Latest / Hattrick's Unofficial Flyers Podcast / Episode 20: FLYERS MAKE THE PLAYOFFS! April 14th, 2026
Transcript
- Rick Mullen: Hey, you Flyers fans, welcome to Hatrix on official Flyers podcast. I'm Rick Mullen. be your host today. And we are going to recap the game last night from the Carolina Hurricanes and the Philadelphia Flyers. And hey, the Flyers made the playoffs. Look at that. Look at that. The Flyers made the playoffs. Flyers win three to two in a shootout. Crazy game. and let's talk about it for a few minutes. So let's go over stats real quick. Carolina had 26 shots to Philadelphia's 23 shots. Carolina had 27 hits to Philadelphia's 32 hits. Carolina had four penalty minutes to Philadelphia's two penalty minutes. Flyers at the faceoff dot were really strong last night. They had a 66 % at the faceoff dot. to 34 % for the Hurricanes and going into this game, fires need this game pretty badly. We didn't want to wait till the last night to actually get that win we needed to get into the playoffs. And looking at it, Carolina and Robb Brandemore really helped the fires out here. At least that's what we thought. He sat a lot of people. He sat Jordan Stahl, Sebastian Aho, Seth Jarvis. Andre Svetchenkoff. You look at that lineup and you think, okay, the Flyers are going to come in here and, do really well. ⁓ And that game was ⁓ that game was really the Flyers definitely could have lost that game. ⁓ It was two nothing, you know, ⁓ Carolina the first period. ⁓ Flyers were okay. I mean, they were around, they were getting down there, they were getting some shots, but ⁓ they just couldn't sink them. And you see Carolina go up by two goals after the first period and you think, man, this is a really hard game. And it's funny because you think, hey, they take out all these stars. It should be a different game. It should be a little easier of a game. But in reality, they had like four check-in lines out there that worked their tails off, hitting everything that moved and skating hard, playing defense. So the Flyers were playing against like four top lines of grinders. You know, it was a hard fought game. You know, we jump out into the second period and around the 7.57 mark, Matvey Mishkov, he sinks a goal from Denver, Barky and Noah Cates. so we finally get on the board. Really good to see Matvey get another goal. he's been really consistent lately and we need him to be, you know, we need these guys to be firing on cylinders going into the playoffs here. At the 1030 mark of the second period, we had Trevor Zeager score from Porter Martone and Tyson Forster. So that ties the game to two. We roll out into the third period and there's no goals by either side. And here we are, we're going into overtime. All right, this is one of those things where we're going to end up getting one point and we're going to have to hope like, ⁓ Maybe that's all we need to get into playoffs. know, at one point if Columbus wins tonight against the Capitals, but we didn't need it. We go through out over time. There's no goal scored and we go to the shootout. And the shootout was a tough shootout. Nobody scored. It went through Trevor Zygres and Matvey Mishkov and Travis Konekny. So we went through three shooters who didn't score. Finally, we get to Tyson Forrester and Tyson goes in and he absolutely rips a wrist shot, know, beating Pussy on the right hand side, you know, going top shelf. ⁓ Really good shot by Tyson. All the other ones tried like little moves, tried to beat him and couldn't beat him. So Tyson made a good decision by firing that puck. And then here we go again. ⁓ Rod Brindon were through the flyers of bone. No doubt about this. Can't prove it. But I'm saying it, Rod sends out a rookie and two defensemen to take the shootout attempts. A rookie and two defensemen who really haven't ever scored. I don't think all three of them have scored a goal this year in a shootout. So he handed the Flyers every opportunity to win, it or not, agree with it or not, I should say. think Rod did the Flyers a solid. and he gave him every opportunity to win this game and the Flyers thankfully did. They made the playoffs. At the end of that game, it was really nice to see, Dan Valdar was going crazy. He's standing up like head and shoulders higher, taller than everybody on the ice. They all jump on, the Flyers are surrounding him. They're freaking out, partying, you know, they were so happy. ⁓ Valdar's got his arms up straight in the air, looking up into the sky, like pumping his arms, and he's head and shoulders taller than everybody. It was crazy. It was a crazy celebration. You could see how excited he was, the rest of the team was. And I am really thankful this team made the playoffs. I want to see what they can do. And now they're going to go and have one more game tonight. I'm not sure what it's going to look like. I'm not sure if they're going to play everybody. or sit some people but we have a couple guys banged up they could probably use a rest like I know it looks like tippy had a really hard game last night he took a couple shots. Garner Hathaway you know TK has been sore all year. David Yurichak he was called up what yesterday and I think we're going to see David Yurichak tonight plays first NHL game with the Flyers. So looking forward to that, we're definitely going to watch that game, see who they play, who they bring up, who they give shots to. ⁓ Really cool to see the Flyers finally make the playoffs and they earned it. They really did. They played so hard since that Olympic break. They came in, they took care of business. ⁓ I they had ⁓ one the best streaks in the NHL over the last 13 games winning streaks. ⁓ kudos to the Flyers, kudos to Takit for making adjustments, kudos for Takit for putting the right people in, and kudos to our goalies, our team for doing whatever they had to do to get us into the playoffs. I'm excited, I can't wait to see it round. It's going to be against the Pittsburgh Penguins, our arch enemies, our rivals, and God knows what that's gonna look like. You were going in against a team that's very vet heavy. They have a lot of experience. They had a good season this year where no one thought they were going to. Hopefully the Flyers can match that veteran presence with some young speed and we'll see how it goes. But there are always battles with Pittsburgh and usually every puck bounce seems to go their way. It doesn't even look like they're doing anything and they're just standing there and bam, the puck will bounce somewhere right to Sid who's wide open in front of an open net and he stuffs a goal. They have a lot of skill on that team. I really feel like they have a lot of luck on that team as well. Those guys just know where to be and that puck just seems to always find them. So I hope it's a good series. I hope the Flyers really take it to them. I believe it's Sunday that they're going to start. think we'll update more after probably tonight's game. We'll do a little review on how the team looked tonight after that big win. anyhow. Great game last night. Flyers made the playoffs. Flyers win 3-2. First playoff since the bubble. First real playoffs in a long time. good luck to the Flyers. Hopefully they can win a round. Would love to see them take out Pittsburgh. And we will do a recap again after tonight's game.