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Usually after a team loses a game, somebody in the media asks what sounds like a stupid question.

“Are there any positives you can take out of a loss like this,” or something to that effect.

Just like players and coaches have cliche answers, reporters have cliche questions. Sometimes you just need to keep the line of questioning going until you can think of a better question. It’s the nature of the beast.

And most times, when that question is asked, it’s done so innocuously without any real expectation for an insightful answer.

So, it was a couple of weeks ago, when the Flyers lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning, that the question was asked several times. And to a man in the locker room as well as coach Alain Vigneault, there was a unified response. It went something like this:

“There wasn’t a lot of room out there. Both teams played a tight, defensive game. Neither team was willing to give up any space. The game was decided because they got a fortunate bounce on the only goal and we didn’t. But I really liked the way we played defensively as a team.”

Now, that sounds like a typical, boring answer. And, in a vacuum it certainly is.

But let’s extrapolate it out now 10 days later.

In the span of 13 days, the Flyers have played seven games. Of those seven, five have been against teams in the top six in terms of points this season. In those five games, the Flyers are 4-1-0, with their most recent win coming against the arch rival Pittsburgh Penguins Tuesday, a 3-0 shutout for Brian Elliott in the final game before the All-Star break.

It’s pretty impressive to beat Washington, Boston, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh in games so close together. And with the exception of the Boston game, which was more akin to a track meet than a hockey game, the Flyers have relied on defense and goaltending to topple the best in the sport.

In fact, they held the Penguins to just 19 shots on goal. It was only the second time in the last 160 games that the Penguins were held to fewer than 20 shots in a game.

The defense was smothering.

“It was a pretty mature game from us, knowing the situation,” said James van Riemsdyk, who scored one of the three Flyers goals and continues to be a player playing a different – and welcome – brand of hockey than we are used to seeing from him.

And he’s right. It was a mature game. Mature in the sense that there was a game plan and the Flyers stuck to it. They never wavered. They never strayed from the system. Not even when the first period ended in a scoreless tie. Not even after the Penguins hit one post – and then another. Not even when the Penguins, obviously frustrated with the Flyers bottling them up, decided to put Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin on the same line late in the second period and throughout the third.

It was precise. It was disciplined. And the few times it wasn’t and there was a mistake, there was Elliott ready to come up with another big save.

And it was all rooted in the lesson learned from that Tampa loss a couple weeks ago.

“Yeah, each game is different because each team is different, but I think in that Tampa game we saw the merits of what good defense can do for you,” van Riemsdyk said. “We were never out of that game, and even though we lost, we had a chance to tie it because of how we were playing team defense. You know that the end result of that game was just one of those things that can happen in a 50/50 contest.”

JVR elaborated further:

“When we play that way, it looks like we’re playing really fast, but we’re not,” he said. It’s just that we are all doing things the right way. Whether it’s supporting the puck, or back checking, or making a quick, simple pass, we’re doing things the way they’re supposed to be done and it’s good hockey.”

Yes, yes it is.

And yet, despite all the good hockey the Flyers have played of late – they are 5-2-0 since returning from a disastrous post holiday road trip (1-4-1), and despite beating so many good teams in short order, the Flyers do enter the All-Star break (and subsequent bye week), on the outside of the playoff picture looking in.

They do have 60 points (27-17-6), which has them in a virtual tie with Columbus for the final wild card spot. But, the Blue Jackets have more regulation wins at the moment, ergo they sit ahead of the Flyers in the standings.

And what wild standings they are. After Washington and Pittsburgh, the next four teams in the Metropolitan Division are all within three points of each other. Add in the fourth team from the Atlantic Division (currently Toronto, although they and Florida keep trading places) and there are going to be five teams chasing three playoff spots.

As good as the teams are in the East, they are not so good in the West. Consider that the Flyers, who are on the outside looking in in the East, would be in third place in the Central and in first place in the Pacific if they were in the other Conference.

But, they are not. They are in the East – which is uber-competitive. And it’s only going to get more so over the final 32 games of the season.

But if the Flyers continue to play team defense the way they have – and continue to create the opportunities to score goals, as they did against the Penguins with smart defensive plays by oft-criticized veterans Jake Voracek and JVR, they’re going to get into the playoffs and be a tough, tough out.

It’s a commitment to a system and they’re buying what Vigneault is selling. I mean, when have you seen Voracek hustle (defensively) like this:

And when have you seen JVR give max effort to create a turnover from behind the play like this:

I mean, both goals are pretty, but both are the result of the guys that scored them making really strong and smart defensive plays first to create those chances.

And then there’s the penalty kill, which just toyed with the lifeless Penguins, who played much of the game lie they had already departed for their All-Star break vacations.

Kevin Hayes continues to be a whirling dervish of puck possession on the PK. This sequence alone killed off 18 seconds of power play time without the Penguins even touching the puck and being forced to play defense and expend the energy of their skill players on the ice.

Something tells me the Flyers will see a different kind of Penguins team when the two teams reconvene for the back end of this weird home-and-home series separated by nine days with no games in between.

But, if nothing else, the Flyers have become relevant again. They may not wow you. They may not be filling the highlight reels and they may not have a true superstar – we can argue Claude Giroux is, and make a valid argument, but he’s not playing like a superstar this season – but they are winning games. They are beating good teams. Oh, and they’re tied for the 10th-best record in hockey.

For once, February and March are going to be fun and it just might lead to an outcome in April we have not seen in eight years.

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