The highest point that the Flyers have reached in the last decade was the highest point that Carter Hart has reached as their goaltender. It was two-and-a-half years ago in the 2020 playoffs, in the pandemic bubble in Toronto. The Flyers had beaten the Montreal Canadiens in six games in the first round, and Hart had outplayed his idol, Carey Price, stopping 31 of 33 shots in the clinching Game 6 victory. In the conference semifinals, the Islanders beat the Flyers in a seven-game series that was as one-sided as a seven-game series can be. So for Hart, Montreal was the peak. That was it. That was as good as it has gotten for him here.
He does not look back at that time much, if at all. “I don’t even really think about it,” he was saying last week, and it’s understandable, for now, that he wouldn’t. He is in the middle of the regular season, tunnel-vision time for any athlete, and that single moment — the Flyers as the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed, a deep postseason run possible — probably feels too far away to touch. Hell, with the Flyers in the condition that they’re in, overmatched in the present, their future uncertain, so much apathy and anger swirling together in the atmosphere, that moment must seem a lifetime ago, and Hart is just 24. He has lived only one lifetime.
“We need to change things, for sure,” he said after a practice at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees. “I mean, we can’t keep being in this position every year, where we’re kind of on the outside looking in. Obviously, we still have a chance this year, and we’re going to fight to the end, but I think something’s got to change, and it starts with us.”
