While we are enduring the some of the coldest weather on record here in the Philadelphia area, the Flyers are heating up – for the past two games anyway.

Following yesterday’s 6-3 win over St. Louis, the Flyers scored six goals or more in consecutive games for the first time in nearly five years.

It’s been good enough hockey to get the Flyers out of last place in the Metropolitan Division (O.K., they are tied in points with the New York Islanders, but the Flyers have a game in hand, thus, they are ahead of New York. Only in the NHL is a tiebreaker based on something that hasn’t happened yet while in every other sport known to man is a tiebreaker based on results that have happened.)

Nevertheless, for this Flyers team, this is progress.

And it’s been fueled by excellent starts in each of the past two games, ambushing their opponents and dictating the style in which the game is to be played.

On Thursday, everyone assumed the Flyers were playing pissed off after such a dreadful and listless performance two nights earlier against Pittsburgh.

By Saturday, everyone saw it was a definitive change in style that was making a difference.

And it didn’t take long.

Tyrell Goulbourne, making his NHL debut, on his very first shift, was a bowling ball and the guys with the Blues note on their sweaters were the pins.

This included St. Louis captain – and Norris trophy candidate – Alex Pietrangelo who promptly turned over the puck when he saw Goulbourne coming for a big hit, allowing Scott Laughton to take the puck and score from a sharp angle to give the Flyers an early lead they never relinquished.

Goulbourne said he was “scared” before his first NHL game. Keep doing things like that Tyrell and you’ll be using your special power of transference to instill fear instead of feel it yourself.

The Flyers continued to press and kept scoring.

They got an ass goal from Claude Giroux:

Jordan Weal made a sick move to beat a goalie:

Sean Couturier scored his 20th:

He’d later get his 21st on an empty netter – the eight shot attempt the Flyers had on an empty net that finally went in.

Oh, and Wayne Simmonds must have been playing Cards Against Humanity because he played the “Just the tip” card:

“It’s part of being a good home team,” Dave Hakstol said. “Having a little extra. Not just being good, not just being solid, but having that push to start a hockey game is what helps you establish a small advantage at home. We’ve been able to do that the last couple nights now. This is short lived. We can sit back and enjoy this for the next 30 minutes or so and then gotta park it. Gotta park it and move onto the next challenge which is here [today] at 1 o’clock.”

(Thanks for interrupting a Sunday afternoon NHL schedule makers).

Anyway, the offense looks good right now. Four lines are pretty much rolling. The third period was better than against New York, but still a little dicey as they gave up a goal 12 seconds into the period. Another later in the period and in between had one waved off and go unchallenged (surprisingly) by St. Louis on a play when the puck was in the net well before the whistle blew.

That would have made it a one-goal game and then it would have gotten really hairy.

But it never did. The Blues never got to within two. Brayden Schenn was invisible (how’s he looked since Jaden Schwartz’ injury, huh? Less than a half point per game in 13 games without Schwartz. He can’t create on his own, needs help, is mostly a power play specialist (although he has been better at even strength this season) and traditionally isn’t a clutch goal scorer, usually potting goals when the pressure isn’t as high (big leads, trailing by a few, etc.)

Not to mention, the first of the two first round picks the Flyers got for Schenn turned into Morgan Frost – who is leading the OHL in scoring this season. So, there’s that.

But today is the day the Flyers have to worry about.

They can’t get caught playing down to the level of their opponent. Buffalo is the worst team in the league. However, they were in town watching the Flyers game yesterday, so they’re rested. They beat the Flyers in their last meeting.

And, I can’t stress this enough – the Flyers are officially on their bye week as of 4 p.m. today and many of these guys have travel plans and want to get out of dodge. I’d bet many of them have flights tonight. It’s easy to get caught looking ahead to a break mentally and getting snookered by a team you expect to beat.

Not only that, but I think – THINK – Hakstol is finally going to give Brian Elliott a day off and start Michal Neuvirth. Elliott has started 16 consecutive games for the Flyers.

“[The last two games] we don’t wait to see how they are going to play or what they are going to do,” Giroux said. “We kind of play our game and it’s been working well for us. But we have had a couple good games and then we slack off a little bit on how we play. So we gotta keep this going.”

Despite all the ups and downs of the season, the Flyers find themselves at the halfway point just two points out of a playoff spot, which is pretty hard to believe considering a 10-game losing streak was included in that first half.

But it might be because of three players – Giroux, Couturier and Jake Voracek.

This isn’t to slight anyone else – Ivan Provorov has been excellent. Shayne Gostisbehere is third in the league in scoring for a defenseman and Elliott has done his job keeping the Flyers in games.

But this season has been and continues to be about the big three.

And while they might not be a line anymore, they’re still doing some really good things.

With his three points last night, Claude Giroux has 51 points through 41 games and ranks third in the NHL in scoring. He is on pace for 102 points, which, if he reaches that total, would not only be a career high but also make him the first Flyer since Eric Lindros in 1995-96 to crack the 100-point plateau and only the sixth player in franchise history to do so (Bobby Clarke, Bill Barber and Mark Recchi all did it twice, Lindros and Rick MacLeish were the others).

But more importantly, Giroux has been the Flyers best player in almost all phases of the game. If the Flyers were in a better position in the standings, the murmur would be that Giroux is a Hart Trophy candidate as MVP.

Consider what he’s done for Couturier as well.

That’s not to say Couturier wasn’t ready to break out and shouldn’t get credit for his season thus far, but playing with Giroux has elevated Couturier to new heights. He has 40 points in 41 games. The 40 points is a career high – and he’s still got half a season to go.

Couturier is finally in the Selke Award conversation as the best two-way forward in the NHL, where he belongs.

But would he be there without Giroux?

Voracek leads the NHL in assists with 41. Would he have that many without Giroux?

The Flyers captain is having a relatively obscure season from a national perspective. That’s a shame, because locally, we realize just how damn good he’s been playing.

A couple other notes about the pace these guys are on.

Voracek has 49 points in 41 games, so he’s on pace for 98 points, which of course would be a career high. If both he and Giroux can reach 100 points, they’d be the first teammates to do so in franchise history since Clarke and Barber in 1975-76 and the first teammates to do so in the NHL since Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom in 2009-10 (which was also the last time more than one player in the entire league had more than 100 points).

Meanwhile, Voracek’s pace of an assist per game would have him finish with 82, which would be third-best in Flyers history. Clarke had 89 in each of 1974-75 and 1975-76. The next closest to those was Recchi getting 70 in 1992-93. Barring injury, Voracek should pass Recchi for sure.

Additionally, the trio combined are on pace for 280 points, which would be the most since Lindros, John LeClair and Rod Brind’Amour in 1995-96.

But as good as they’ve been, there have been some equally perplexing things going on with the Flyers.

Wayne Simmonds is on pace for a 50-point season, but he doesn’t seem to be his old self.

Travis Knoecny may have turned the corner since being moved to the top line because now he is not trying to do too much because of the players he is playing with and can utilize his skill set more effectively and efficiently.

The jury is still out on Jordan Weal, although he’s looked better of late.

Scott Laughton and Michael Raffl have turned into reliable depth forwards, although Raffl is being forced to play second line left wing because the Flyers don’t have another scorer there.

From there, the rest of the forward unit hasn’t been pretty.

Nolan Patrick will be fine, but his rookie season has been underwhelming. Taylor Leier hasn’t impressed his coaches and can’t get in the lineup now.

And the veterans – Valtteri Filppula, Dale Weise and Jori Lehtera remind me of these guys:

via GIPHY

On Defense, Provorov has been sensational. Gostisbehere has had some lapses, but overall has been what you’d expect. Robert Hagg and Andrew MacDonald have been steady. Radko Gudas is what he is – a third pair defenseman – on a team with too many third pair defensemen.

What I don’t get is Brandon Manning playing ahead of Travis Sanheim. More so, what I don’t get is how sitting Sanheim in the press box night after night is doing anything to develop his game. He’s supposed to be a huge part of this team’s future and yet he and I have had a bit of a ritual the past few games of meeting up to make hot chocolate at intermission at the press box snack bar to combat the frigid temperatures up in the rafters.

I don’t have a problem with Manning being your No. 7 guy. He’s a glue guy in the locker room. He’s a gritty player. He can fill in if needed and not kill you.

But I just don’t see his value playing ahead of Sanheim. I just don’t.

Look, even though the Flyers have clawed their way back to within two points of a playoff spot, by going 10-4-1 in their last 15 games, they pretty much have to do that again… and maybe even again if they want to be considered a real playoff possibility.

It’s doable. But it’s going to be tough – because they’ve put themselves in this position.

I’ll let the captain close it out from here:

“I can’t really say [the first half was] good because it’s not the position we want to be,” Giroux said. “But I think how we’ve been building as a team – how we got together and kind of played how we are playing now… We’ll see. We are playing well now and it’s easy to say we are playing well but I think we can definitely keep getting better.”