If the Flyers and Sixers Both Make the Playoffs, it's a Five-for-Five First

5 Apr 2024

Crossing Broad

If the Flyers and Sixers Both Make the Playoffs its a FiveforFive First

I was thinking last night that if the Sixers and Flyers both scrape through in April, it will be the first time both Winter teams have qualified for the playoffs since the pandemic. Then I paused, and thought to take it a step further. Has there ever been

I was thinking last night that if the Sixers and Flyers both scrape through in April, it will be the first time both Winter teams have qualified for the playoffs since the pandemic.

Then I paused, and thought to take it a step further. Has there ever been a year in which the Flyers, Sixers, Eagles, Phillies, and Union have all made the postseason at the same time?

I don’t think there has been, but I went back to triple check, starting with a simple post-2010 listing of each playoff appearance:

Eagles: 2010, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023
Phillies: 2010, 2011, 2022, 2023
Flyers: 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019
Sixers: 2010, 2011, (big gap for the process), 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022
Union: 2011, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

The caveat here is that I listed the Flyers, Sixers, and Eagles based on the year in which their campaigns started, so while the Flyers, for instance, went to the playoffs in 2015, that was the tail-end of the 2014-2015 season. Same with the Birds, who had playoff games pushing into January. If you take this into consideration, and look at 2011 for instance, the following games or series were played on the following days:

Packers 21, Eagles 16 / Wild Card (January 9th, 2011)
Phillies vs. Cardinals / NLDS (October 1st to 7th, 2011)
Flyers vs. Bruins / Eastern Conference Semifinal (April 30th to May 6th, 2011)
Sixers vs. Heat / first round (April 16th to April 27th, 2011)
Union vs. Dynamo / Eastern Conference Semifinal (October 30th to November 3rd, 2011)

Technically, the five teams each played a postseason game in 2011, but we’d count that Eagles squad as the 2010 team. The Flyers and Sixers also started in 2010 and carried into 2011.

What I was looking for was all five teams starting in the same year and all five of their respective campaigns going into the postseason, which can happen in a few weeks:

2023 Eagles – playoffs (lost in Tampa)
2023 Phillies – playoffs (lost in NLCS)
2023 Union – playoffs (lost in conference semifinal)
2023-2024 Flyers – ???
2023-2024 Sixers – ???

What’s the difference, you ask?

Well, if the Flyers and Sixers both make the postseason, it means we will have all five teams in playoff games separated by just six months. That’s a shorter time frame than the 2011 I laid out above, in which all five squads had postseason appearances separated by a little less than 11 months. We would have achieved this feat back in 2010, had the Union not stunk in their first year, or in 2011 if Vince Young’s “Dream Team” had not gone 8-8 to miss the postseason.

Of course, I may have jinxed it.