Durso: Will holiday hurt Flyers road success?

Right now, things are good in Flyerland.

Three wins in three games to open an eight-game road trip have the Flyers climbing slowly but surely back into the playoff picture. The Flyers sit six points back of a playoff spot at the moment. Just in time for a break.

I'm using this week's column to kill two birds with one stone. With Christmas falling on Thursday, we're not having a mailbag tomorrow, but an interesting question was presented following Tuesday night's 5-2 win over the Minnesota Wild.

The Flyers were rolling before an extended break in early November and the layoff set off a massive stretch of losing – 1-8-1 in 10 games – before the Flyers recent turnaround – 6-1-3 in their last 10 games. Now back into a rhythm, is there concern that the Flyers will return from this break in similar fashion?

Instantly, I understand the cause for concern. The week before the layoff, the Flyers won three games in a row. Until the third period of a 4-3 win over Colorado on Nov. 8, they were completely dominating the opposition.

The Flyers didn't play another game until Nov. 14, and that started a string of losing that looked like it would swallow the Flyers up completely.

That's when Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel became parts of a conversation no one was having until that point in the season. Winning one game in two weeks will do that to you.

But here are the Flyers on a similar stretch. Prior to the massive losing streak, the Flyers were 7-3-0 in the 10 games before the break, totalling 14 points in a matter of three weeks. In the next three weeks, they would get just three points in the standings. In the two and a half weeks since then, they have 15 points.

Craig Berube even made the joke that maybe the Flyers should just skip Christmas and keep going. It certainly wouldn't hurt given the confidence of the team, a similar confidence to that 7-3-0 stretch started in late October.

It is all part of a roller-coaster ride of sorts for the Flyers. They started the season slow. It took five games for the Flyers to get a win. But once they did win, they started improving. 

By mid-November, the team was on a roll and looking very capable of at least matching last season's success. They had climbed from another disappointing start and become relevant in talk about successful teams.

When they crashed, they crashed head-first and head-on. It wasn't a pretty stretch of games for the Flyers, who were starting to create new ways to lose by the time they reached the West Coast at the beginning of December.

So now that the Flyers have been on a roll again, with defining wins over Toronto, Winnipeg and Minnesota to start this crucial road trip, how will they react after a road trip.

There is one key difference here as compared to the Flyers last extended lay-off: the entire NHL is off for three days – no games, no practices. So when the Flyers face the Nashville Predators on Saturday, the two teams will be on level playing fields, coming off the same break with the same amount of preparation.

I wouldn't look past struggles occurring. In fact, it seems bound to happen. The Flyers have looked slugging at some point in each game on the road trip. They have simply managed to snap out of it by the end of the game and still get the desired result.

Nashville is a difficult opponent to return to. This is another strong defensive team led by a coach who certainly knows the Flyers stars well.

But after Nashville, the Flyers are facing teams below them in the standings in each of the next four games – Arizona, Colorado, Carolina and New Jersey. If they don't earn six points in those games, that will be a disappointing end to the road trip.

Additionally, you have to think that break is weighing on the players' minds a bit. They know that if they would have cleaned up the play a lot sooner, they wouldn't be dealing with questions about a turnaround in the season and trying to get back into playoff position. This is their shot at redemption.

The road will press on for the Flyers, who have been solid as a team and growing in chemistry and confidence more and more in the past few days. As long as they return refreshed and renewed with that confidence on Saturday, there shouldn't be a drop-off this time around.

Kevin Durso is managing editor for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @Kevin_Durso.