The Philadelphia Flyers are somehow just four points back of the New York Rangers for first place in the Atlantic Division. Flyers fans like myself find that fitting, since four points represents four straight regulation losses to the Rangers this season. If Philadelphia falls to New York for a fifth straight time on Feb. 11, it will become even harder to imagine this team winning the division.
The Flyers won't be knocked out of the Atlantic Division race with a loss, since there are still two months to go in the regular season. However, it is extremely hard to imagine that Philadelphia can win the division over a team that it has gone 0-4 against, and could drop to 0-5 against after this latest showdown.
Winning a division over a team that the Flyers haven't beaten the entire season would be an unbelievable prospect - unbelievable and unlikely. It has become even more unlikely recently, as the Flyers are having a harder time beating teams that aren't the Rangers these days. If that doesn't change, Philadelphia will have to worry more about holding off the Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils than catching New York.
Yet even if the Flyers lose a fifth straight time to the Rangers, they won't face off again until April 3 in the final week of the season. It is somewhat conceivable that Philadelphia and New York could still be neck-and-neck by then, depending on if the Rangers finally come down to Earth and the Flyers get on a last season run over the rest of the NHL. But it is hard to imagine that Philadelphia could be far enough ahead in the division by April 3 to drop to 0-6 against New York and get away with it.
Mathematically, the Flyers can win the Atlantic Division without ever beating the Rangers. Yet plausibly, it is difficult to picture that a team which could never beat its arch-rival and its closest Atlantic competition could possibly win enough to finish ahead of them anyway. A team that goes 0-4 and worse against one top ranked club does not look like a squad that can beat the rest of the elite - at least not enough to win a division, a conference or a Stanley Cup.
Philadelphia's season will depend on more than what it does in these two final battles with New York. But if we still want to buy the Flyers as a legitimate Stanley Cup contender, they need to get one win or even one point at the Rangers' expense sometime this year. Otherwise this will be too big of an asterisk for us to take the Flyers seriously.
Robert Dougherty is a life-long Philadelphia resident and a Flyers fan since the age of eight.
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