Flyers: No tanks!

JAKE VORACEK wasn't just spitballing last week when he said the Flyers needed to win 25 of their final 34 games in order to make the playoffs.

Or, if he was, it was a pretty good guess.

"Now, we have 20 or 21 to go," Voracek said Saturday night, after the Flyers won their fourth straight. "We know how many points we're out and how many points the other teams have. We have just got to keep grinding. It's all in our hands."

I hate to be the bearer of reality, but just about the only thing this season-high win streak has brought the Flyers is worse odds in the NHL draft lottery.

They've gone from a 7.5 percent shot at Connor McDavid to 5 percent. It's only going to get worse with each win, taking them further from the top of a franchise-altering draft class. Meanwhile, their playoff chances haven't improved much at all.

This spirited sprint toward no-man's land has shades of the 2013 lockout season written all over it. Look back to April 12, 2013.

The Flyers were ahead of only Tampa Bay, Carolina, Florida, Colorado and Calgary in the standings. They were already out of the playoff mix. The trade deadline had passed.

They ended up winning six of their last seven games, rocketing past four more teams, to finish with the 11th pick in the draft. That year, winning those final meaningless games was the difference between Samuel Morin and Seth Jones or Darnell Nurse.

Now, that isn't to say Morin, still only 19, won't ultimately end up being a solid NHL defenseman. It's just that Jones, picked fourth overall, garnered deep consideration for the U.S. Olympic team last year and already has 125 games under his belt on the No. 1 team in the NHL right now. Even Nurse, who is Donovan McNabb's nephew, was a star for Canada's world junior team last month while Morin played sparingly in the gold medal game. Nurse went seventh, where the Flyers were pegged before their winning streak.

"Tanking" is a dirty word in hockey, with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman scoffing at the idea last week following the "Connor McDavid Bowl" between 30th-place Buffalo and 29th-place Edmonton.

It's an even dirtier word in the Flyers' lexicon, a proud organization that wants to win at all costs. Somehow, the other teams that the Flyers just blew by in the standings this week - Toronto, Ottawa, New Jersey - don't seem to be hyping the playoff chatter.

"You've got to have credibility and this organization, [losing] is not what it stands for," general manager Ron Hextall said a couple of weeks ago. "We're going to try to win. You don't dictate necessarily where you finish. You owe it to your fans. You owe it to hockey to try to win every game."

What happens, though, when the fans ultimately see the bigger picture at play? Everyone wants to cheer a winner, but the goal is a Stanley Cup in a few years, not 42 wins this season. Present fans with the option of 32 wins instead of 42 with a better chance for the future and they'll make that choice every time.

No one is implying Hextall should deliver any sort of message to the locker room, asking them to purposely lose. They won't participate anyway. Too much is at stake.

Hextall alone holds the keys to jump-start the rebuilding process by moving assets before the March 3 trade deadline. Most teams would rather jump on a deal now rather than wait until the last minute, when prices are exponentially higher. If these deals just happen to inch the Flyers closer toward 30th sooner, consider it two birds killed with one stone.

Fans would much rather watch to find out if a prospect like Petr Straka, or Nick Cousins, or Taylor Leier, has the goods to fill a created void on the roster anyway. Straka, 22, probably wouldn't have been the team's first choice for a call-up if not for the AHL All-Star break, but performed well enough in three games this week that he must have turned some heads. He was sent back to Lehigh Valley yesterday, with Michael Raffl (illness) and Scott Laughton (concussion) inching closer to returning.

The Eastern Conference playoff picture is largely set. The final wild-card team (Washington) is on pace for 98 points. The Flyers have 51 points in 51 games. Even if the Caps were to fall back to the traditional 93-point pace required for a playoff spot (the average in the East since 2005), the Flyers would need to go something like 20-8-3 while the Caps went 15-14-3 to close out the year. The bleak outlook will only become more clear this week, with just one game for the Flyers between now and Sunday.

No one likes the idea of tanking. If anything, though, the Sixers have tanked the notion that tanking is impossible to sell to a fanbase. It requires humble pie, a sour dessert that's rarely been served on South Broad Street. Pretending now for short-term ticket sales will only hurt in the long haul.

Rookie forward Scott Laughton joked he "took the option" to not participate in yesterday's limited practice, but he actually took and passed a baseline concussion test while his teammates were on the ice. He skated with assistant coach Ian Laperriere by himself afterward and expects to test himself with contact drills tomorrow . . . Forward Michael Raffl said he lost approximately 10 pounds while sick last week. His lungs were filled with fluid, keeping him in bed most of the time.

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