VOORHEES, N.J. — Ready, set, hit reset.
That will be the Flyers’ objective after taking a three-game winning streak into the bye week and the All-Star break. Although the schedule came to a screeching halt, the team hopes to keep the train rolling coming off solid wins against the Wild, Bruins and Canadiens.
“That’s pretty much all I thought about for eight days is how we go about the next stretch here before we go back to practicing again,” Scott Gordon said. “The biggest thing we need to understand is we can’t get into that rut that we got into after the Christmas break.”
It was just a month ago when the Flyers carried some momentum into the holiday season winning three of four and then proceeded to belly flop during a four-game road trip losing to Tampa, Florida, Carolina and Nashville.
“I think we can talk about where we were when we came back against Tampa Bay,” Gordon said. “It was a wide-open game and we were a little reckless. I think that kind of snowballed during the four games on the road.”
A year ago, under former head coach Dave Hakstol, the Flyers carried a three-game winning streak into their bye week and then proceeded to rip off five wins over their next six games after they returned.
While Gordon may be wracking his brain to find the answers, the players believe the formula is rather basic.
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“You have to be focused in that first game, especially on the details,” Jake Voracek said. “Sometimes when you have eight days or nine days off, I think the timing has been a little bit off, especially in the beginning of games. Don’t try and make anything extra, just try and keep it simple.”
Right now, any talk of qualifying for the postseason has been tabled.
A run to the playoffs isn’t impossible, but highly improbable. The Flyers currently sit 14 points behind the Penguins, the second wild-card team in the Eastern Conference, who are also coming off their bye week. Compounding their playoff dilemma, the Flyers would need to jump over six teams above them in the standings.
“We can’t be looking at the big picture here,” Claude Giroux said before heading out West for the All-Star game. “You look at the big picture and we’re 14 points out of the playoffs. It’s definitely not easy to make the playoffs, but you win a few in a row and that changes quick. One game makes a huge difference.”
And as the Flyers have discovered, that snowball can build in a hurry.
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