Kyle Phillippi
Head hung low. Frustration ensued. A player’s meeting commenced.
Exactly 14 days later, those same heads were laced with smiles from ear to ear, a sense of relief in the locker room and pure adrenaline and excitement out on the ice from the fans.
That rather rapid change of emotion and mannerisms stems from the Philadelphia Flyers 7-1 loss to the Florida Panthers in the second game of the season up until the team’s most recent 3-2 shootout victory over the New York Rangers.
Since that defeat, the Flyers have gone onto a 4-1 record with wins over the Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers and Boston Bruins. The team is 2-0-1 against three of the four teams that played in last year’s conference championship (TB, CHI, NYR) and won a game at the TD Garden in Boston for the first time since 2011 despite trailing by two goals going into the third period.
To put it straight: this team is for real.
The biggest knock on the Flyers the past couple of seasons has been their poor start to each year. Each season, the team finds themselves in a hole that they are fighting out of all season.
That’s not the case this year as the Flyers are hanging right there with the big three in the Metropolitan in Washington and both New York squads.
What better way to ensure a good star than by picking up a point in five of their seven games?
“We keep talking about working to get better and improving on a daily basis,” said first-year head coach Dave Hakstol following the win over the Rangers. “I think I said this before the game – every night there are two points available. You only have one shot at those two points.”
The Flyers have taken that to heart.
Yet, it’s easy to say all the right things. It’s about executing, and unlike in year’s past, this team is doing everything the right way, starting with the defense.
The NHL schedule makers did the team no favors with putting Tampa Bay, Dallas, Chicago and New York all in the first two and a half weeks of the season. Last season, those teams had their way with the Philadelphia defense. That’s not the case anymore.
Hakstol’s systems, which preach neutral zone play (attacking the rusher before they get into the zone), forechecking and aggressive defensive play, are all paying off. Michael Del Zotto, Evgeny Medvedev and Michael Del Zotto are leading the team through their two-way play with guys like Nick Schultz, Radko Gudas and Brandon Manning keeping a more traditional approach with a little more aggressive approach. These well-balanced defensive pairings have greatly improved this squad.
Their defense is just one of a handful of areas that have improved under Hakstol’s brief tenure so far.
“You can look up and down the lineup and you can find different things that are good and positive from good goal tending, extra efforts on the penalty kill, finishing a power play goal and just a lot of second efforts all over the ice,” Hakstol said following the win over Chicago.
Just from the eye-ball test, this year’s Flyers team plays a much different game than fans are used to. There’s hardly any dump-and-chase with more emphasis being placed on puck possession into the zone. The defense is winning battles along the boards and blocking shots. The neutral zone is being controlled seemingly each game by the Flyers and the secondary scoring, with guys like Matt Read and Sam Gagner, is vastly improved.
It’s still early, yes, but after seven games, it’s clear that this year’s Flyers team is for real. When a team plays the game the right way, is able to not only hang with the best but also beat the best and has reliable goaltending with two goalies, that team is going to be competitive all season long.
Sit back Flyers fans and enjoy this season.