Ask the other Philadelphia Flyers players about the friendship between Travis Konecny and Travis Sanheim, and the response is invariably a combination of a laugh, scoff and eye-roll.

“I think they bring out the best in each other. Maybe the worst, too,” Kevin Hayes cracked.

“I feel like they’re more brothers than friends,” Tony DeAngelo offered.

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“I think for them, they’re like a married couple,” Joel Farabee said.

“It just seems like they’re like ‘The Odd Couple’ as far as they’re always bickering about something,” James van Riemsdyk noted.

Scott Laughton’s thoughts on the duo are best saved for last.

“Painful. That’s it,” he said with a deadpan expression. “Once they get together, they’re like 13-year-old high school kids.”

There are other tight friendships within the Flyers locker room. But none quite match the zany antics, personality mismatch and unlikely bond shared by Konecny and Sanheim. And even their “fiercest” detractor knows it.

“They’re always going at each other. So it’s fun. They’re really cool,” Laughton continued, before abruptly stopping himself. “I shouldn’t say they’re really cool. No. Cancel that.”

Sanheim and Konecny’s history goes back to when they both played for Canada as teenagers at the under-18 world junior championships in 2014 and the under-20 world juniors in 2016.

But even though they were teammates, they weren’t yet friends. Sanheim played in the WHL and Konecny was from the OHL, and players tended to stick with those they knew from their respective leagues. Plus, Sanheim was a year older than Konecny, reinforcing the gap.

“I think as Western guys, we always go in there and think that we’re the best league and that we kind of play a harder game, and that the OHL guys are kind of the more skilled and kinda cockier guys,” Sanheim said. “So that was kind of my first impression of him.”

Konecny, for his part, didn’t think much of the tall Manitoban, even as both were impact players on the same team, particularly in 2014.

“For me, I just thought he was just a quiet guy,” Konecny said.

That started to change in 2017-18, Sanheim’s first season with the Flyers. After Sanheim made the club, he roomed with Konecny — at least until he was sent down in January, and Konecny’s pal Nolan Patrick swooped in and nabbed the vacancy in the apartment, forcing Sanheim to find new lodgings after he was called back up in March.

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“He gassed me when I got sent to the minors,” Sanheim laughed.

It was the next season, 2018-19, when the two really became close. Konecny already lived in downtown Philadelphia, and he was able to convince Sanheim to join him in the area with the rest of his friends on the team. The rest, as they say, is history.

Now, the two are stationed next to each other in the Flyers’ locker room in Voorhees, a residual consequence of the pandemic requirement for stalls to be in alternating positional order to keep entire groups from catching COVID-19. They drive to practice and games together every day, swapping stories as Sanheim provides updates on NHL happenings to the less-plugged-in Konecny. They even live right across the street from each other in New Jersey, the product of Konecny putting the full-court press on Sanheim after the latter signed his eight-year extension in October.

“I started putting it in his ear — like, you get to park in your own driveway, the drive to the grocery store is nice, whatever,” Konecny said.

“I’m pretty sure now they’re looking at each other through the window at night saying goodnight to each other,” Laughton joked.

The truly odd part about the Sanheim-Konecny friendship, of course, is just how different they are as people.

It will come as little surprise to most fans that Konecny’s attitude off the ice mirrors his on-ice persona. He’s constantly chattering away, a perpetual ball of energy. Sanheim, on the other hand, is notably quiet and reserved — particularly for a professional athlete.

“It’s funny, too, because they’re total opposites,” DeAngelo said. “Sanny’s real, real laid back, and just super quiet, super nice. And then you’ve got TK, who’s out of his mind. He’s just wild, he’s loud, he’s a jokester.”

An outsider might look at the two and wonder how they could possibly become so close. Even Konecny himself wonders at it sometimes.

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“Definitely just around the room every day, it’s probably me running my mouth. And he’s just sitting there shaking his head at me,” he chuckled.

So why do the two click?

It starts with their upbringings, which they bonded over in the early stages of their friendship. Both grew up on farms and enjoy the outdoors, though Sanheim often ragged on Konecny for being a “fake farmer” as they discussed their respective family responsibilities. But it goes beyond those shared experiences. Perhaps the friendship works as well as it does precisely because their personalities are so different.

“They say opposites attract, in a sense,” DeAngelo said. “That’s been a saying since the beginning of time. It’s true there.”

“He kind of picks away at me, and then I get mad a little bit at him,” Sanheim said. “But I feel like we’ve kind of brought the best out of each other, on both sides of it. The joking side that he brings, and then some of the more seriousness that I bring. It kind of equals itself out.”

Konecny also pulls Sanheim’s usually hidden outgoing side out of him, too. It took Konecny’s wife Karly some time to see that side of Sanheim after Konecny introduced her to him — she apparently had a similar first impression of Sanheim as Konecny himself did. But that’s changed.

“Now that he’s got comfortable around her, you see the other side of Sandy where he’s goofing around, and not so quiet behind closed doors,” Konecny said. “A lot of people don’t know that about him.”

Their friendship goes well beyond fun and games, though. There’s a connection between the two that both rely on to keep them steady throughout the course of a long season.

“I think we help each other out too,” Sanheim said. “When guys are going through stuff that maybe you don’t necessarily want other guys knowing about, or just mentally when you’re going through stuff, I think it’s nice to have another voice, a guy that’s in the locker room that can help you out. I think we’ve both gone through that. Not even just this year, I think in years past we’ve both gone through that. It’s been nice having each other there.”

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Konecny, of course, had two straight down years before bouncing back in a big way in 2022-23; Sanheim has struggled this season in his first year under new head coach John Tortorella. But through all of it, each of them knows they can lean on the other when things get rough.

“Everyone has super, super close buddies,” DeAngelo said. “(But with) them, it’s like they’ve been related for years, punching each other, like little kids, yelling at each other, chirping each other. But if you go against one of them, the other one’s right there to back them up, too. So they really remind me of closer than friends.”

“I always tell him all the time, that the way I see him is kind of similar to the way I see my twin,” Sanheim added. “In that sometimes I’d like to hit him, and we get into fights all the time — pretty well every day, actually. And that’s kind of how I see him. It’s just kind of like a brother to me.”

All that said, antics are still a key part of their friendship, and the main reason why it’s become legendary in the Flyers’ room.

Yes, the pranks are plentiful and constant.

“There’s nothing that’s overly memorable, other than the fact that it’s them, so it happens all the time,” van Riemsdyk said.

Laughton might disagree with that “not overly memorable” designation, given that he’s the most frequent target of their stunts.

“It’s usually Laughts going after them, or them going after Laughts,” Farabee confirmed.

“Usually we’re messing with Laughts quite a bit with his vehicle,” Sanheim said. “Usually try to do something with him. And then he usually tries to get back at us, so it’s an ongoing war.”

All of the details of The Car Wars wouldn’t likely be fit to print. But some details did get out. Laughton recounted one instance when he believes the duo put water bottles under his windshield wipers and broke them, and another time when the doors on his car were the target.

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“There was a sticky substance on my door handle that my wife actually touched. I’ll get them back,” Laughton said.

Konecny, however, maintained his innocence in the face of Laughton’s claims.

“I don’t remember either of us pulling a prank on Scotty. But he likes to blame us,” he said with a slight smile.

Laughton did find a way to get revenge on Konecny, dumping all of the styrofoam from his recent purchase of a sauna into Konecny’s truck, filling it with mountains of popcorn. But as recently as February, he had yet to get what he deemed to be sufficient payback on Sanheim.

The Car Wars, in other words, continue.

“I know he’s gotten us for things that we didn’t even do. So we owe him a few. That’s all,” Konecny said.

In truth, even if Laughton is the primary target, no one is safe from their pranks.

“Another one we like to (do) … usually in the shower, the towels. If we see just a couple left, we usually just take them and go hide them. And then guys don’t have towels,” Sanheim said.

And of course, they torture each other constantly.

“They’ll come up to you at the rink and be like, ‘Hey, go say this to TK! It’ll really bother him!'” van Riemsdyk laughed. “Then you’ll go say it to him, and then he’ll be like, ‘Sandy told you to say that. I know he did.’”

Konecny, unsurprisingly, is usually the aggressor when it comes to intra-duo pranks, noting that Sanheim usually only enters the fray to dish out retribution. Konecny got a particularly karmic version when he came to pick Sanheim up for practice one day, only to find Sanheim standing outside his house on the phone, gesturing for more time.

“I was just giving him a hard time because he was on the phone, and I was teasing him that he was on the phone with his girlfriend,” he recalled. “I was pretending like, ‘Why can’t you just go inside and talk to her?’ Why do you need to speak on the phone?”

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But it wasn’t Alex, Sanheim’s now-fiancee, on the other line. Sanheim was actually on the phone trying to set up a ride for his brother to the airport. Getting no response from his friend, however, Konecny cranked the music in his car so loud that Sanheim couldn’t hear the operator on the other side of the line.

So Sanheim fought back.

“He turned with a Fiji bottle, and he threw it at my car and put a huge dent in my door,” Konecny said with a sheepish smile. “So that was probably one that backfired on me.”

Live by The Car Wars, die by The Car Wars.

Sanheim and Konecny’s preferred card game might be what best showcases the nature of their friendship.

Sanheim, Konecny, Hayes and Justin Braun regularly play a game called 7 Up 7 Down, with DeAngelo as a regular observer of the battles. Sanheim, by both of their admissions, is the better of the two card players; he’s the one who got Konecny hooked on the game years ago when they were still in their early years as NHLers.

But according to the other members of the group, a member of the duo rarely comes away as the clear-cut winner.

“This game, you can kind of make sure somebody loses,” DeAngelo explained.

And that’s very much on both of their minds.

“(Konecny) wants to make sure that Sandy doesn’t win. Sandy wants to make sure that TK doesn’t win, and Brauner wants to make sure they don’t win,” Hayes said. “So I’m kind of Switzerland and come away with money every game.”

Still, even amidst their rivalry, their differing personalities shine through.

“The problem is though, I play my cards and don’t think. He thinks about every single play he has,” Konecny said.

Sanheim takes full advantage — with both his more strategic approach and his spot on the team plane.

“We sit in a certain order on the plane, and he’s after me,” Konecny said. “So every time he gets a chance, he’s messing with my hand. He makes sure (that I don’t win). And it drives me up the wall.”

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“But then when he’s able to get me just that one time, he’s gonna make it very well known, and then he ticks me off and I’m like, ‘OK, now I’m just gonna chop ya,’” Sanheim added with a satisfied smile.

And thus, the rivalry — and friendship — persists, with no end in sight.

(Photo: Len Redkoles / NHLI via Getty Images)