervous and a little scared.

The Flyers had just lost their fourth straight, and as the goalie walked out of Pepsi Arena to the bus after allowing five goals to the Colorado Avalanche, Paul Holmgren waved him over. The then-general manager was known as a tough guy, so it’s fair to say that anyone would have been wary in that moment.

But for a goalie who started the season with three losses, a 5.75 goals-against average and an .824 save percentage — Antero Niittymäki had the other loss — yeah, he had a reason to sweat.

“He’s like, ‘You just got to play, man. You’re overthinking this right now. I know last year was a great year, and there’s added pressure probably on everybody, but you’ve just got to breathe in, breathe out, and play,’” Biron recalled on Saturday.

Like this iteration of the Flyers, Biron’s 2008-09 squad and the 1999-00 team started the season with a six-game winless streak. The 2008-09 team was also coming off a playoff appearance after a season that ended without one, although last year’s playoff appearance was the first since 2020.

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So the vibes were flowing into the season.

Until they weren’t.

“I remember we were on the road, and [Mike Richards, the Flyers’ new captain] took it really hard on himself. And as a group, we were really confident that, don’t worry, we’ll find a way. We’re too good to be in that position,” said former Flyers forward Simon Gagné during a phone interview.

“I remember grabbing a beer with a bunch of guys, and Richie was there. He was really down at that. But we were too good as a team. We believed in each other, and we did find a way to get out of it.”

One thing Biron felt his group had was leaning on the previous season — and not the good stuff. Despite leading the Atlantic Division standings in points percentage entering the late-January All-Star Game, they went on a 10-game nose dive beginning in early February. He thinks they got out of that tailspin because of the fans.

“We won a game in Buffalo [to break the slide], but the day before we left for Buffalo was the Wives carnival,” Biron said of the annual event now called the Philadelphia Flyers Charities Carnival. “And I remember the fans were like, it didn’t matter if you had won 10 in a row or lost 10 in a row; kids were excited to see you. They wanted pictures and autographs, and then you’re like, OK, the sky hasn’t fallen on our heads yet.”

Like Chicken Little, there was no real danger, and despite both teams starting with goose eggs in their first six games, they were playoff-bound; the 1999-2000 team went to the Eastern Conference Finals.

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Unlike those teams, this squad is younger and more inexperienced. But the players can learn from history before creating a new franchise record.

Although they are the 12th-youngest team in the NHL (27.24), the current Flyers can recall a six-game losing streak from last season; a gutsy 2-1 win over the eventual Stanley Cup finalists, the Vegas Golden Knights, ended it. A good chunk of the team was also involved in the eight-game slide in 2023-24 that saw them go from third in the Metropolitan Division to outside the playoff picture. That ended with a win against the division-leading New York Rangers.

Right now, the outside noise — like the media — has to be muted. The focus has to be internal, with the team trusting each other. As Gagné, the only player who was a part of both six-game slides, recalled from dealing with similar adversity, the players must “stick together as a team.”

“This era of hockey now, it’s maybe different, but in our time … go grab a beer at the pub after the game and clean your dirty laundry as a team,” he said. “Sometimes you need to tell the truth, or sometimes you’re surprised that it’s just to get looser. You want to have fun to go back to the rink and play and find a way together.”

And if this happened mid-season, while it wouldn’t be great, it wouldn’t be as glaring of an issue since teams go through ups and downs for months.

» READ MORE: Flyers take another hit in 5-1 Boston loss, dropping six straight to start season

“The problem is that right now everything is magnified, right?” pregame radio analyst and Snow the Goalie podcast co-host Chris Therien said. The former Flyers defenseman was on the 1999-00 team.

“They’re coming off a nice run in the spring. There was a lot of enthusiasm toward the team, a lot of goodwill earned, and unfortunately, the start of this season has just reversed that a little bit … because they were playing good hockey last year, and they have not played good hockey to start this season.”