VOORHEES, N.J. — This time of year, everyone is aware of what’s going on around the league and in the standings, Flyers coach Dave Hakstol said after Saturday night’s 6-0 win over Columbus.
They’re all aware of the records and the point totals. Claude Giroux said earlier in the week it’s tough not to scoreboard watch.
It’s just the nature of the playoff chase. But figuring out how many wins you’ll need over a certain stretch to keep pace isn’t the easiest of tasks. Some teams have a game in hand on another. It can all get a little confusing at times.
Just leave it to resident mathematician, Jake Voracek.
Last year, with the Flyers jockeying for playoff position, Voracek said the Flyers needed to win 25 of their final 34 games to reach 95 points and a playoff spot. He turned out to be only a little off. Pittsburgh got the East’s final playoff spot with 98 points. The Flyers, of course, fizzled out down the stretch and finished with 84 points.
Voracek went back to the magic ball last Thursday, saying the Flyers needed 10 of a possible 12 points on their season-long, six-game homestand to make a serious push for the postseason.
Well, they’ve got eight points with one game to go, despite Voracek only playing in the first of the six games (he’s out at least another week, lower body). Even so, they haven’t necessarily made up any ground. They were three points out when Voracek made that statement.
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And it’s possible they’ll be four or five points out of the playoffs entering Monday, when the Flyers welcome in the Eastern Conference’s hottest team, Tampa Bay, which brings a nine-game winning streak to Philadelphia.
“Jakey’s a smart guy with numbers,” goalie Steve Mason said after Sunday’s optional practice. “I guess he did the calculations. If we can get tomorrow night’s victory, it will be a pretty solid homestand, setting us up for a little mini-road trip here.”
The Flyers, who had a jam-packed February schedule, will then finally have three days between games for the first time since the All-Star break before heading down to Florida for a quick, back-to-back set against the Lightning and Florida Panthers next weekend.
Monday’s game will be the polar opposite of Saturday’s. Columbus came to Philadelphia with a sub-.500 record while playing its second game in two nights. The Lightning’s latest surge has pushed them to the top of the Atlantic Division’s standings.
“Last night we got a tired hockey club and tomorrow we’re going to get a team that’s rolling pretty good,” Mason said.
“There’s a reason they went to the finals last year,” said defenseman Brandon Manning, one of seven Flyers who took the ice Sunday. “They started a little slow, but when you win nine in a row it’s not by accident.”
The Flyers are 6-3-1 in their last 10 games, doing everything they can to keep pace while dealing with injuries.
They can’t control anything other than what’s in front of them. It’s likely going to come down to the remaining three games the Flyers have against Pittsburgh, no matter what Voracek's math calculations say. Each team had 18 games left to play entering Sunday.
“That’s been our mentality quite a bit this year,” Manning said. “The way Pittsburgh is playing in front of us and the other teams, I think we’ve just got to worry about what we can do and we’ve talked about it as a group: it’s one at a time. It’s one here and one in Tampa after that. We’ll go from there.”