In the meantime, we are all in this uncomfortable middle ground. The Flyers are trying to generate some momentum going into the playoffs but cannot seem to sustain anything for very long; Bruins 2, Flyers 1, case in point. The media are wondering why.
The players are unable to say what everybody knows in their hearts - that is, that they have been in first place in the NHL Eastern Conference for nearly 3 months, and that it is difficult to manufacture urgency at a time when staying healthy is really the most important thing for a hockey player whose playoff berth is already clinched. So we go through this dance, picking at scabs and covering them with platitudes - everybody involved knowing that none of it is likely to matter on April 13, when the playoffs begin.
This is going to play out in one of two ways. If the Flyers find a way to get bounced out of the first round of the playoffs, everybody will point to their lack of consistency down the stretch. If the Flyers find a way to make another long run this spring, everybody will acknowledge this was a 100-something-point team whose mediocre last couple of weeks were forgotten the moment that the urgency was ratcheted up.
Hindsight will be unimpeachable, as is the custom. In the meantime, though, the Flyers have to get from now to then.
In the last week, they played a good game but lost in a shootout against Washington on a night when starting goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky was marked absent, and then they played a bad game against Pittsburgh and lost in another shootout, and then they tap-danced on the New York Islanders, and then they lost last night when the Bruins scored a late power-play goal.
None of it has been horrible, even as this is now nine games without defenseman Chris Pronger and his broken hand. It has just been kind of . . . blah. (That's a hockey term.)
