Flyers still believe, and other takeaways from a season-saving (for now) win over the Rangers

NEW YORK — Flyers never say die.

This has been used often in a season filled with comebacks and thrills. So why not once more? Because despite riding an eight-game losing streak, where they were outscored 42-18 and were a mess against the Columbus Blue Jackets and Montreal Canadiens, the Flyers played one of their most complete games of the season on Thursday night.

“The key is just not quitting,” captain Sean Couturier said t before the game. Indeed.

This Flyers team does not know what quitting is, whether in a game or to save their season. So of course, facing the No. 1 team in the NHL, they went out and did what they do best when facing adversity — win. Not only did they beat the New York Rangers 4-1, but they kept their playoff hopes alive.

“Just believing in one another. No matter what was going to happen, tonight we were going to be there to follow it up and I thought the guys did a great job,” winger Travis Konecny, who had two points, said.

Here are three things to know from the Flyers’ big win.

The Flyers have 85 points and just two games left, Saturday against the New Jersey Devils and Tuesday against the Washington Capitals. Both games are at the Wells Fargo Center.

How did the night go for the other teams in the mix?

The New York Islanders beat the Montreal Canadiens 3-2 in overtime. The Washington Capitals lost 4-2 to the Buffalo Sabres. The Pittsburgh Penguins squandered a 5-3 lead in the third period before topping the Detroit Red Wings 6-5 in overtime.

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So with that, the Islanders remain in third place in the Metropolitan Division with 89 points and three games remaining. With their win and the Capitals’ loss, the Penguins are now the second wild card with 86 points and three games left. The Flyers are tied with the Red Wings and Capitals but their two rivals each have a game in hand.

If the Flyers win their next two games they will finish with 89 points. The best-case scenario is the teams between them and the wild card lose their last three but that’s probably a pipe dream. The Flyers finish their season with a matchup against the Capitals and the Islanders play the Penguins on Wednesday.

Anything is possible. Buckle up.

“We win and we get to fight another day,” coach John Tortorella said. “We’re going to have to do the same thing when we play Saturday. We’re going to have to be ready to go and just see if we can extend this.”

Maybe the Flyers needed to get back to their comfort zone. Maybe they just needed to get back to being “hungry dogs” because, as we all know, “they run faster.”

“We’re back to being the underdogs, kind of where people thought we were out or counting us out,” said Noah Cates, who extended his point streak to five games with a goal. “Back to kind of where we feel comfortable. Playing against one of the top teams in the league, everyone’s doubting us, and we stepped up and had a great effort.”

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Underdogs. It’s where the Flyers have played their best all season long. They went into games against the No. 1 team in the league like the Vancouver Canucks in December and the Winnipeg Jets in January, and came out victorious. Several times throughout the season the players have brought up that no one on the outside expected them to be good, that no one expected them to be in the playoff picture, and that it wouldn’t last.They are still hanging in because, inside the room, there was never a doubt.

“There’s a lot of ups and downs in a season, it was just too bad ours came right now,” Konecny said about the long losing streak. “But we’ve been playing like that all year so we weren’t shocked in here when we started that way. We know there’s really no other way around it, we just got to win games right now.”

From the moment the puck dropped the Flyers of old roared. They weathered an early storm before Cam York made it 1-0 just under 5 minutes into the game. They didn’t fold when things got tough, even when the Rangers tied things up late in the opening frame. The Orange and Black instead kept plugging away as Bobby Brink, Konecny, and Cates added markers.

And despite facing more shot attempts in the second and third periods, per Natural Stat Trick, they did not lose their structure like in the past few games. In fact, the Flyers only allowed two shots on goal by the Rangers in the third period. The structure helped Sam Ersson, who was stellar in net and rebounded in a big way after getting lifted on Tuesday night. Ersson was awarded the dog mask after he stopped 24 of the 25 shots he faced.

“It’s been kind of a struggle here lately so it was definitely huge,” Ersson said about the early saves he made. “Especially coming off a performance like last game, you want to bounce back. We still believe that we’re in this thing and we’re going to do everything we can to make a push here.”

Across the last few chats with the media, Tortorella mentioned that maybe some guys were trying a little too hard.

“We’ve won this year as a team, that’s the way we go about it,” Tortorella said pregame. “I think certain Individuals have hurt their game because they’re trying to do too much and trying to take too much on. I can see it happening through a lineup.”

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Doing too much was causing the team to not work together as a five-man unit on the ice, as they lost their structure in the defensive zone and weren’t clicking on offense. Cates acknowledged the team hit “rock bottom” in Montreal and had a good look in the mirror. According to Konecny, there was a pregame meeting with the players and coaches and everyone knew the objective. Whatever was said internally worked because Thursday the Flyers team that earned points in 45 of its first 71 games showed up.

“We talked about how we’ve played this year, not as individuals, but winning games as a team,” Tortorella said. “That was probably one of our better team games we’ve played in quite a while. It helps to score some goals, too. It takes pressure off our goalie.

“It’s good it happens this way, as far as a team game. And we can lean on that for another couple of games here and see where we go.”

Each of the Flyers’ four goals was scored off the rush. Translation: they played well in their own end, and were able to break out before burying their chance on the other end. It’s something the Flyers excelled at for most of the year and finally were able to find again.

York’s goal was scored after the Flyers pressured Alexander Wennberg to cough up the puck to Konecny along the boards; Travis Sanheim kept Kaapo Kakko on the outside before separating him from the puck, allowing Ryan Poehling to pick it up and break out before dropping it to Bobby Brink for the goal; Konecny made it 3-1 by first stripping the puck from Mika Zibanejad in the Flyers end; and Cates’ goal came after Garnet Hathaway and Co. were able to win a defensive zone faceoff and Couturier chipped it up to Cates.

“We’ve been a rush team all year long,” Tortorella said. “It’s been tough for us to get going in this time of year, the way teams are playing and I think we’ve lost a little bit of our transition. But tonight we found a way. ... And I think it is fed off of being good defensively because that’s where you get your turnovers and get going the other way.

“Important that we scored a couple of goals, some [by] guys that we needed to score; maybe it’ll help them get on a little bit of a run here. No complaints. I thought Erss was really good, made some timely saves [which] should help his confidence. So we take a good win and it allows us to keep fighting here.”