Preview: Flyers playoff hockey is back there’s no better first round matchup than The Battle of Pennsylvania

Nobody thought that the Philadelphia Flyers would be a playoff team this season. Literally nobody. Not the national media. Not the talking heads on ESPN or whatever dumb podcast engagement farming on social media. Hell, I don’t think most of the people in this city thought this team had a chance and it’s hard to blame anyone for believing that would be the case.

The Flyers were a punchline for five straight years and everybody was perfectly happy to keep it that way. Nobody outside of the diehards (The Liberty Yell) gave a single shit about this team until they went on a heater after the Olympic break and forced the entire hockey world to pay attention.

Now the whole city is buzzing about Flyers hockey again. People who hadn’t watched a game since November are suddenly locked in.

The bandwagon is filling up and honestly, I love it. Get on. There’s room for everybody.

That’s what happens when a team earns it the way this group has. You want to jump on now? Welcome aboard. Just don’t pretend you were here in January when this team was eight points out of a wild card spot and the rest of the city had already moved on to Phillies spring training.

Welcome back, Philadelphia Flyers. Trever Zegras, start us off.

View this post on Instagram

It’s been eight long years since playoff hockey has been played in Philadelphia. Six years since the team even made the playoffs, but I find it hard to count the COVID bubble as real playoff hockey anyway.

We’ve dealt with five of the most miserable, pathetic years in Flyers history. In the entire history of this franchise, there has only been one other time when the Flyers failed to make the playoffs five years in a row.

That streak was snapped in Eric Lindros’ second year and the team went to the conference finals. Now we’re in Matvei Michkov’s second year and we have a Battle of Pennsylvania on our hands against the most annoying franchise in professional sports.

The Flyers make their official return to the playoffs Saturday night when they face the Penguins at PPG Paints Arena for Game 1 of a best-of-seven first-round series.

Puck drop is around 8 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Philadelphia. Coverage begins at 7:30 p.m. with Flyers Pregame Live.

The Flyers haven’t played in an actual playoff series outside of the bubble since the 2018 matchup against Pittsburgh. Philly hasn’t won a real playoff series since the 2012 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals against Pittsburgh.

The Penguins haven’t won a playoff series since that 2018 series against Philly. Sidney Crosby was still just 30 years old the last time Pittsburgh won a playoff round.

Let that one sink in.

The NHL’s Golden Boy Canadien Pigeon hasn’t done a damn thing in the postseason in eight years and now he’s trying to do it at 38 against a team that’s playing the best hockey in the league right now.

Good luck with that.

This Team Is Different and Nobody Believed It Until It Was Too Late

There is something to be said about this young, dumb Flyers team. They’re a bunch of kids who just don’t know any better. Sure, guys like Couturier and Konecny and Sanheim have been around for a while and have had to grind through some brutal years in this city but look at the fresh faces.

Michkov. Martone. Barkey. Foerster. Zegras. Drysdale.

These guys don’t carry the weight of all those failed seasons. They don’t carry the trauma of watching this franchise bottom out for half a decade.

They get to head into these playoffs with a ridiculous amount of confidence because this team has been playing unbelievable hockey down the stretch and none of them have years of disappointment sitting on their shoulders.

These kids just have a belief. Nothing throws them off. They know somebody is going to step up and get the next one when they are in hole, and then someone else will tie it up after that. That’s been the identity of this team pretty much all year and it’s exactly the kind of mentality you want heading into a playoff series against a veteran Pittsburgh team that thinks they can coast on reputation alone.

The Flyers were sitting in third place in the Metro on January 7th at 22-12-7. Then they hit a brutal skid that coincided with a Dan Vladar injury. By the time they reached the Olympic break, they were 25-20-11 and sitting eight points out of a Wild Cart spot.

That was the moment most Flyers fans figured it was over. Time to give up. We were about to watch the same movie we’ve seen year after year. Great start. Catastrophic collapse. Mirage playoff push that fizzles out in March.

You know the deal. That was the moment the rest of the city completely stopped caring. The Sixers for a second, were actually healthy and making a push while the Phillies were in Spring Training. The Flyers were dead.

Except the Flyers weren’t dead..

A few changes were made on the defensive side. Vladar came back from injury. They moved Michkov back to his preferred position on the right side. Zegras slid into the middle to clear out that logjam of wingers.

They caught a lucky break with Michigan State losing in OT to Wisconsin with some crucial games left in the season which allowed Porter Martone to ascend on the city of Philadelphia.

Tyson Foerster miraculously healed up a month ahead of schedule and all of a sudden, the Flyers finished the season on an 18-7-1 heater playing some of the best hockey in the NHL. They won 18 of its final 25 games. That’s a team that figured itself out at exactly the right time while the entire city wasn’t paying attention and now they’re here and nobody knows what to do about it.

Why the Flyers Are Better Than The Penguins

The Flyers and Penguins split the regular season series. The Flyers went 2-2-0 and the Penguins went 2-0-2. Both Flyers wins came in the shootout, once back in October and the other on March 7th. Both Penguins wins came during the stretch when the Flyers were playing their worst hockey, including a 6-3 beatdown right in the middle of that horrific January.

So if you’re a Penguins fan hanging your hat on the regular season matchups, just know that you beat the worst version of this team and still couldn’t close the deal twice.

The Flyers were a historically great shootout team this season at 10-4, but that means absolutely nothing in the playoffs. They were only 6-8 in overtime games that didn’t make it to a shootout. Five-on-five overtime is a different animal than three-on-three, and for a team that only had 27 regulation wins this season, they’re probably going to need to win most of their games in regulation during this series.

The Flyers are deeper at forward and on defense than Pittsburgh. That’s where I feel most confident and honestly, it’s not even close on the back end. The Flyers clearly have the better goalie in this matchup with Vladar having a monster year and Stuart Skinner being, well, Stuart Skinner.

That guy is going to fold under playoff pressure and everyone in Pennsylvania knows it.

I also like the fact that the series opens on the road because the Flyers were 23-14-4 away from home this year. Go into that dump of an arena in Pittsburgh, steal Game 1, and bring the series back to Philly with the momentum. That’s the blueprint.

Obviously the Penguins have Crosby, Malkin, and Letang. The three have won three Cups together and have more playoff experience than this entire Flyers roster combined.

That’s great. Congratulations.

We’ve all seen the banners but we’ve also seen over the last eight years that rings from 2016 and 2017 don’t mean shit in 2026. The Penguins are a bunch of slow dinosaurs that have been riding the coattails of a dynasty that ended a decade ago.

Pittsburgh always has that weird voodoo magic where some random winger turns into a superstar and this year it’s Egor Chinakhov. Fine but one hot winger doesn’t make up for the fact that this Flyers team is younger, faster, deeper, and hungrier than anything the Penguins can put on the ice.

The one clear advantage Pittsburgh has besides Crosby is special teams.

The Penguins have a top-10 power play and a top-10 penalty kill. The Flyers have legitimately the worst power play in hockey and a bottom-10 PK. They also take a ton of penalties but most of the Flyers’ penalty trouble comes from being too undisciplined with their sticks.

The Penguins don’t have the kind of overall speed that’s going to force the Flyers into a bunch of stupid tripping calls. So as long as the Flyers stay out of the box, this series is extremely even. If they start racking up penalties, maybe it tilts toward Pittsburgh. Stay disciplined and the Flyers are the better team on paper and on the ice.

Flyers Lines and Power Play Units

Practice Heading Into Game 1:

• Foerster – Zegras – Tippett
• Konecny – Dvorak – Martone
• Barkey – Cates – Michkov
• Glendening – Couturier – Hathaway

Power Play Units:

• Ristolainen, Dvorak, Tippett, Konecny, Michkov on PP1.
• Drysdale, Cates, Martone, Foerster, Zegras on PP2.

Quick Shoutout Phans of Philly

Phans of Philly went 6-0-0 in regular season road trip games, bringing hundreds, if not thousands of fans out with them. Let’s hope they keep it going in the playoffs.

Saturday Night hockey in Pittsburgh!! Join us on our bus trip!! Lower level seats included! pic.twitter.com/ABYZSxBwjs

— Phans of Philly – Road Game Tailgates & Travel! (@PhansofPhilly) April 16, 2026

Prediction: Flyers in 6…. Just Don’t Let It Get to 7.

I’m calling it right now. Flyers in 6. The goaltending is there. The depth is there. The confidence is there. The kids don’t know any better and that’s a superpower in the first round of the NHL playoffs. Sidney Crosby can’t carry this team anymore and Skinner is going to get exposed. The Flyers are faster, deeper, and playing with house money while the Penguins are limping into the postseason running on fumes and nostalgia.

First-round NHL playoff hockey is either better than or equal to first-round March Madness and I will die on that hill. Battle of Pennsylvania. Flyers versus Penguins. The kids versus the old guard. This series is going to be absolutely awesome and the Flyers are going to win it.

Join The Chase