Almost everyone around him made a move or three. Pittsburgh. Tampa Bay. Boston. New Jersey. Columbus.

But Ron Hextall stood firm.

While other teams were trading high draft picks like they were duplicate baseball cards, Hextall decided not to enter the fray, aside from making a waiver claim for veteran defenseman Johnny Oduya, who is here to be the No. 7 defenseman as the team prepares for the playoffs.

And it was the right thing to do.

Not because the Flyers – check that, the first-place Flyers – are head and shoulders above everyone else and don’t have flaws that can be addressed.

No, believe me, this team has flaws that definitely could have been corrected by trading for any one or two of several guys who switched teams yesterday.

It’s not that at all.

Nor is it what Hextall said – that he didn’t think trading for any of the guys that were available yesterday were of a good enough value that couldn’t be replaced by in-house options.

I mean, really, Ryan McDonagh would have instantly made the defense better than any other guy in the system. Evander Kane or Patrick Maroon or Thomas Tatar would have improved an offense that many mistake as deep because a bunch of streaky players are sitting around 10 goals.

No, there were upgrades that could have been made. For sure. But Hextall did the right thing by not getting rid of future assets at this time.

It’s not that he’s being too stubborn. It’s not that he’s overprotective of his draft picks. It’s that the Flyers are surprising everyone – including themselves – with how they are playing right now.

In other words, they’re playing with house money. If it weren’t for the Vegas Knights doing what they’re doing, the Flyers would be the best story in the NHL right now. Easily.

They went from last place to first place, defying all odds and expert analysis (including mine). They are doing so with a handful of really good players, and a bunch of mediocre players. They are in one close game after another, after another, after another, and are winning most of them.

Since December 4, they are 26-8-3. That’s pretty darn good. But let’s break that down further:

  • They are 11-2-3 in one goal games (including last night’s 1-0 shootout win in Montreal)
  • They are 8-2 in two-goal games
  • Six of the 10 two-goal games were still in doubt in the final minute and were finished with an empty-netter to make the two-goal spread (the Flyers are 5-1 in those games).

Add it all up and 22 of the 37 games (59.5%) had the winner in doubt into the final minute of the contest and in those 22 games, the Flyers are 16-3-3, garnering a .796 points percentage.

I don’t have the time to do the statistical research necessary to identify where that fits in the grand scheme of things, but based on experience and being around the sport for as long as I have, I’ll tell you that:

  1. It’s rare for a team to have 60% of their games still be in the balance in the final minute of a game.
  2. It’s even more rare for a team to be accruing 80% of the possible points available for all games that are lingering in the balance in the final minute of a game.

This was kind of the argument I was making in my last post a few days ago. This team never really looks like it’s consistently playing better than it’s opponent, and yet somehow, it’s winning.

The Flyers have now won six straight for the second time this season after winning in Montreal last night, a game, where, once again the Flyers didn’t play their best, but still won.

It’s been happening a lot lately with this team. And you can’t knock them for it. They’re 10-0-2 in their last 12 games. That’s not all luck. But it’s certainly not measurable statistically.

So, I decided to ask a couple of sharp guys on the team to offer some insight into this. How is this possible? How does a team that is not dominating the opposition on the ice somehow dominate in the win/loss column for such a long stretch of games (nearly half a season?)

“What’s overlooked a lot in hockey is that there is a real process to learning how to win games,” Andrew MacDonald told me. “But when you are playing strong, systematic hockey and everyone is committed to ding what you have to do to win, it not only improves your chances of winning, but it builds confidence.

“We are going into games now expecting to win every night. We no longer think ‘let’s not blow this one,’ or ‘let’s not let this one slip away.’ It’s a good mindset we’re in right now.”

I found what he said about systematic hockey interesting. Because, I felt when things were going bad, and even when they initially started to get better, that the Flyers biggest problems still were mistakes born from the system they were playing.

But MacDonald identified a key element that changed that has been the real difference maker for the Flyers.

“We made a change to our system that allowed us to have more support going back to the puck,” MacDonald said. “When teams dumped it in, it was tough [earlier in the season] because the defensemen were going back alone and didn’t have a lot of support. Now, we have some more layers to protect against breakdowns. That’s one part of it. But, even then we still have to make little tweaks along the way because teams pre-scout and they have a pretty good idea of what we are trying to do. So those tweaks are important to guard against complacency and ensure we can keep getting good breakouts out of the zone.”

Let’s look at those last 37 games again from this perspective:

  • In the games the Flyers have allowed two goals or fewer, they are 17-0-1. In the games they have allowed three goals or more they are 9-8-2.

Now, common sense will tell you that you will, of course, win more games the fewer goals you let up. So, I’m not giving you earth-shattering information there.

But compare it to the first 26 games of the season:

  • In the games the Flyers allowed two goals or fewer they were 6-3-0. In the games in which they allowed three goals or more they were 2-9-7.

See the differences?

Firstly, nearly half (48.7%) of the games since Dec. 3 have ended with the opposition scoring two goals or fewer. Where as, in the first 26 games, only a little more than a third (34.6%) ended that way.

Secondly, they are slightly above .500 from a points percentage perspective in higher scoring games since Dec. 3 (.526), then they were in the first 26 games (.306).

Thirdly, for the season, they are averaging 3.00 goals per game and giving up 2.83 goals per game. Here are the splits form the first 26 games and the last 37 in the goal scoring department:

  • Pre Dec. 3: 2.69 goals for; 3.12 goals against
  • Post Dec. 3: 3.21 goals for; 2.62 goals against

It’s all about defense. And not just the defensemen on the ice, but team defense. The Flyers have knocked off an average of a half goal against per game in the last 37 games. That’s a very big number. Considering the penalty kill is still subpar, it speaks a lot to the defensive schematic at 5-on-5. It also speaks to the team discipline to not take too many minor penalties.

It’s the immeasurables. Because if you look at puck possession statistics, the Flyers rank 17th in the NHL with a Corsi For percentage of 49.54, meaning they actually have possession of the puck less than 50 percent of the time.

Analytics people will argue that there are better measurements now than Corsi – like where the shots are coming from – and those that are being taken from the “high danger” area improve scoring success (no duh… but let’s go with this).

The Flyers HDFC% (high danger chances for percentage) is 49.75, which ranks 16th in the NHL and is again, below 50 percent.

Well, shit… the analytics say the Flyers are mediocre. How can they be a first place team?

“It’s the way the game is nowadays,” Sean Couturier told me. “Games are tighter than they’ve ever been. Everyone has the same information. What separates you is you have to learn as a team of players how to win these tight games.

“We’re comfortable playing these close games now. We thrive in them. Earlier in the year, the games were still tight, but we couldn’t figure out how to close it, or we’d find a way to lose it. We’ve learned from that. We’re a better team because of that. We’re responsible now. Guys are doing their jobs. We’re not trying to overdo it. We’re not trying to take chances just to take chances. We’re playing with patience and waiting for the good chances to arrive and not just trying to force them.”

In other words, they’re not just shooting the puck to shoot it because shooting is supposed to indicate they’re a good puck possession team. Nor are they only focusing on one area of the ice – you know, that place marked “high danger area.”

Instead, they are making other teams have to work harder to create their own opportunities and chances – however you want to define them. And the Flyers are waiting patiently for their chance to arrive.

O.K., so maybe waiting until the sixth round of the shootout last night was a bit too long, but – they still got a win.

And that’s all that matters.

So if you’re Hextall, and you’re looking at these team’s paying a king’s ransom for players to improve their lineup, when you know that your team is doing just fine the way it is for a long period of time, and probably reached this point a whole year before you expected it to do so, then why make a move? Why trade future value to make the push now?

Look, the Flyers are going to be a hard out in the playoffs. That said, they are still a likely underdog in a series against at least five other Eastern Conference teams (Tampa, Pittsburgh, Boston and probably Washington and Toronto, although I think they can beat either in a seven-game series).

And that’s to be expected.

The Flyers are living in the moment. They don’t know they are supposed to be losing more than they are. They don’t focus on the fact that Carolina Thursday will be the 12th opponent in the last 13 games that are below the Flyers in the standings. They just come to the rink and expect to win.

And although there’s a brutal stretch of games against really good teams on the horizon that will be a true bell weather test for the Flyers, it doesn’t matter. This team has already exceeded expectations.

Everything moving forward with the Flyers for the remainder of the 2017-18 season is just gravy. And when it ends, whenever it ends, because Hextall had the foresight to see that we’re still at least a year away from him needing to shove all his chips into the middle of the table at a trade deadline, the Flyers will be better off for it for several years to come.