For Flyers, it’s win in regulation vs. Boston or start building for next season

The Flyers’ five-game stretch -- three against Boston, two against the Islanders -- was viewed as the pivotal part of the team’s season. It would determine whether the team was good enough to climb into the East Division playoff chase.

It would also determine whether general manager Chuck Fletcher should be a buyer or seller by Monday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline.

Well, the five-game Show Me Tour ends Saturday afternoon against Boston at the Wells Fargo Center, and the Flyers have played relatively well in the first four contests. They have displayed more structure, and limited their opponents’ chances.

Yet, the results say otherwise.

The Flyers have won just one of those four games, going 1-1-2 and falling six points behind Boston for the division’s fourth and final playoff spot.

“I really like our compete level, especially in our last four games,” coach Alain Vigneault said before Friday’s practice in Voorhees. “I really believe our record should be better, but it’s not, so you have to deal with it and find a way to get the job done.”

That puts them in a must-win-in-regulation position Saturday against the Bruins (21-10-6), who have two games in hand on the Flyers (18-15-6) and are coming off Thursday’s impressive 4-2 win in Washington.

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Win in regulation Saturday and the Flyers would be four points behind with 16 games left, two fewer than Boston.

Lose -- or win beyond regulation -- and Fletcher is apt to be a seller at the deadline, perhaps dealing Scott Laughton for a draft pick and then hoping to re-sign the valuable forward when he becomes an unrestricted free agent in the offseason.

“The way we’re behind them now, we have to find a way to win that game in regulation,” Vigneault said. “We played hard in our last game against them, and we have to continue to do that.”

“Every game is a must-win at this point of the year, with the position we’re in,” captain Claude Giroux said.

On Tuesday, the Flyers dropped a 4-2 decision (with an empty-net goal) to the visiting Bruins despite a 42-26 shots domination and a 25-shot second period.

That defeat severely damaged the Flyers’ playoff chances. At the moment, MoneyPuck.com gives them a 15.2% chance to make the playoffs.

Vigneault was asked if he felt the Flyers needed to make a deal before the trade deadline to have a better playoff shot.

“My job and my focus is to work with the players that I have here,” he said, adding he talks with Fletcher daily about the team’s needs. “I really believe we have a good team. Our record doesn’t indicate how good our team is, but there’s still quite a few games left.”

In Thursday’s 3-2 shootout loss on Long Island, the Flyers again chased the game as they fell into a 2-0 hole in the first 7 minutes, 13 seconds. (They have had just two leads at the first intermission in the last 21 games.)

The Flyers steadied themselves. They got goals from Nic Aube-Kubel and Jake Voracek, received strong play from goalie Carter Hart and a defense that was shorthanded because of Samuel Morin’s controversial first-period ejection, and finished with a 56-42 advantage in shot attempts.

“I thought they played a much better game than we did,” Islanders coach Barry Trotz said.

No matter. The Isles prevailed in the shootout, where the Flyers’ shooters were stopped all five times by Ilya Sorokin.

The Flyers are 1-4 in shootouts, and their shooters are just 3-for-17.

So now they return home, try to get a lead for Brian Elliott, and figure out how to protect it. The Flyers have just one win in seven games against the Bruins this year.

“We need to focus on Boston; that’s all we can control,” Vigneault said. “We need to go out there and play and compete every shift -- and that’s what we’re going to do, and that’s what we’ve been doing lately.”

Other than inserting Elliott (2.92 GAA, .890 save percentage) for Hart, Vigneault said he plans to use the same lineup that lost Thursday’s hard-fought decision to the Islanders.

“I really liked the balance that our four lines had,” he said. “I thought our five D played really hard. They stayed off the ice [Friday] and will be in good shape for [Saturday]. I expect to go with the same D pairings that we went with.”

That means Morin, who did not receive any further disciplinary action from the NHL for his boarding major, will be in the lineup and Phil Myers will again be a healthy scratch.