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This Flyers post will not be very long for a few reasons.

  1. I wrote 2,000 words about the state of the team yesterday, and not much changed in 24 hours with the exception of another win under the Flyers’ belt.
  2. It’s a Sunday in December, so the Eagles and gambling dominate conversation – I know my place.
  3. The Flyers still really aren’t on the Philadelphia sports radar when compared to other teams. When you are a mediocre team for the better part of a decade and disconnect from what was one of the most loyal fan bases in professional sports, creating more of an apathetic feeling about your team, your going to need more than one good month of hockey during football season to alert the city that you matter again.

That said, the city better start waking up to the Flyers.

In a game Saturday in Montreal, the Flyers had no legs. It was their fourth game in five-and-a-half days. There wasn’t a lot of jump. Montreal was the faster, more desperate team.

But, Brian Elliott played outstanding in goal and kept the Flyers in the game. It was enough for the Flyers to force overtime when the goal of the year so far for the Flyers happened, and maybe even the goal of the season so far in the NHL:

Savor that one. Watch it 1,000 times. Share it with your friends.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t just take this goal to show it, but Ivan Provorov is back on target to be the the burgeoning star defenseman the Flyers expected him to be when he came into the league a few years ago. It looks like last year’s step back was simply an anomaly.

He’s been the Flyers best defenseman. He’s playing huge minutes in every game. He’s the guy the coaching staff is leaning on in the most important minutes of every game. His pairing with Matt Niskanen has been nothing short of excellent for the Flyers.

The Flyers also got goals from Oskar Lindblom, Kevin Hayes and Travis Konecny, the latter who snapped a 10-game goalless drought.

Hayes had a brutal first period, but really came to life and had an excellent second period and his goal was a snipe to the top shelf after Joel Farabee found him cross ice with a LOT of room to work with.

The only lineup items of note from the game were Phil Myers returning and replacing Robert Hagg – although Myers didn’t have a great showing in the game. It’ll be interesting to see who is the lineup against Toronto on Tuesday. I would still bet on Myers as the Leafs are a fast and shifty team, and Myers is the better skater, but the coaches couldn’t be too thrilled with his performance against Montreal.

The other item is Morgan Frost and Michael Raffl switched places in the third period. Frost was mostly invisible, so Vigneault shuffled the lines and it paid immediate dividends as it lead to Konecny’s goal.

Frost had sporadic shifts in the third period with the fourth line and the unit as a whole was rooted to the bench for the last seven-plus minutes of the period.

It’ll be interesting to see where Frost plays on Tuesday as well.

Yet, the Flyers keep winning. Their 10-2-4 November allowed them to post the most points in the NHL in the month. It also tied a team record with 24 points in November, something that had been done three times before, but not since 1990.

Things are looking a lot different for the Flyers as we enter December than they have in a long, long time.

When things are going well, these kind of outcomes find a way of happening for your team. The Flyers probably had no business even getting one point in this game, let alone two – and yet, they got it.

They are now 15-7-5 this season. With 35 points, they are in third place in the Metropolitan Division. They have a four point cushion on the closest non-playoff teams. They haven’t had 35 points going into December since 1995. Think about that for a second.

And now the Flyers have three straight home games this week with games against Toronto, Arizona and Ottawa. The Flyers have been excellent on home ice, going 8-1-4 through their first home games.

Sooner or later, the rest of the city will have to take notice that this team is worth paying attention to.