Streaking Flyers, with a defense that is the ‘hallmark’ of their success, face challenging week

The Flyers will try to sweep the season series against powerful Boston and extend their winning streak to 10 games Tuesday night at the Wells Fargo Center.

To do so, they will have to play better than they did in Saturday’s 3-1 win over Buffalo. Much better.

“We didn’t deserve to win,” said right winger Jake Voracek, who is tied with Travis Konecny as the Flyers’ leading scorer during their nine-game winning streak. “We were really flat throughout the 60 minutes. … The emotions weren’t as high as the other night, let’s be honest. But we won. You can’t ask for much more.”

Carter Hart stole the victory. He made 38 saves in one of the few games the Flyers have been outplayed during the streak, getting outshot, 39-24.

“Hartsy made some huge stops when we needed it and we got lucky that we won,” Voracek said. “In the end, you don’t ask [how], but we won. So, I like I said, it’s a good two points, but we’ll need to be way better Tuesday.”

Boston, which dropped a pair of shootout decisions (3-2 and 6-5) to the Flyers earlier this season, leads the NHL with 98 points. Hart won both decisions against the Bruins and was the benefactor of his team’s offensive eruption in the latter contest, a game in which the Flyers overcame a 5-2 deficit.

The Flyers (41-20-7), who played their last three games in a four-night span, had a day to recharge Sunday. They will practice Monday at the Wells Fargo Center before the Bruins (43-14-12) come to town. The Flyers then play at Tampa Bay, the league’s second-best team, on Thursday.

Thanks to a 19-5-2 run, the Flyers are tied with Washington for the most points (89) in the Metropolitan Division, though the Capitals have the tiebreaker: a 37-36 edge in regulation and overtime wins.

“To be honest, I didn’t ever make any projections as to where we would be,” general manager Chuck Fletcher said in an ESPN Radio interview Saturday. “I really felt that in the first half of the year, there would probably be the proverbial growing pains as you have new players, new coaches, and everybody getting used to one another. I figured there would be more inconsistency and just hoped we would kind of keep our heads above water and kind of keep in the middle. I felt in the second half, once you have Alain Vigneault working with the team for half a year, our team would get quite a bit better.”

That’s exactly what has happened.

“I thought our team would be a playoff team … and hopefully at the right time of the year, you’re trending the right way,” Fletcher said. “It’s been an impressive response by our players and our coaches. We have a real tough schedule coming up, but I like our mentality, and we’ve put ourselves in a pretty good spot here, where if we can keep doing things the right way – again, I don’t expect to win every game the rest of the year, that’s not realistic – and continue to play the way we’re playing, we’ll be happy when the season ends.”

During their nine-game winning streak – there have only been four longer ones in franchise history – the Flyers have outscored opponents, 39-17, and have scored the first goal on six occasions.

Fletcher lauded the offense, which has scored four goals or more in eight of the last nine games, for its consistency, but said the defense was the “hallmark of our success."

With three veteran coaches hired before the season -- Vigneault and assistants Mike Yeo and Michel Therrien -- “there’s instant credibility there,” Fletcher said. 'I think once the players grasped what we were trying to do and why, they bought in, and they’ve really done the job. Defense is the start of everything, and how you defend -- the neutral zone in particular. If you can stop teams coming through the neutral zone and turn pucks over, then oftentimes you get an odd-man rush on a short sheet of ice.”

Voracek and Konecny are tied with a team-high 13 points during the streak, and Kevin Hayes leads the Flyers with six goals during the nine games.

Hart has led the way during the streak, going 7-0 with a 1.71 goals-against average and .942 save percentage, and the top defensive pairing of Ivan Provorov (six points, plus-12 in last nine games) and Matt Niskanen (four points, plus-16) has been superb.

Now comes the hard part: Pushing the streak into double figures. And beyond.

That said, the Flyers are 6-1-1 against teams that, heading into Sunday, sat atop the league’s four divisions: Boston, (Atlantic), Washington (Metropolitan), St. Louis (Central), and Edmonton (Pacific).