Buckle Up, Baby! Pens-Flyers Matchup Is As Good As It Gets for Playoff Openers

PHOTO COURTESY PITTSBURGH PENGUINS

For playoff hockey-starved fan bases at both ends of the state, the upcoming NHL first-round series between the Penguins and Flyers will have been worth the wait.

In Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, they’ll remember how to hate — especially each other.

What’s much more difficult to equate is which team should be the favorite. You can compare and contrast Sidney Crosby with Travis Konecny analytically, if you’re into that.

You also can gauge a perceived special teams edge, if desired, based on power-play and penalty-killing success rates.

What we don’t know, and won’t know, until the games play out is who the Flyers really are, and what specifically the Penguins are up against.

The Flyers’ regular-season record (43-27-12, 98 points) mirrors that of the Penguins (41-25-16, 98 points). Philly’s ledger is a little bloated due to 10 shootout wins, just as the Pens’ is less than it otherwise might have been if not for 10 shootout losses. The shootout, thankfully, goes away in the playoffs, as does a game being decided by 3-on-3 overtime.

That suggests advantage Pens.

Except the team the Flyers are now barely resembles the team they were before the Olympic break.

And that makes Philly dangerous.

SIDNEY CROSBY | PHOTO COURTESY PITTSBURGH PENGUINS

The Flyers, like the Penguins, were thought to be bottom-feeders at season’s outset. It took them a little longer to flip the script than it did the Pens, but preseason expectations of what the Flyers would be capable of have nonetheless been shattered.

As a result, not much, if anything, that happened to the Flyers before the post-Olympics resumption of play on Feb. 25 matters. The Flyers went 18-7-1 after that, storming their way into the playoffs by playing their best hockey when it mattered most.

How’d that happen?

Flyers players talked with each other after beating Carolina in a shootout and punching their ticket to the postseason on Monday night about a three-game swing through California from March 18-21 that, in retrospect, stood out as a turning point (the Flyers beat the Ducks, Kings and Sharks; apparently, they bonded while doing so).

Other in-season or late-season game-changing developments in Philadelphia include:

• Trevor Zegras finding a way to express his anomalous personality and his atypical game and still play the game the Flyers need him to play. South Philly apparently agrees with him more than Anaheim.
• Matvei Michkov eventually understood what first-year head coach Rick Tocchet wanted from him and delivered what was expected from a former 2023 seventh-overall selection.
• Tyson Foerster, selected 23rd overall in 2020, returning on April 3 after missing 49 consecutive games to injury but refusing to concede the season.
• Porter Martone, Philly’s 2025 sixth-overall pick, being delivered in time for the stretch drive via Michigan State’s sooner-than-anticipated NCAA Tournament exit. Had the Spartans not collapsed in a regional final against Wisconsin and instead reached the NCAA’s Frozen Four, Martone wouldn’t have arrived soon enough to make the difference he has (four goals and 10 points in nine games).
• Goaltender Dan Vladar played 19 of the last 26 regular-season games and allowed two goals or fewer in 13 of them.
• Head coach Rick Tocchet massaging a consistent compete level out of and instilling a collective belief in the Flyers, two things that for too long hadn’t been seen on Broad Street.

The Flyers were nine points out of the postseason money on March 10. No team had ever come from that far back at that point of a season, through 60 or more games, and qualified for the playoffs.

Now, one has — and it’s the one with which the Pens must now contend.

The Flyers, like the Penguins, have evolved into a team for which the sum of the whole far exceeds the sum of the parts; that’s what you want to be when the playoffs start.

The rivalry adds spice for two teams thirsting to achieve in the postseason for a change (Philly hasn’t won a series since 2020, and the Pens haven’t since 2018).

One gets the feeling both the Pens and the Flyers would be ready to play anybody, anywhere right about now, and they are determined to continue proving people wrong, no matter the matchup.

This is going to be as unpredictable as it will be exhilarating.

Drop the puck.