Flyers 'back in the race now'

IT . . .

Is . . .

Alive . . .

The Skating Dead, the label often attached to this town's hockey team less than a month ago, are not only moving forward, they are poised to climb over a numbed body or even two in the next couple of weeks.

Their playoff chances reduced to state lottery-winning percentages just a month ago, the Flyers added four more points to their mounting total over the weekend with victories over two playoff-bound teams, including the NHL's current top team, the Nashville Predators.

Less than 24 hours after their home shootout win over the Predators, the Flyers beat the Washington yesterday, 3-2, to remain within four points of the Boston Bruins for the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.

They did so with a brand of hockey that makes lower-seed upsets so commonplace in this league: minding their positions defensively, blocking shots and interrupting passes with sticks and bodies, and mostly avoiding the kind of mindless unforced turnovers that Brayden Schenn committed in the second period that sliced a 2-0 Flyers lead in half, swung momentum, and once again put them on that razor's-edge existence that has marked nearly every game of this excruciating march from the grave.

"We're back in the race now," said Flyers captain Claude Giroux, who scored on a first-period power play and later added an assist on another power play. "I think we have to be pretty happy with how we're playing right now. We're playing as a team."

A team, he could have added, that has survived simultaneous scoring droughts by himself and Jakub Voracek, the team's two top scorers. That has survived three separate injuries to its starting goaltender, that has required continued shuffles of lines and lineups just to squeeze out an extra goal here or there.

"We want to be accountable for ourselves," said Giroux. "Play for our teammates. I think that's what we did tonight. We played for each other. Didn't really play safe but we played smart. That's how we want to play."

Giroux's goal snapped a 10-game streak without one. Voracek's two assists, which included a whirlaround pass from the boards late in the third period that hit trailer Michael Del Zotto in stride for the game-winner, were his 43rd and 44th of the season and, well, a welcome sight too.

"What we've been doing lately," Voracek said. "Finding ways to win a game, doesn't matter how. All four lines going out and producing. It's the way you have to play if you want to make the playoffs."

The Flyers are 8-1-4 starting with that 3-2 overtime victory over Pittsburgh on Jan. 20, and have collected 20 of a possible 26 points since. More impressive, and encouraging, is that they have a 6-0-4 record in games decided by one goal, especially since once the postseason arrives, the dreaded shootout returns to the netherworld in which it belongs.

They have done this by executing all the things they kept vowing they were working on during those dark days of December. Puck support, playing a simple game along the boards, holding your position. And they have done this, at least this weekend, with a 33-year-old journeyman goaltender.

One day after Zepp combined a modest regulation game with a stellar overtime and outrageous shootout effort, he was back in the net against the multipronged Caps. Zepp is no Bernie Parent, or even Chico Resch, and has a penchant for allowing the ugly goal, like the deflected hack that climbed over his head and tied yesterday's game at 2 late in the second period.

But Zepp has shown remarkable poise in his limited time here. And the Flyers seem to play for him, and in front of him, more responsibly, or at least did so this weekend.

Over the weekend, the Flyers limited two of the NHL's more prolific teams to low shot totals, particularly in the game's first 20 minutes. On Saturday, Nashville had just three shots on Zepp in the first period, four in the second. Yesterday, Washington had six first-period shots.

"You talk about the whole area, the whole game itself," Flyers coach Craig Berube said. "Our team is doing a good job of transition game, playing good defense and transitioning into offense, and that's the game in today's game. It's huge. We're playing a 200-foot game, and to me that's the biggest reason for where we're at right now."

That, he said moments later, and his penalty kill. It has gone from Achilles' to calling card in a little over a month. Not only were the Capitals 0-for-5 on the power play, they were virtually unthreatening on three of them. It took a pulled goalie and an unlucky delay-of-game penalty in the final minute for the Caps to make the Flyers' PK look as it had for much of this season. But even then, Braydon Coburn got a foot on Alex Ovechkin's blast from the circle, Chris Vande Velde sprawled in the way of a setup pass, and the Flyers skated off the ice looking very much like a team with more answers than questions.

A team that, with 22 games left, is very much . . .

. . . Alive.