It\u2019s 23,040 minutes and a handful of hours. It\u2019s five games.<\/p>\n
But how do you measure a year? <\/p>\n
In goals? In saves? In shifts? <\/p>\n
How do the Flyers\u2019 decision-makers measure this season? That\u2019s the question as president Keith Jones<\/a> and general manager Danny Bri\u00e8re<\/a> figure out what to do as March 6\u2019s 3 p.m. trade deadline ticks closer.<\/p>\n For the players who hit the ice Tuesday for the first allowed practice after taking 11 days off for the Olympic break, they are focused on closing out strong, beginning on Feb. 25 against the Washington Capitals (7 p. m., NBCSP).<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Travis Sanheim learned hard work growing up on a grain farm in small-town Canada. It helped make him an Olympian.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any emphasis on the games before the deadline, [it] doesn\u2019t change anything for us,\u201d winger Travis Konecny<\/a> said. \u201cWe\u2019re just looking to get back on track, kind of back to the way we were playing at the start of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n The last time the Flyers were in playoff position was Jan. 12. They sat in third place in the Metropolitan Division, but since then, they have won only three of 12 games (3-6-3) and posted the fifth-worst points percentage (.375) in the NHL. <\/p>\n With 26 games left on the schedule, and just five until the trade deadline, time isn\u2019t just ticking on what management will do<\/a> but also ticking on the season. The Flyers enter the last stretch eight points back of both the Boston Bruins, who hold the second wild card in the Eastern Conference, and the New York Islanders in the Metropolitan Division. The Flyers have a game in hand in Boston and two on the Islanders.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo division opponents right when we get back, huge back-to-back,\u201d said center Noah Cates<\/a>, regarding playing the Capitals and New York Rangers on consecutive nights (8 p.m., ESPN).<\/p>\n \u201cSo, yeah, definitely the urgency, the compete level needs to be up, everything. Definitely huge for us to get back into shape and our structure, different things that were lacking before the break. And get reset and refocused and dialed in for huge games in February and then in March.\u201d<\/p>\n Tuesday marked the start of pseudo-training camp, with seven practices over the next eight days at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees.<\/p>\n Things started slowly as the players worked on getting their hands back, touching the puck for the first time in a while, and skating. Some of the drills included a small area game of keep away, with one fewer puck than the players, and someone ending up as the last man standing, and another where the players had to pass between pylons a certain number of times before being able to shoot on goal.<\/p>\n As the day wore on, the intensity ratcheted up \u2014 without contact \u2014 and it ended with a conditioning bag skate.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you realize where we\u2019re at in the standings, where things are schedule-wise. Right now is part of the process, and today was part of the process of getting ourselves back up to speed,\u201d assistant coach Todd Reirden said. Reirden spoke with the media with Rick Tocchet<\/a> still in Italy as an assistant coach for Hockey Canada. <\/p>\n \u201cEvery drill was done with a purpose and with a reason behind it to be able to get the players executing as high a pace as they possibly could, conditioning at the end, and then tomorrow, we\u2019ll go after certain areas of our structure to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Rick Tocchet\u2019s late parents emigrated from Italy. Now, he\u2019ll go back there to coach Canada in the Olympics<\/a><\/p>\n One guy the Flyers will be relying on is Konecny, who has 37 points in the past 35 games, including nine points in five games heading into the break. Banged up and playing through it \u2014 he tallied a hat trick as he gutted out and grimaced through a demoralizing loss to Columbus<\/a> on Jan. 28 \u2014 the alternate captain has impressed everyone, including Reirden.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a good break, got a chance to reset, get my mind in a different spot. Kind of realize where we\u2019re at as a team and what we need to do finishing the season here. For me, just getting to the top of my game, where I need to be to help our team, and I think everyone is in the same spot,\u201d Konecny said.<\/p>\n But he\u2019s also looking ahead. Konecny, who said after the loss in Boston<\/a> to the Bruins before the break that \u201cI\u2019m tired of missing the playoffs,\u201d looks at the standings every day.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s disappointing every year if you miss it,\u201d he said on Tuesday. \u201cI think what\u2019s gotten everyone to this point is everyone\u2019s a competitor, everyone wants to compete in the big games. \u2026 It\u2019s not going to be like the end of the world if it didn\u2019t happen; I\u2019d be frustrated. <\/p>\n \u201cBut I know that the team we\u2019re building, what we have, the plan, we\u2019re going to be a playoff team, and I\u2019m not worried about that. I know everyone believes in that in this locker room, so we keep on pushing. Hopefully, it happens, and we\u2019re going to give everything to get there, and if it doesn\u2019t, we re-evaluate and get better in the summer.\u201d<\/p>\n Breakaways<\/p>\n Goalie Carson Bjarnason was recalled from Lehigh Valley of the American Hockey League on Tuesday to give the Flyers two goalies with Dan Vlada\u0159 at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics<\/a>. \u2026 According to Reirden, defensemen Oliver Bonk<\/a> and Hunter McDonald will also join the Flyers with Rasmus Ristolainen and Travis Sanheim<\/a> in Italy playing for Finland and Canada, respectively, and the Phantoms off until Friday in Hershey. McDonald was with the Flyers across the weeklong trip to Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Denver, but did not play. Bonk joined the Phantoms in early December after missing training camp and the start of the season with an upper-body injury. He has six points in 22 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s 23,040 minutes and a handful of hours. It\u2019s five games. But how do you measure a year?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,246687,85],"class_list":["post-487749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-practice-olympic-break-playoff-push-trade-deadline","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}