The Philadelphia Flyers are making a playoff push that everyone is on board with — well, at this point they are. They’ve been too good to wish for losses to improve the draft pick by a significant amount, so they might as well try to win and get a possibly brief playoff appearance that would give one of the youngest teams in the NHL a beneficial experience.

But, with the 4-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings on Friday night they are now in a place where Saturday night while hosting the New York Islanders, has turned into a do-or-die game. It all comes down to 60 minutes of action. It’s the stakes of a Game 7 before they even make the playoffs.

Flyers need to win vs. Islanders to keep playoffs dream alive

Thank you to the folks at MoneyPuck.com, we can see just how each result affects the likelihood of them making the playoffs, and everything else beyond.

Essentially, it all comes down to this game against the Islanders on Saturday night. The lights are bright.

If the Flyers manage to win in regulation, then they can keep on fighting — a 26.5 percent chance isn’t the best and it is still more likely than not that they will miss the playoffs, but it keeps them involved in the race with multiple paths to shedding this nasty streak of eight years with no playoffs in Philadelphia. It would help them earn the possibility that they can leapfrog the wild card and have a 19.3 percent chance of finishing third in the division and possibly face the archrival Pittsburgh Penguins in what should no doubt be an entertaining series.

Everything stays alive with a win tonight. Because if they don’t, they might as well have their backs on the canvas and start counting the lights.

With just one single regulation loss Saturday against the Islanders — one little tiny game — their playoff odds sink to a dramatic 5.1 percent. Basically nothing. It’s the odds of every other team around them going on losing streaks as the Flyers surge through the final six games of the season. It’s, as the odds say right there in numeric form, unlikely.

And that would be it. Because of the unfortunate loss to the Red Wings at home Friday night, they have put themselves in this position to desperately need a result to go their way 24 hours later.

But there are reasons for hope. Despite the Islanders being off since Tuesday night and the Flyers being in the second half of a back-to-back — possibly the worst combination the Flyers could hope for when it comes to fatigue — Philadelphia has some things going for them. With the addition of Porter Martone to the team, who has been incredibly impressive in his first two career games, and the return of Tyson Foerster, capped off by a goal in his first game back Friday; they are playing some impressive hockey.

Even while they lost Friday, they dominated and controlled all three periods against Detroit. Every single offensive metric at 5-on-5 went in the Flyers’ favor — shot attempts, unblocked shot attempts, expected goals, shots on goal, high-danger chances — and the only reason they truly lost against the Red Wings was a couple of severe misplays by veteran players. If they can just iron that out, and maybe get that third line going with a Barkey-for-Bump switch next to Noah Cates and Matvei Michkov, they can keep their playoffs dream alive.

There are reasons to be optimistic, but also Saturday night could feature a whole lot of crashing out as we realize another season will pass without seeing this team in the postseason. We’ll find out in mere hours.