It’s only taken five games, but the Flyers have an identity.

It’s one that has been slowly building since Ron Hextall took over as general manager a little more than three years ago, but it’s here. Now. And it’s sexy.

“You talk a little bit about an identity, it’s four lines, it’s six D, you know it’s everybody that is in the lineup just going out and doing their job,” Dave Hakstol said. “[Is it] sustainable? That’s the way we have to play.”

It was on full display in the home opener, and although the same schedule makers were cursed by fans for a four-game, Western Conference road trip to start the season, they created a perfect storm for the Flyers to have a great chance for success in their first game in front of the fans.

The Flyers beat up/abused/spanked/annihilated/embarrassed/ (choose your favorite verb) the Washington Capitals 8-2 – a D.C. team playing its third game in four nights, and the back end of a back-to-back set with travel involved.

So, yes, grains of salt and all that.

But it’s hard to ignore the collective work of the Flyers through five games. This team skates. This team keeps coming. This team is – to steal a word from Peter Laviolette – relentless.

Will we have our moments of frustration, exasperation and agitation (I’ll take false rhymes for 800, Alex)? Of course, but if nothing else, this Flyers team is going to be fun to watch, fun to cheer for, and fun to follow.

And Opening Night was the appetizer. Just ask Capitals coach Barry Trotz what it was like playing against the Flyers last night: “It just kept coming down our throat,” he said.

Umm… to the takeaways:

 

1) Opening Salvo

The atmosphere around the Wells Fargo Center was unlike any other regular season game I’ve seen in the 17 years I’ve been covering hockey games.

There was a buzz in the air from the minute you pulled into the parking lot. It reached a crescendo sometime in the third period where we were wondering if the Flyers might reach double-digits in goals.

And it wasn’t just the fans – it was the players too.

When I walked in the building, Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek and Wayne Simmonds were playing an intense game of horse in the bowels of the center. Giroux created one trick shot on the fly, passing it to himself off of a heating duct, and then tucking the ball under one leg in mid-air, handing it off from right hand to left before laying it in.

Not to be outdone, Voracek made an identical shot. The trio of veterans were on point from then, it had to translate to the ice, right?

And it did. The Flyers led by a goal after one period. By three after two periods. And unlike recent incarnations of the orange and black, rather than sit back and rest on their laurels they kept the gas pedal pinned to the floor in the third period.

“We just didn’t sit back in the third period,” Voracek said. “Obviously against Washington if you sit back it can cost you. We kept pushing in the third, we kept skating well, we were skating better than them and I think that second goal by Scotty [Laughton] was huge – it finally give us what we needed.”

We’ll get into Laughton in a bit, but here are some musings for you:

It was the first time the Flyers scored at least eight goals in almost six years (9-2 over a dreadful Columbus Blue Jackets team – with Steve Mason taking on a brunt of those goals) and it was the first time they scored at least eight in a home opener since 1982, when they put up nine against the Quebec Nordiques in Mark Howe’s NHL debut.

The Flyers have scored 21 goals in five games – and that includes being shutout in one! And no, averaging more than four goals per game isn’t sustainable, but what it is an indication of is roster depth.

This team, for the first time in… maybe it’s history, can roll four lines. All four play important minutes. All four can make something happen offensively. All four can skate with pace.

And more often than not, that’s going to bring a win. Especially …

 

2) The top line came to play

More time is still needed before we can officially declare the move of Claude Giroux to the wing an overwhelming success, but it’s definitely trending in the right direction.

As a line, Giroux, Voracek and Sean Couturier were superb – at least offensively. Giroux had two goals and two assists, Couturier had two goals and an assist, and Voracek had three assists.

(Carry the one… that’s 10 points combined – from one line)

The skill and vision of both Giroux and Voracek is normally otherworldly, but Saturday was all sorts of special:

Giroux’s pass to Voracek is just off-the-chain superb. Voracek’s pass to Couturier is equally pretty as it is sharp.

If this keeps up, Couturier will score 60 points this season playing with these two.

This is something that forms out of chemistry, and on Saturday, this trio had it.

https://twitter.com/CFJastrzembski/status/919361846209019905

And then of course there was this:

https://twitter.com/CFJastrzembski/status/919358563780366337

I’ll just leave that for you right there so you can watch it on repeat. Welcome to the NHL, Madison Bowey. It’s tough being a rookie sometimes.

“It obviously wasn’t the game I wanted or expected,” Bowey said. “I have watched [Voracek] play for numerous years now and I know how shifty he is. I think that is just part of learning the game. Like I said it’s all up hill from here now and I can put that one behind me.”

You know who you can ask about rough experiences as a young player? This guy:

 

3) Scott Laughton

I’ve been hinting at it for a while now, but my projection for the former first round pick is for a breakout season.

No, I’m not saying he’s suddenly going to be a 30-goal scorer or anything like that – but this is definitely the season when Laughton arrives as a bona fide NHL regular who can do a little bit of everything.

He came into camp with a purpose. He had to come to grips with the role the Flyers wanted him to play – fourth line center. Those words don’t always ring in harmony to a young player’s ear.

“Your whole life up until that point, you’ve been the man,” Laughton told me during training camp. “Now, all of the sudden, you’re being asked to do things the top players aren’t usually asked to do – pay with a defense-first mentality. Kill penalties. Not take a regular shift – it’s not easy to adjust to that.

“But I knew, if I wanted to play in the NHL and play for this team, I not only had to accept it, but embrace it. I had to work my butt off at these little things that aren’t flashy and become a reliable, two-way player.”

He did just that.

Ian Laperriere is still an assistant coach, just not on the bench. He’s the “eye in the sky” who communicates with the bench from his private suite in the press box. He used to be a player development coach, and spent much of his time talking to young prospects about what it means to being a good pro.

“I tell them that there are only so many chairs available on a hockey team,” he told me once. “And each chair is a different shape and size. And as players, you have to find which chair you fit in best. It’s the hardest thing for a young player to do. Everyone in the NHL was the best player or one of the best players on their team at some point – and they all think they belong in that one chair.

“A lot of guys never find their chair – which is why they don’t make it. There are a lot of players with the talent to play at the top level who never do, or don’t for long, because they refuse to find that chair.”

It’s only been five games, but Laughton seems to be really comfortable in his.

Laughton had two goals. His second was a beautiful snipe from the right circle that made it 6-2:

https://twitter.com/CFJastrzembski/status/919375849090056192

But, it was his first that broke Washington’s back and, after our very own Chris Jastrzembski’s creative edit of his goal, also broke Twitter:

https://twitter.com/CFJastrzembski/status/919363402371387392

It’s pretty uncanny how his goal and Mike Richards’ goal some seven-plus years ago now were so identical – from the defensive play that made it happen, to the same spot on the ice, to Philipp Grubauer going the full Halak on his failed attempt to get to the puck, to the goal celebration.

When I talked to him about it post game, he said he thought about that for a minute too, but didn’t realize just how similar it was. He said he’d check it on CB today.

But, comparisons aside, it was the most important goal of the game.

“That was the key point in the game,” Hakstol said. “To get a shorthanded goal that late in the period and get momentum back on our side, that was the key point right there.”

The thing is, that “Fourth Line” is much more than that. Its deployment isn’t that far off from the “Third Line” of Dale Weise-Nolan Patrick-Travis Konecny. It’s like Matt Read told me training camp:

“Whoever ends up playing on those lines, it’s going to be more like 3A and 3B,” he said. “They’ll be interchangeable. It’ll be really good for us matchup-wise.”

And while Read is toiling in the AHL with the Phantoms (he scored a goal last night), his assessment on how the lines will be used was right.

 

4) Mojo Rising

Of all the combinations the Flyers are using right now, perhaps the most successful is one not generating a lot of conversation.

However, it can’t be understated just how good the defensive pairing of Robert Hagg and Shayne Gostisbehere has been.

They may not be getting the most minutes, but they’re darn close, and they compliment each other really well.

Hagg is impressively steady. He doesn’t look like a guy who has all of six career NHL games under his belt now. He is so incredibly poised and sound – something you hardly ever see from such a young defenseman.

I sit right next to Bill Meltzer in the press box this season, so I’m sure there are going to be a lot of great hockey story swaps happening as this season progresses, but last night we were trying to come up with a comparable for Hagg – and I think Bill nailed it.

“He reminds me a lot of [Phoenix Coyotes defenseman Niklas] Hjalmarsson,” Meltzer said.

For the more casual fan, Hjalmarsson was one of the top four defensemen for the Chicago Blackhawks during their three Stanley Cup runs. An all-situations type player, Hjalmarsson is known for his hockey smarts, his strong positional play and an underrated physical game – one rooted in timing.

He’s also calm, cool and collected under pressure and is a reliable and consistent player who you don’t have to worry about on the ice.

Hagg is no different. And because of that, it allows Gostisbehere to be more of a free-wheeling defenseman who can generate all kinds of offense.

Ghost has eight assists in five games – including three last night. So, yeah, it’s working.

“They have been a good pair since they have been together,” Hakstol said. “Hagger is a very quiet, very solemn player and that is not just without the puck, he is real sound with it as well, he does positive things with it. As a defenseman, your main role is defend and move the puck out of the zone and do it efficiently and Hagger does a good job of that.

“And Ghost is competing extremely hard without the puck and you know I don’t have to go there in terms of what he can do with the puck. That pair has a little bit of mojo, a little bit of chemistry now and bottom line they are just playing hard and they are playing hard together.”

 

5) The uh-ohs

As dominant a game as the Flyers played last night, there were some things to clean up.

https://twitter.com/CFJastrzembski/status/919346778448777217

I wanted to look at this one specifically, because the immediate reaction on Twitter was that this was another bad play by Andrew MacDonald.

It amazes me how easy it is to dog pile on the rabbit.

Andrew MacDonald did NOTHING wrong on this play, yet was crucified for it. Here’s the breakdown. You don’t see the full play on the gif, but here’s how it went:

  1. AMac passes the puck up the wall to Voracek, trying to start a zone exit.
  2. Voracek mishandles the pass, and after a second, loses it to the Capitals
  3. The puck ends up on the stick of Alex Ovechkin – and although he was dreadful last night – a minus-4 in only 14:25 of ice time – he had scored nine goals in Washington’s first five games.
  4. AMac marks Ovechkin, forcing him to give up the puck.
  5. AMac then stays with Ovechkin – which is part of the game plan – whoever is defending him, stay with him and everyone else covers for each other except…
  6. Neither Giroux nor Voracek – both on AMac’s side of the ice, covers his area, creating a 2-on-1 down low and leaving both Ivan Provorov and Brian Elliott out to dry. John Carlson finds Evgeni Kuznetsov who slides it to a wide open Vrana for an easy goal.

The goal is entirely on the forwards there, not MacDonald – even if it seems easy to blame him.

And for all the good Giroux and Voracek provided in the game, this is something that always worries me about them – they seem to have moments of a lapses in the defensive zone.

It happened twice to Giroux last night. On another play, he wasn’t moving his legs and had Ovechkin pass him for a 2-on-1 that Provorov had to skate the length of the ice to break up, passing Giroux on the way.

It’s not like this on every shift – there are shifts when both guys make good plays defensively in their own end – Giroux thwarted another Ovechkin chance from the slot in the second period with a hard back check- but it does happen often enough to point it out. Having Couturier on the line with them helps, but it’s something that needs to improve.

On a separate note:

Look, like I said, it could be nothing, but usually when you see a guy limping that hard 15-20 minutes after a game, something is bothering him.

With the team having an off day today, I’m wondering if Provorov gets a “maintenance day” at practice tomorrow. We’ll see.

 

6) The Crap-itals

When I went to college in D.C., I used to be able to get tickets to see the Caps for peanuts on Game Day. We would drive out to Landover, MD, where the Cap Centre was, and enjoy hockey at a very affordable price.

It was so easy back then, as the Capitals were a bit of a non-entity, that in 1993 we got tickets to Game 6 of the playoff series where they eliminated the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins four hours before the game from the box office. Four of us. 12 rows from the ice.

A lot has changed since then. A downtown arena, Ovechkin and a better marketing strategy have made the Caps a hit in D.C., but one of my favorite stories from back in the Landover days was when we were at a Caps-Flyers game and there were always more Flyers fans than Caps fans in attendance.

There were these Caps fans in the second level, a group of 10 or so, and they used to bring a series of signs to the game – some of them required each fan to hold up a letter spelling out varying things they wanted the other fans in attendance to start chanting.

We were sitting behind them for this one particular game, and were getting annoyed at the constant sign-raising blocking our line of sight.

At one point, my eventual roommate Sami, who was from Allentown, had seen enough. So, he concocted a master plan: He went to the concourse and came back with a magic marker and the top of a pizza box. Who knows where he pulled it from, but on the inside of the box top, written in the middle of the grease stain, Sami etched a thick capital “R.”

We had no idea what he was doing.

He then taped the one fan on the shoulder, as they were holding up some series of signs and said, “Excuse me, you guys forgot your ‘R.'”

They looked at him, perplexed. What the hell was he talking about? Choosing to ignore him they went about raising their signs for a good 30 seconds longer. Meanwhile, Sami, in the row above them, was holding his “R” box top between to of the signs, unbeknownst to those in the row in front of us.

We could see Flyers fans on the opposite side of the arena pointing up in our general direction and cheering. We still had no idea.

So, I went down the aisle a few steps to see what was going on from the front… and there was Sami’s “R” right between the “C” and the “A” of the “Go Capitals” sign that was being spelled out.

Topping it off, it actually made it into the next day’s Washington Times (not the Post, sadly) as a photo from the game.

I told you that ridiculous story all to say this – the Caps looked like Sami’s “R” was in their name last night.

Look, it’s tough to play three games in four days. Especially if the third game is also part of a back-to-back. So, the Caps can chalk it up to tired legs a little bit.

But their defense was pitiful last night.

Washington coach Barry Trotz, blamed it on the forwards, not the defense, saying it was their mistakes in the neutral zone that resulted in so many goals. But boy the defense looked shabby to me.

And the goalie? I don’t know how you recover from such a poor outing. Grubauer endured all eight goals. Trotz never thought of going to Braden Holtby, who deserved a rest.

Ovechkin and Kuznetsov, who have been so good in the early-going for Washington, seemed disinterested, especially in the last two periods.

If they are going to really compete this season, they need at least one blue line upgrade, maybe two, because that was a pitiful performance.

 

7) Loose Pucks

  • The Flyers unveiled a bunch of new things to try to engage with the fans in a different way. A couple didn’t work out. The rally horn sounded like a dying giraffe (although I’m told that was because they had a kid winding it up and not an adult and it will sound different next time). The other was piano accompaniment and backup singers for Lauren Hart for the National Anthem. They weren’t in sync and it wasn’t the best performance for the #1 ranked anthemist in the NHL (which makes me wonder, who is ranked 30th on this “ranking,” and why do they still have a job?)
  • Brandon Manning was back in the lineup while Travis Sanheim was sitting with us in the press box. This remains an “I don’t get it.” Especially since Sanheim seemed to be getting better with each game.
  • There was a scrum late in the third period right along the wall between the two benches. Flyers broadcaster Chris Therien stands there during games. Trying to avoid becoming a casualty in the fight, Therien reached in and took the stick out of Radko Gudas’ hands to prevent himself from getting whacked. Therien told me afterwards that the two are really close and he told Gudas previously that if it ever happened, he would take the stick to both prevent himself from being carved up as an innocent bystander, and to allow Gudas to get his hands free in case he needed them to scrap. Lo and behold, Bundy did just that last night.

And, from the Flyers award-winning public relations department:

  • Voracek’s three assists, give him nine on the season. It’s the best start of Voracek’s career after five games of a season in terms of points and assists.
  • Laughton recorded his first career two-goal game in the NHL.
  • Couturier recorded his fourth career two-goal game. His last one came exactly one year ago on Oct. 14, 2016 in the Flyers’ 2016-17 season opener at Los Angeles.
  • Giroux recorded his ninth career game of four or more points. His last four-point game was Feb. 29, 2016 vs. Calgary (4A).
  • Per the Elias Sports Bureau, the last time the Flyers had three different players with two or more goals in a game was Dec. 8, 2009 when Giroux, Richards and Jeff Carter each scored two goals in a 6-2 win over the New York Islanders.