Flyers find motivation in the Phillies’ postseason success: ‘That’s where we want to get to’

At the Flyers’ preseason finale at the Wells Fargo Center on Thursday, the videoboard flashed a good luck message to the Phillies. The bright message in red led to a loud cheer from the 12,751 in attendance.

Welcome to Red October.

While the Flyers’ focus is now on the regular season, the Phillies’ are gazing toward their end game with the hope of a trip to the World Series. First stop? The friendly confines at Citizens Bank Park, where the Phillies hosted the New York Mets in the first two games of the best-of-five National League Division Series this weekend.

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The Phillies have made the postseason for three straight years, this time by winning the NL East for the first time since 2011. They jumped out to a large lead in the division before eventually winning it by six games over the Atlanta Braves and the Mets.

“I’ve been following the baseball for the last few years,” said winger Travis Konecny. “So when you see the buzz around the team — and I was here when the Eagles won — you want to get back to that and be that team that is involved in that and have the other sports teams watching us. That’s the key, is you want to be the team in the playoffs and have the buzz around the city.”

The Flyers have not made the playoffs in four seasons, but it feels like longer. Maybe it’s because four years ago, the guys in orange and black were in the Stanley Cup playoffs hundreds of miles away, in the pandemic bubble with crowd noise pumped in at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. Maybe it’s because that run ended in the second round with a 4-0 loss to the New York Islanders in Game 7, despite the Flyers being the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.

And maybe it’s because the last time fans got a chance to grab a beer and watch their team play postseason hockey in person was the first round in 2018 — a six-game loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins.

“I think any year, especially being in this market, you want to succeed and do well and be part of something,” center Scott Laughton said. “I don’t think there’s any time where the players are thinking a different way, but I know the guys in here who have been here a while definitely wanted to kind of push over the edge here. We were close last year, but we want to get there. You want to get there. You want to feel the energy from the crowd and be a part of something.”

Laughton, Konecny, Sean Couturier, and Travis Sanheim are the only guys left on the roster from that 2018 team. Joel Farabee played in the 2020 bubble.

“You just see how much into it the fans are when the team’s going to make the playoffs, and obviously they win the division and the city just really gets behind them. So we’re just trying to do the same thing,” said Farabee, a noted Phillies fan since he was a kid. “I think a lot of people, especially with our young guys coming up, I think that the fans are really excited for what’s going to happen this year. And it’s our job to give them what they want.”

Morgan Frost wanted to make clear that he is a Blue Jays fan first. But he’s on the Phillies bandwagon.

“That’s where we want to get to, obviously,” said Frost, who played in the 2020 regular season but not the postseason. “We were so close last year, which is obviously a little bit heartbreaking. But, yeah, I think if we can get there, I think the fans would rally behind us even more. All you got to do is get in, and you never know what can happen.”

Frost, Farabee, Laughton, Sanheim, and Konecny got a chance to live like major leaguers before training camp, when the quintet took batting practice hacks at Citizens Bank. No one cleared the fences, but Frost earned the Phillie Phanatic chain as the best hitter among the group. He said Farabee was the most consistent hitter, but he thinks he got the award from Phillies infield coach Bobby Dickerson because he came the closest to hitting one out. Laughton confessed he hit two singles but stressed that they were “two MLB singles.”

So does seeing the Phillies in the postseason fuel some fire?

“A little bit, maybe,” Laughton said. “I think especially when the Eagles won, you obviously think about going down Broad Street and being part of that. But there’s a lot of steps and a lot of processes to go through. So, yeah, you don’t think about it too much, but it’s cool to see and cool to be part of.”

It’s been 49 years — 50 come May — since the Flyers have won a Stanley Cup. But the first step is, of course, a spot in the postseason. Sanheim has tasted the postseason and has seen the city not dressed in red but in orange. It is the passion of the fans he has fed off and “hopefully the fan base is fired up, and it translates into us.”

Now, while hockey and baseball end in a champion being handed a trophy, the sports celebrate things quite differently. Plastic sheets covered the lockers in the Phillies clubhouse, and the players were sporting goggles as they sprayed each other with champagne … for winning the division. And, as they advance, they will party just as hard each round.

In hockey, you may toast with a beer in the back when you win the division and move on to the next round. But the goggles don’t come out until you’re drinking from Lord Stanley’s Cup.

“A little bit different when they’re celebrating after every series win or clinching the playoffs,” Sanheim said with a laugh. “That’s just kind of what they do in their sport, not something you see, I guess, in hockey. It’s more businesslike and on to the next challenge.”

“Maybe we change it,” his buddy Konecny chimed in from the stall next door.

Maybe.