Last gasp for Flyers, best chance to make up points comes on homestand

In reality, the last month of games has been must-win hockey for the Flyers. To this point in Februrary, they are just 5-4-3.

Trailing Pittsburgh for the final playoff spot by five points, they are no worse for wear in the standings despite Tuesday's 3-1 loss in Carolina. The Penguins fell to the Bruins, 5-1, on Wednesday, holding the margin.

Fresh off a five-game road trip that certainly featured its ups and downs, the Flyers get the comforts of home for the next six games spanning two weeks and in doing so, get their last-gasp effort to stay alive and truly make up ground in the playoff race.

It was around this time last year that the Flyers were going down a similar path, slowly but surely closing the gap and the final five weeks of the season approached. What makes this stretch different is the opponents on the schedule.

The Flyers have an incredibly difficult post-deadline schedule that will start with the final game of the homestand against Tampa Bay on March 7. That can be good or bad depending on which Flyers team shows up.

Last season, the Flyers seemed to get up for the big game, the tough games, the most-anticipated games. There will be plenty of those to come.

That is why now is the time to make up ground.

There is nothing necessarily easy about this stretch. They will face three playoff-worthy teams on this six-game homestand. But they will also face three teams well out of the playoff hunt. And four of the six are from the opposite conference.

What the Flyers need here to really make some headway is points in five of the six games on the homestand and ideally four or five wins. Nine points in the standings in that time should at least be enough to put some pressure on teams the Flyers will still have to play, which equate to four-point games, even if the best they can do is leap frog two or three teams instead of the four they need to.

Brings that the next four games are against Western Conference teams, there is no real wrong way to win. In Carolina, it was really a worst-case scenario, because not only did the Flyers not get two points, they lost in regulation, giving Carolina a four-point swing. Even winning the game in overtime, if they had managed a tying goal, would have been a small defeat because it would give Carolina a small incentive for just surviving regulation. Against teams they are chasing, games like that can't happen.

So in a sense, the pressure is off there. If it takes overtime, so be it. Giving up that point means nothing.

Even when they close the homestand against two East teams, there really is nothing wrong with those getting to overtime either. Columbus is too far behind and Tampa too far ahead to have it really mean anything.

This homestand is about the end result and in more ways than one.

The Flyers have struggled to bury chances and they will already be shorthanded at the start of the homestand without captain and leading scorer Claude Giroux.

Finish your chances, finish off the opponent, grab two points, repeat. That has to be the Flyers focus.

The Flyers may also want to take care of business in the first two games in particular. If the Flyers slip any further than five points back, it may further influence their trade deadline stance.

The trade deadline is Monday afternoon, and while Ron Hextall may be looking to sell, he'll be more inclined to keep as much of the team intact as possibly if the playoffs are still a possibility. If those chances slip further, it could add up to another trade or two happening before Monday.

But for now, the task is not in the GM's office but on the ice. The Flyers can certainly influence Hextall's decisions over the next few days. Starting off on a positive note in the homestand could be enough to convince him, and the fans, that this team may have a shot, especially as time dwindles down.