Through 30 games of this season, the Philadelphia Flyers have been a good hockey team. That is a statement that can be made without qualification, as the team has a 17-10-3 record and currently sits firmly in a playoff spot — in second place! — in the thought-to-be-crowded Metropolitan Division. Their points percentage and goal differential are both 10th-best in the NHL and fourth-best in the Eastern Conference. They’ve been firmly in the top half of the league by any bottom-line performance metric. They have been good.
And this has caught some people off guard. Because, y’know, the Flyers weren’t supposed to be good?