Flyers exceed expectations with thrilling first-round series win over the Penguins in overtime
Game 6 was a pivot point for both the series and the Flyers’ immediate future. They now take on the Carolina Hurricanes — the top team in the Eastern Conference — in a pressure-free atmosphere.
The biggest Flyers home game in 16 years was the best of that mostly dull and empty stretch of time, 77 minutes and 32 seconds of total tension, loads of scoring chances, a near-equal number of stellar saves by the two goaltenders, all of the action and apprehension inside Xfinity Mobile Arena building and building and building … until Cam York flicked a little wrist shot from the right point that sailed on an enchanted journey to the back of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ net. Until the place felt like a gigantic joy-filled balloon that just popped. Until York skated to the glass rimming the rink and chucked his stick hammer-throw-style into the stands.
Flyers 1, Penguins 0 in overtime. Welcome back to springtime, Flyers fans.
“I hope everyone’s OK,” York said. “Definitely don’t want a lawsuit.”
» READ MORE: Cam York’s OT winner eliminates the Penguins, as Flyers advance to the second round for the first time since 2020
No potential plaintiffs in the place Wednesday. The 20,005 people on hand were at times too nervous to wave rally towels and, in the end, too giddy to care that York had flung his stick into harm’s way. No sense minimizing what Game 6 of this Eastern Conference first-round series meant, either.
“You can tell a little bit by the energy in the building, you know?” defenseman Jamie Drysdale said. “It feels like the relief and the cheers that we heard through the wins we’ve had here, it’s absolutely electric. It shows that they’re fully behind us. It’s amazing.”
“It’s been a long time,” coach Rick Tocchet said, “and there’s been a lot of frustration.”
The last time the Flyers had a playoff game in this arena that mattered so much was during their run to the 2010 Stanley Cup Final. Sure, they had been in the postseason thereafter, but none of those series carried the weight of this one. Those minidramas had played out during a different era for the franchise, when playoff berths were expected and perhaps taken for granted. The context now is different, not just because the Flyers hadn’t been a playoff team for so long, but because Game 6 was a pivot point for both the series and the Flyers’ future.
Consider the two possible outcomes and their ramifications. The Flyers finished off the Penguins and got the better of Sidney Crosby for one of the rare times in his 21-year career. They have advanced to the second round for the first time since 2020, and they have cemented this season as a success. They now take on the Carolina Hurricanes — the top team in the Eastern Conference — in a pressure-free atmosphere. They are, as the cliché goes, playing with house money now, and the table in front of them is covered in chips.
They’re in this enviable position because their goaltender, Dan Vladař, stopped all 42 shots he faced Wednesday for his second shutout of the series — and his best performance of a season in which he was voted the team’s MVP. Because York, who had spent the previous two years in former coach John Tortorella’s doghouse, slipped that shot through a Noah Cates screen and past Penguins goalie Arturs Šilovs, who was just as good in Game 6 as Vladar was. Because they held on and held on even as the Penguins were controlling the flow of play for most of the night.
“There were stretches we were rope-a-doping out there,” Tocchet said. “I’m [62], so I used to watch Muhammad Ali. Old guys know those fights.”
On the flip side of that thrilling coin, there would be really no way to sugarcoat it if they had lost Wednesday night and again Saturday in a prospective Game 7 in Pittsburgh. The goodwill that they had generated over the last month and a half, the belief that they were finally making the transition from a bad-to-mediocre team to a solid and competitive one, wouldn’t disappear, no. But it would be tainted. The mere act of qualifying for the playoffs for the first time since the COVID-extended season of 2019-20 had awakened a dormant fan base and stripped away much of its cynicism. Becoming just the fifth NHL team to lose a seven-game series after leading it three games to none would have dampened those happy, hopeful sentiments at least.
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At its most consequential, such a collapse would have compelled the Flyers’ leadership — president Keith Jones, general manager Danny Brière, chairman Dan Hilferty — to take a hard look at the roster and ask themselves, What did we learn about the young players who are here? Who among them pleasantly surprised us? And did we see something that raises concerns? The salary-cap space that they’ll have this offseason is unlikely to do them much good. More and more teams sign their best and most promising players long before those budding stars are eligible for free agency, so the pickings figure to be slim there. Instead, to make whatever additions and changes they decided were necessary to improve, the Flyers would have to make a trade, one that probably would have required them to sacrifice some of their young talent.
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Perhaps Jones and Brière will be inclined to consider and make such changes anyway, but they can do so now with freer minds, with the knowledge that this team did truly take a step forward — and, at the moment, still can keep moving. The Carolina Hurricanes are contenders for the Stanley Cup, and they’ll be favored to take care of the Flyers quickly, but late Wednesday night at the Xfinity Mobile Arena, no one cared. No one was looking ahead. Everyone stayed and roared and soaked in the sight of the Flyers celebrating. Of course they did. It had been such a long time since spring had come around.
