RALEIGH, N.C. — Once again, under Rod Brind’Amour, the Hurricanes are a force. They pressure you, they suffocate you and they make you work for everything. They led the Eastern Conference with 113 points in the regular season. Over the last six seasons combined, they’ve had a .678 points percentage, the second-best mark in the NHL. And they’re in the playoffs for an eighth straight season. So this is a stiff challenge for the Flyers in the second round of the 2026 playoffs. But they’re not in conceding mode. They certainly don’t sound satisfied after winning a series for the first time since 2020. “I don’t like the ‘happy to be here,'” Rick Tocchet said Friday. “I’ve heard ‘house money’ and all that stuff. I don’t want to hear that, for me, personally. “We’re not going into it like, ‘Hey, we’re just happy to be here.’ We’re here to win the series. You’ve got to have that mindset, that’s what I believe in.” The Flyers resume their playoff run Saturday night when they meet Carolina at Lenovo Center for Game 1 of a best-of-seven matchup. Here are three thoughts on the series. Less rest, no problem? The Flyers won their first-round series in six games, eliminating the Penguins with a 1-0 overtime win Wednesday night. The game went over 77 minutes. The Flyers were off Thursday, practiced Friday and then flew to Raleigh. While rest is important this time of year, so is momentum. The Flyers might benefit from jumping right back into action. “For us, it doesn’t really matter, it feels like we’ve been in this rhythm since the Olympic break,” Sean Couturier said Friday. “It’s nice to just keep it rolling.” Including the playoffs, the Flyers have been on a surge of 22 wins over their last 31 games. They clinched their playoff berth in the second-to-last game of the season, so they’ve gotten accustomed to busy, high-stake stretches. The Flyers learned the date for Game 1 of the series late Thursday night. “I’m not going to lie to you, I told my players this at 11:40 p.m. when we found out, my mind went, ‘Ah, man, I wish we had two more days to prepare,'” Tocchet said. “But then I’m thinking, ‘No, I want us to stay with the same routine.’ That’s why I want our players to have the same mindset. ‘This is great, let’s get right back at it.’ Because we want to stay in the routine.” The Hurricanes swept the Senators in the first round. They’ve had six days off between games. That could make them an even scarier team. Time will tell if the storyline of rest vs. rust is a real one. For the Flyers, though, they seem unbothered by having just two days between the start of this series and their previous one ending. Interestingly, this second-round matchup will be underway before the Lightning and Canadiens finish their first-round series. “There’s no excuses,” Couturier said. “At this time of the year, you’ve got to find a way to produce and get results.” ‘They show their cards’ The Hurricanes play an aggressive man-to-man defense. They don’t waver from it. “They show their cards,” Tocchet said. … “Like in a poker game, they show you, ‘Hey, we’re playing this hand. Whatever you want to play, I don’t care.’ That’s the way they play it.” Carolina allowed the NHL’s fewest shots per game in the regular season at 23.9. The Flyers were not a high-volume shot team. They put up the league’s fifth-fewest per game at 25.5. The Flyers will have to earn everything they get offensively. They struggled to score for stretches of the regular season and had just five goals over their last three games in the first round. They could be in for some scrappy, low-event games against the Hurricanes. But Carolina can also score, so Dan Vladar will likely have to be the Flyers’ best player again. Among the league, the Hurricanes were second in goals per game (3.55), second in shots per game (32.2) and fourth in power play percentage (24.9). They have one of the game’s most underrated players in Sebastian Aho, who was one of seven forwards on the team to score 20 or more goals. “We know they play a really fast style, high pressure, there’s not going to be a lot of space out there,” Denver Barkey said Friday. “But I think we’ve been playing this style of hockey for, like, two months now, where everyone was counting us out of the playoff race, we switched right into that playoff mindset. “I feel like we’ve been taking every day, every team, every game, treating it like a playoff game. I think we’ve just got to stay in that mindset, stay dialed.” The Flyers have been one of the stingiest teams in the league going back to Feb. 26. In that stretch of 22 wins over their last 31 games, they’ve allowed just 2.26 goals per game. They feel like they’ve been playing a postseason brand for over two months. “It’s a lot of work, most of the games we’re on the gas all the way, we’re throttling in,” Tocchet said. “So you’re going to have some dips in your game because it’s hard to play at that pace all the time. We’re playing a team that plays with that style of pace, pace, pace. And they have their ups and downs sometimes because of it. “But in saying that, I think the belief and the energy, it’s easy to come back when you don’t feel great. I felt that. We might have a bad period or a tough game, but the next game we usually bounce back. That’s because, I think, of this routine we’ve been going through the last two months.” Tocchet vs. Brind’Amour This is a pretty fun coaching matchup. A Flyers Hall of Famer will be behind each bench. Tocchet and Brind’Amour both have their names on a banner in the rafters of Xfinity Mobile Arena. They were teammates for only half of a season in 1991-92. Both have won the Jack Adams Award. “From afar, really respect him,” Tocchet said. “I played here, there was no guy that worked harder. And I think it’s the same thing with coaching — he works hard, good motivator, you can see he has got his team playing their way and they all buy in.” Every meeting between the Flyers and Hurricanes in the regular season was decided after regulation. The Flyers lost three of the four games. Brind’Amour is still trying to lead Carolina to a Stanley Cup Final appearance, but he owns 51 playoff victories. “He has done it for years and years and years,” Tocchet said, “so it’s a tough matchup for myself, too, just as much as our players.” More: Flyers bought into Tocchet; if fans haven’t yet, they should This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ...read more read less