The Flyers are 4-2-2 in their first eight games of the season. It’s safe to say, at this point, that they managed to avoid the slow start to the season they were looking for.
But in those first two weeks, the Flyers had to pass several tests, tests that were about competing with good teams. They lost in overtime to Tampa Bay, shut out the defending champion Blackhawks and most-recently picked up a key shootout win over the Rangers on Saturday.
Starting with Tuesday’s 4-3 overtime loss against the Buffalo Sabres, the Flyers now get to see the opposite end of the spectrum and have two labels that they can shed with a successful two weeks.
The Flyers played host to the Sabres on Tuesday and will host the New Jersey Devils on Thursday. After that, they are not home again until Nov. 10, playing their next five games on the road.
Their opponents are Buffalo, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Winnipeg, teams that are either around the same benchmark as the Flyers or struggling mightily to start the season.
If there was one problem that stood out in the Flyers inconsistencies, it was the bizarre reality that the Flyers always seemed to play better against the teams in the playoff picture that were clearly better than they were and down to their own level of competition.
So, one of the Flyers immediate goals should be to play the Buffalo Sabres, who entered Tuesday with a 2-6-0 record, as if they were the Montreal Canadiens, a team lost their first game on Tuesday night.
The Flyers will get plenty of chances to prove that this team has a new mindset and has fully embraced the style of Dave Hakstol if they take care of business in the next two weeks.
Then there is the problem of succeeding on the road. The Flyers are a great home team. So far this season, they are 3-1-1. On the road, they hold a 1-1-1 record.
A five-game road trip will also give the Flyers time to see how effective they can be on another team’s ice.
A 4-2-2 start is good enough to start thinking that this team has more of a shot than a lot of people wanted to give them. The eye test will always prove more than anything paper says.
That said, the Flyers habits of losing on the road with poor play and struggling against the teams that were right there with them in the standings last season doesn’t cut it and it’s not what playoff teams do.
With wins there for the taking if they just stick to the system, the Flyers could suddenly turn a lot of people into believers if they can overcome the demons that plagued them last year.
Kevin Durso is managing editor for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @Kevin_Durso.
