Playoff talk not on the Flyers’ December agenda
Playoffs. Playoffs? Playoffs!?!
John Tortorella didn’t even attempt to raise his voice Thursday but given the chance to emulate an old famous football coach like Jim Mora … well, Torts didn’t even go there.
During a morning skate session, Tortorella was asked, sort of, if he thought this year’s stubborn spate of Flyers success could translate into a playoff spot for the club.
“Playoffs?” Tortorella said. “Don’t even start asking me those questions. We’re in the end of December. … You don’t know what your team is until the end of January. I’m not even going there.”
If he won’t go there, who will?
To their credit, not many of the Flyers’ players do, either. But there’s no question this team has been more consistently competitive in games than it has in quite some time. Years, even.
“The biggest thing is confidence throughout the entire locker room,” said Flyers forward Garnet Hathaway. “We have this belief that the guy next to you is going to do the job, and we know that we can score goals.
“We’ve played a lot of teams in our division lately as well, and those games are so tight. They come down to the wire. And playing until overtime … having the confidence to say, hey, we tie this game … there’s a chance we can win. And we’ve been down goals in most of those games. But having that belief and trust in that guy next to you in the locker room and just knowing that you take that next shift at a time, and if you’re down, build back into it.
“It’s one of those things where we know we need to rely on everyone to have their best game in order to be successful in this league,” Hathaway added. “We taken it one game at a time, one shift at a time. But you know you have to give it everything that you can.”
Of course, Hathaway hasn’t been here through most of the hard times. He was a player the Flyers pegged for free agency at the start of the buying period on July 1, signing a two-year, $4.75 million deal.
Through 31 games, the veteran checking line forward had but two goals and three points. But his defensive ability and energy weighed favorably, and moved Tortorella to put him in higher leveraged roles of late, especially with Cam Atkinson in a long scoring slump.
“Garny is what he is,” Torts said. “A simple game, go after pucks, bang around. But he’s more skilled than what people give him credit for. … I feel we can move him up and down the lineup. He’ll get bounced around if we think guys are struggling.”