SOMETIMES, THE moment distills to nothing more than winning by any means necessary. For the Flyers, Thursday night was one of those times.
They had won two of their last 11 games and had earned seven of a possible 22 points. They had been outclassed in New Jersey and in Buffalo, where they should have outclassed their hosts. They had been steamrolled by the Rangers and Blues, teams that seemed to be their peers just 3 1/2 weeks before.
Three-and-a-half weeks before the Flyers were finishing a 10-game winning streak, their third-longest in franchise history.