A day before NHL trade deadline, Flyers pick up 10th win over top-10 team originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
If the Flyers wanted to make things a little bit harder on Danny Briere at the NHL trade deadline, they did it Thursday night.
John Tortorella’s club found a way to beat the NHL-leading Panthers, 2-1, at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida.
A day after placing a third defenseman on injured reserve and trading away another, the Flyers still knocked off the top team in the league.
Garnet Hathaway collected a rebound and flushed it for the game-winning goal with 21.3 seconds left.
Ryan Poehling scored the other goal for the Flyers (33-23-8), who never trailed in the game.
The Panthers (43-17-4) have lost only three times in their last 19 games. Two of those losses are to the Flyers, both 2-1 decisions at Amerant Bank Arena.
The Flyers face Florida one more time March 24 in Philadelphia. This is a gauntlet of a month for the Flyers. Eight of their 11 remaining games in March come against teams holding a playoff spot.
• One win isn’t going to completely sway Briere ahead of Friday’s 3 p.m. ET trade deadline.
The Flyers, of course, are not buyers. But that kind of victory might make the general manager think just a tad more about whether he sells off another piece to supplement the club’s future.
On Wednesday, Briere traded Sean Walker to the Avalanche and signed Nick Seeler to a four-year contract extension. Now, Scott Laughton is his biggest question leading up to the deadline.
For various reasons, Laughton should be in high demand. The heart-and-soul Flyer had a gutsy effort Thursday night. After missing Wednesday’s practice because of an illness, he blocked a shot with five seconds left to help nail down the Flyers’ win.
He’s playing his best hockey of the season and giving the Flyers a really tough call.
• The Flyers, in third place of the Metropolitan Division, entered Thursday with a 67.4 percent chance to make the postseason, according to Hockey-Reference.com’s probabilities report.
They fueled their surprise playoff push with a win over the Panthers. They now have 10 victories over top-10 teams.
“I don’t really think of measuring sticks,” Travis Konecny said Wednesday. “I just think we’ve proven that we’re a good team. There’s no, like, ‘Should we be there? Should we not?’ It’s just we’re a good team, let’s believe we’re where we are for a reason, doesn’t matter who we’re playing.”
The Flyers had to be pumped to see the return of Konecny,…