Looking back during this five-day lull as the Flyers prepare for the Washington Capitals in the playoffs, Stevens is hard-pressed to pinpoint where the turning point was for this team.

Was it Feb. 25 in Buffalo, when Danny Briere's shoot-out goal capped a 4-3 comeback victory that snapped a 10-game losing skid?

Was it the four wins in succession in late March, after the Flyers had been pummeled, 7-1, in Pittsburgh, when he ordered the equipment staff to rearrange all the players' lockers?

Or was it the final nine games - eight against Atlantic Division rivals - when the Flyers won seven and clinched a playoff berth with a game to spare?

"It was probably those last nine games, where we got big points against division rivals that we had not had a lot success against before, and it culminated with the effort against Jersey and that 3-0 win," Stevens said this week.

From March 1 to the finish, the Flyers amassed 24 points over the final 18 games. Every night was a struggle as the Flyers hovered between seventh and ninth place in the Eastern Conference.

"That last month of the season, every game seemed to have playoff implications for us," Stevens said. "It was almost a playoff mind-set where if you don't keep winning, you're not going to keep playing. That mind-set was present for quite a long time. It really does harden your team to the pressure you are going to face in the playoffs."

Great at the start, struggled in the middle, flurry at the end. That's how the season went for the Flyers. They sailed through October with a 7-3 record. Briere's line, with Simon Gagne and Mike Knuble, collected 24 points in seven games. Then Gagne suffered a concussion that would become post-concussion syndrome, causing him to miss 56 games, and the line went bad.

"We came together quickly as a team getting out of the chute with all those new faces," general manager Paul Holmgren recalled. "Simon was in the lineup then. We got off to a good start, we were scoring, then we hit a stretch where we played .500 and hit some injuries."

The Flyers picked up 16 points in November, then had two losing months - December (5-6-2) and February (4-8-2) sandwiched around a brilliant January (9-3-1). They went into the all-star break first in the Atlantic Division and second overall in the East (59 points) with a 27-16-5 record.

"The whole year has been somewhat of a roller coaster - up and down," said Mike Richards, who led the team with 75 points. "The losing streaks, the winning streaks were loopdy-loops. We battled through a lot. No one really gave us too much of a chance at the beginning of the season, and then we started out strong and then went up and down. For the most part, it's been a successful season."

From the all-star break to the end, the Flyers were barely a .500 club, going 15-13-6, largely because of a 10-game losing streak.

So what was the difference? A lot of things. You can start with injuries to key players. Gagne's concussion was huge. Without him, Briere could not find chemistry. Stevens used 18 line combinations, the last with Vinny Prospal, before Briere came alive again. He and Prospal combined for 26 points in 17 games when playing together.

Derian Hatcher missed 38 games with various leg and knee injuries. Richards missed nine games with a torn hamstring, and Joffrey Lupul missed 26 because of a concussion and spinal injury, then a high ankle sprain.

Good teams overcome injury. Pittsburgh and Colorado made the playoffs, despite missing key personnel. Carolina did not.

But the Flyers had some problems that plagued them all season. They lacked intensity at the start of many games. Their team defense was poor, in part because their work ethic had slipped on the forecheck, and there were too many turnovers.

Goalie Marty Biron, who had a 1.78 goals-against average and a .948 save percentage playing nine games in October, went through seven starts in November and early December with a 3.56 GAA and .893 save percentage.

Biron lost six close games in February but showed improvement in March, despite a tendency to give up soft goals.

But the team's big slump was due to more than inconsistency in goal, and Holmgren said he never considered firing Stevens in late February.

"I was concerned how we were playing," he said. "I think the leadership [group], the players, the coaching staff figured it out. They needed to dig in, and they did. We weren't going to do anything drastic at the trade deadline. With Simon being out, we had to get a guy to produce offensively.

"And I think Vinny helped us. We wanted more experience and depth on defense, and for the most part, [Jaroslav] Modry has helped in that regard. [Lasse] Kukkonen going back in the lineup, I think he's been terrific."

Biron finished the final nine-game stretch with five wins and back-to-back shutouts, a good sign for the postseason. You can't win in the playoff if your goalie is inconsistent, and at the end, Biron showed some consistency, even though he had some hiccups.

"When we play like [we did at the end], it's much easier for me to adjust, be sound positionally, and make the read," Biron said. "I know that the guys have the coverage in front of me. Now I can focus on one or two options, instead of having a few of them that can surprise me.

"We talked about it after the [April 2] Pittsburgh [loss] that during the last two games [of the year], we needed to get rid of the hesitation and just play hockey by reading the play and not overdoing anything."