Everyone, even the most casual hockey observers, had to know that the torrid pace the Flyers were playing in the first six games of the season wasn’t sustainable.

Averaging more than four goals a game? Averaging 35 shots on goal? What do you think this is the 1980s?

No. Hockey is forever morphing and changing, but one thing is for certain, if there are extremes in the sport, even for as short a period of time as six games, you can bet someone will find a way to change it.

Just like the amount of slashing penalties being called (more than 90% of NHL games this season have had at least one) will eventually slow down, so will the high-scoring games. So will the wide open ice. Things will invariably change.

And when they do, teams that are prepared for it will flourish, and teams that won’t will perish.

The Flyers? They want to establish that they can accomplish their goals playing varying styles of hockey.

(Wait, did I just use four -ish words in a span of 17? It was completely unintentional and not a bullish attempt to publish this story in a stylish manner. Not at all.)

After a tight-checking, 1-0 slogfest loss to Nashville Thursday, everyone, including yours truly, expected a return to the high-speed, wide-open style of hockey Saturday afternoon against Edmonton and Connor McDavid.

That wasn’t the case at all.

Instead, this game was much more spirited, with a little animosity, a lot of physical play, a lot of unselfish, team-oriented stuff usually reserved for late in the season or the playoffs and not October.

This was especially surprising since it was a non-conference game.

But it’s the way things are right now for the Flyers – who have definitely put the league on notice with the way they were playing over the season’s first couple of weeks.

And now, following their 2-1 win Saturday, they are showing they can win this way too.

To the Takeaways…

1. Not the Same Old Flyers

There was a time when playing the Flyers amounted to the opposition creating a game plan that required good defense against the top line, not getting caught taking too many penalties, and simply being opportunistic when the other lines were on the ice.

It was pretty standard for, oh, I don’t know, about 40 years.

But, something has changed with the organization. GM Ron Hextall’s plan has plodded along slowly, but it’s definitely starting to bear fruit.

The Flyers can skate. The Flyers have depth. The Flyers are no longer a one-trick pony.

And it may have caught the league a little by surprise to start this season. They will roll four lines at you consistently. They will skate with you. And, they have talent throughout the lineup that can score.

Putting up 26 goals through the first six games (really in five, since they were shutout in one of them) was evidence that the Flyers have some firepower on the roster.

And it’s not like the Flyers were doing this against doormat teams. San Jose was the Western Conference Champion two seasons ago. Nashville was the Western Conference champion last year. Anaheim was in the Western Conference Finals and Washington had the best record in the league last season.

That’s all impressive.

But what happened the past two games? Only two goals scored. Only two goals allowed. Only 100 shots total by all teams involved in two games, an average of 25 each and nine off the pace of those first six games for the Flyers.

Teams have decided they need to find ways to slow the Flyers down.

I decided to press this issue with a couple Flyers after the game.

“As the year goes along, teams get better defensively and things tighten up,” Wayne Simmonds told me. “It is what it is and you have to learn how to deal with it.”

And deal with it they are.

“I don’t know if we caught them by surprise with our speed like you said,” Andrew MacDonald told me. “But we have done a good job sticking to our gameplan – and there’s always adjustments to it. Every team pre-scouts the other team and know their tendencies and how they play and we can see certain aspects of that against us out there for sure, but we are trying to focus on the things we feel we can do to beat the other team’s defense.”

What the Flyers showed Saturday – that they didn’t Thursday when Nashville brought the tight-checking style against them – was an ability to be opportunistic.

They may have only scored a pair of goals, and they may have only gotten 24 pucks through on Edmonton goalie Cam Talbot, but they were smart to recognize opportunities that were there and take advantage of them.

They did on the game-winning goal by Simmonds (we’ll dive into it on No. 2 below), but they had other chances as well. The defense was quite active. Shayne Gostisbehere, who has been superb thus far this season, played perhaps his best game and was involved in a lot of plays. Travis Sanheim jumped up into the play for a couple of good chances.

And the forwards took advantage of turnovers, or created them with their skating ability as well. Travis Konecny had a heck of a game and didn’t even register a shot. Matt Read, playing his first game of the season, also had an excellent game – as did the entire fourth line, which has really become more of a third line these days, playing more minutes than Nolan Patrick, Konecny and Dale Weise.

Meanwhile, the Flyers were concentrating mostly on playing smart defensively. After all, when you are playing against Conor McDavid, you better be smart positionally.

They got a little loose in the neutral zone in the second period, getting away from their game plan and affording the Oilers chances – and goalie Brian Elliott bailed them out on a few occasions – but aside from that, the Flyers really did a nice job against McDavid and friends.

A commitment to defense. An opportunistic offense. Speed throughout the lineup – sure sounds a lot like the Los Angeles Kings model that Hextall is employing with this team… and its been good so far as the Flyers are 5-3-0 this season having outscored the opposition 28-18 through eight games.

2. Simmonds is one tough S.O.B.

Wayne Simmonds was hurt in the game Tuesday night. He didn’t skate Wednesday then played through a lower body injury Thursday. He said he was fine, but you could tell he wasn’t quite 100%. Then he took a stick to the mouth while on the bench, and while he doesn’t need oral surgery, he’s likely going to lose teeth – maybe as many as seven.

And yet, here he was, two days later, wearing a mouth shield that he said affected his vision when pucks were at his feet, setting up the Flyers first goal and scoring the game-winner.

“He is as tough as it gets,” Jake Voracek said. “He doesn’t miss many games. It was a great play by [Jori] Lehtera and [Valtteri] Filppula on that goal and Simmer is always in the right spot. So he knows where to go to get those goals. I wish I learned from him sometimes.”

Voracek can joke about the fact that he hasn’t scored a goal yet this season, but Simmonds is making up for it. He has six now and has scored the game-winner in four of the five Flyers wins.

Speaking of, here it is:

Canadians weren’t too pleased with the effort of defenseman Kris Russell on the play:

But alas, Simmonds is simply clutch. And to do it with a mouthful of hurt is all the more impressive.

While most of us would be home in bed crying less than 48 hours from being told we might lose seven teeth, Simmonds was winning hockey games. Not that he isn’t frustrated about it.

“Trust me, I was swearing up and down in the dentist’s chair for four hours yesterday,” he told me and NHL.com’s Adam Kimmelman.

It likely means Simmonds has to avoid any fighting for awhile too… or not.

“We’ll see what happens if somebody decides to do something stupid,” he said.

3. Giroux’s best game

I know. You think I’m nuts. He had a four-point game last week, how can this be his best game? Believe me, it was. Giroux was committed to the defensive gameplan – something I sometimes criticize him for. It’s really the one knock on an otherwise all-world player.

But Saturday, he was playing at a top level. A lot of guys were.

“Guys were really selling out and were committed out there,” Simmonds told me. “If we want to make the playoffs we’re going to have to play that way all season.”

Giroux played a true 200-foot game. He kept the legs moving the entire time. There was no slow down. There was no passenger-riding in the defensive zone (I always loved that term. John Stevens used to use it all the time. When guys weren’t backchecking or playing good defensive hockey he would say, “there were too many passengers on the bus.”).

And his goal was all about being in the right place at the right time:

Simmonds said that even though it looked like he was passing it to Giroux, he was really trying to just deflect Gostisbehere’s shot into the net.

“You’ve never tried deflecting one of Ghost’s shots,” he said. “It’s hard.”

Giroux jokingly insisted that Simmonds would take credit for a great pass, but he didn’t. The more important part of the play was Giroux’s perfect positioning.

By the way, it was Ghost’s 10th assist of the season. He now has 11 points, which is tops among NHL defensemen (pending the result of the St. Louis game). His eight-game start is tied for the best offensive start by a Flyers defenseman in franchise history (Mark Howe, 2-9-11, 1985-86).

That’s pretty fantastic.

4. Provorov is really, really good.

You don’t need to see stat sheets to see excellence from Ivan Provorov. He’s one guy where the eye test is more than enough.

Provorov and Andrew MacDonald were on the ice almost exclusively every time McDavid hopped over the boards for Edmonton. Provorov was tasked with marking the league’s best player, and he was flawless.

McDavid ended up with four shots on goal, but three came in that lackluster second period by the team, and most impressively, the Flyers held him without a shot in the third period. That was primarily because of Provorov.

“It’s a five-man job to shut down any line that’s out there,” MacDonald said. “But as I’ve said so many times, Ivan’s skating ability and positioning on the ice is so good that he’s able to slow guys down, put them on his back, and just kind of angle them to places they don’t want to go into. It makes it a lot of easier when you are playing with a guy that is capable of doing that so well and covering so much ground because his skating ability is second to none.”

On one occasion in the second period, McDavid and Ryan-Nugent Hopkins skated into the Flyers’ zone on a 2-on-1 break. However McDavid, who is a wizard with the puck, never got off a shot – or a pass for that matter – because Provorov stood his ground and didn’t give him either a passing or a shooting lane, which was pretty remarkable.

There’s no question that Provorov is already a No. 1 defenseman in the NHL, the question is, when will be recognized as one of the best at his craft?

He’s really not that far off. Give it a year, year-and-a-half at most.

5. His partner’s not that bad either.

Here we go with the MacDonald argument again. I really hope not to do this as often as I have so far this season, but talking to fans on Twitter about MacDonald and trying to tell them he’s not as awful as they make him out to be is like knocking on their door, going into their home and making them switch religions.

So yeah… no success.

That said, MacDonald has been steady so far this season – and he really showed some gutsy play and leadership ability in this one.

With the Oilers on a third period power play and the score tied, MacDonald blocked a shot – his sixth blocked shot of the game – by Mark Letestu.

The shot hit MacDonald on top of his right knee, above the padding:

He crumpled him to the ice. He told reporters afterward that it was “just a stinger,” but the fact is, he’s likely still limping today.

He really couldn’t stand up at all. He was in obvious pain. Yet, he dove forward to break up a pass back to Lucic in front of the net that would have been an easy go ahead goal.

And he wasn’t done.

With the shift carrying on for more than a minute after he was hit by the shot, MacDonald tried to play his position and finally was able to even gain control of the puck and clear the zone.

Oh… and it was a rough night physically for AMac:

For a guy who is on the ice against the best players on the other team all night, every night, to have a Corsi For percentage (percentage of all shots taken in a game that are taken by his team while he is on the ice) of 48.1% is not horrible.

The argument that he’s not worth his contract, while true, is irrelevant.

Consider the Flyers’ cap hit this year is roughly $72.6 million. It marks the first season in the salary cap era that they have a higher payroll than they did in 2003-04, the last season before the salary cap.

If ever a team couldn’t care less about discarding bad contracts, it’s the Flyers. They’re paying buyout money to Ilya Bryzgalov and R.J. Umberger. Before Saturday they had Matt Read in the minors. MacDonald himself was sent down to the AHL before.

Bad salaries were an issue when the team couldn’t even afford to call up a replacement player because the cap was so mismanaged. There’s a lot of breathing room this year. It’s not our money. What MacDonald, or anyone else makes, doesn’t matter unless Hextall suddenly becomes Bob Clarke and Paul Holmgren and starts handing out a bevy of obscene contracts.

That’s not going to happen. Nor is MacDonald going to suddenly turn into an awful defenseman. Nor are any of the legions of cranks on Twitter going to change their tune.

So, I’m just wasting energy. Good conclusion. Let’s move on.

6. Where’s the Edmonton offense?

The Oilers were the popular pick to win the Western Conference this year.

They still might get there. After all, they’ve only played seven games and teams have made the playoffs with worse records than 2-5-0.

But what is alarming is that while scoring is up across the league, Edmonton has only scored 14 goals, for an average of two per game. That’s pretty weak. And their goal differential is a minus-8, which is better than only four teams – Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Montreal and Arizona.

Part of the reason is arguably their second-best offensive player behind McDavid – Leon Draisaitl – hasn’t played in two weeks.

But the other part is, aside from McDavid, the team has underachieved offensively.

McDavid has three of their 14 goals, and aside from his eight points in seven games, only Patrick Maroon – who scored the lone goal against the Flyers – has more than three points.

It’s not been a pretty start for the Oilers and that could be because of the immense pressure Canadian cities put on their team once there are expectations of success.

This Oilers team is loaded for bear for the long run and is going to be good for the forseeable future, but they are young, and sometimes youthful yet talented teams need to take a step back after their first taste of success before they go forward again, and that might be the case for Edmonton.

7. Loose Pucks

In what is becoming one of my favorite segments of each takeaways piece, here are some items from both the game and my travels around the Wells Fargo Center that aren’t worth a deep dive, but I feel are worth mentioning anyway…

  1. Had my first chance to catch up with Danny Briere since being back on the beat. Briere is now in charge of the Flyers ECHL affiliate in Portland, ME, who aren’t playing this season, but who will be up and running in 2018-19. Briere said he is still living primarily in this area and doesn’t think that’ll change even once the new team starts playing. For now he goes up to Portland about once every six weeks. “I don’t need to go up there. I think the people that are running things up there don’t need me looking over their shoulder every day.” Briere said he’s enjoying watching his sons play some junior hockey and being around the Flyers, but admits he’ll probably have to be in Portland a little more frequently next season.
  2. Andrea Helfrich is the Flyers new in-arena host along with Shawny Hill. She’s also the latest apple of Kyle’s stalker eye here on Crossing Broad. One of the positive changes to the Flyers game presentation this year is they’ve cut down on the hawking of their own merchandise considerably. They were easily one of the worst, if not the worst in the entire league at pushing merch on the annoyance scale. Now it’s just a little bit pre-game and only one or two hits in-game and it’s much better with Andrea suggesting you go buy something than Shawny screaming at you to do it. But yesterday, during pre-game, some doofus member of the Flyers Fun Patrol was trying to put a ski cap on Andrea during the live hit on the JumboTron. His efforts were futile, and Andrea was visually frustrated with him, and at one point ripped the hat out of the guy’s hands and said “Forget it, it’s too small anyway. It’s probably for kids.” This is a ski cap, folks. On her petite head. No. It’s not too small. The actual English translation for the Fun Patrol guy is, “Get your grimy hands off my hair.” Interestingly enough, he didn’t appear with her at any other point in the presentation after that.
  3. Speaking of game presentation – thank God they got rid of that stupid season ticket holder rally horn before each game. What a disaster. I feel like I had something to do with it’s quick demise – the Flyers’ game presentation director came up to me in the press box and told me he was reading my Twitter feed and that I needed to get a hobby. I’m not sure if that had to do with the death of the rally horn or the fact that I noticed Lauren Hart was no longer being touted as the No. 1 “ranked” anthemist in the NHL, but rather just the No. 1 anthemist in the NHL with the word “ranked” conspicuously disappearing from the Big Board. We’ll see next game.
  4. Tired of the off-ice crap? Well Read and Lehtera were in the lineup because both Jordan Weal and Taylor Leier are nursing upper body injuries. Weal skated Friday, but didn’t feel 100 percent. Leier did not skate Friday with a “maintenance day” which is a comical description for a day they aren’t practicing because they’re freaking hurt. But, the Flyers just keep doubling down with the term.
  5. Nolan Patrick has been getting less and less ice time. He also was responsible for the turnover on the Maroon goal. I think it’s possible that if this keeps up Patrick could end up facing the Dave Hakstol traditional rookie benching for a game soon enough that is sure to set Flyers Twitter aflame.
  6. What happened to Woo? There was no sign of the Ric Flair robe awarded to the player of the game by the team in the locker room yesterday. Did someone forget to pull it out of the duffel bag, or has the kibosh already been put on it as a ritual? In other Woo news, no Woo chants from the crowd yesterday, which isn’t a bad thing. However, the Eagles cheer again reared it’s ugly head. Look, if the team is losing or there’s a playoff game the next day or something, fine. But, if the team’s winning and there’s no game for more than 48 hours? It’s completely unnecessary.