The conversation after the Flyers’ somewhat surprising 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals Wednesday night focused on why this team is different at home than on the road.

The players didn’t have a real answer. Likely because they don’t really know why. And that’s fine.

But one thing that was easily noticeable about the Flyers against the Caps was the temperature of the way they played.

It was intense. It was physical. It was ramped up.

And it worked.

Now, it’s a lot to expect a team to play with this tempo and vigor every night. There wouldn’t be anything left in the tank by the time April rolls around and the games really matter. But the fact of the matter is, you do have to play that way at times in the regular season to get to April and be a part of the playoffs.

The Washington game was one of those games. Considering what lies ahead for the Flyers, it’s likely we will see a few more of them in the coming weeks.

And that’s OK. You have to play a certain way sometimes to find success, or to get back on track, or to infuse energy and confidence back into the lineup.

It didn’t start out that way though. The first period was a collection of sloppy passes, bad turnovers, shoddy defense, and goals that should have been saves – on both sides of the ice.

It was 2-2 after the first period and neither locker room at intermission would have gotten a PG rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.

But from there, things got tense. Things got physical. Things felt like neither team wanted to give even one inch:

Here’s what Sean Couturier told Russ and I after the rest of the media scrum wandered off, having finished asking him why this team wins at home and not on the road.

“It’s their (Washington’s) type of game to be honest. They have some big bodies that can skate but also like to hit and finish checks. You have to be ready to battle out there and give it back to them. It’s something that you want to establish – that physical aspect of the game – when it’s involved and I thought we responded to that pretty well against them.”

That they did. It was chippy. Chirpy. Travis Konecny and Alex Ovechkin were in each other’s face a couple times. Robert Hagg had a smile on his face while he was pushing and shoving with former partner Radko Gudas. Ovechkin gave Matt Niskanen a solid open-ice hit that knocked him down, but also gave him a look that was like, “that could have been worse, Buddy if we weren’t friendly.”

Phil Myers took a pair of penalties, first clipping Caps pest Tom Wilson in the mouth with a high stick, and later sticking a leg out to trip Jakub Vrana.

Even the normally mild-mannered Couturier took a pair of slashing penalties, and was really hot on the second one, especially because he felt like the officials missed a couple of should-be Washington penalties earlier against him.

“I love the feistiness that he brought,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “I think he was 9 for 10 on faceoffs, had 10 shot attempts, some hits, some battles. But, the penalties –  he’s one of our key component players, our key core guys. He needs to make sure he’s got that under control. It could’ve been costly. It wasn’t tonight and he should thank his teammates, but he does so many things right. He’s a battler and I understand part of his frustration tonight. I do think there should have been a couple calls on him, but you got to play through that and at the end of the day our team found a way to win and that’s the important thing.”

That’s because the PK was 5-for-5 killing those penalties and even added a shortie on the game-winning goal by Kevin Hayes that was the direct result of, yup, you guessed it, good physical play:

John Carlson turns the puck over to Hayes because he was anticipating the pending hit by Scott Laughton (and it was a good one).

What’s not seen is Laughton and Carlson were caught up ice behind the play before the video begins because of some physical back and forth, so there was a lead up to this interaction.

The Flyers penalty kill was great because it was aggressive. I spoke to someone after the game who is around the Capitals on a daily basis who said the Flyers frustrated the Caps’ usually potent power play because they attacked it aggressively.

“The Caps are used to having a lot of time and space out there to create,” he said. “They aren’t used to teams coming at them on the power play and pressuring them or hitting them. Believe me, they don’t like it and the Flyers are one of the only teams – or even the only team that does it to them. This would be a fun playoff series.”

But that physical play can’t happen all the time against every opponent. As much as we’d like to see it as fans, the game has changed in such a way that you get punished if you don’t pick your spots these days.

“It depends on the team you are playing,” Couturier told us. “You don’t want to take yourself out of the play by going for a hit. It’s not like the ’90s or early 2000s where you finish every hit. Each guy had their own man back then, so you could do that. Now, the game is a lot faster and when you finish a hit, you take yourself out of the play and a lot of defensemen jump up into the play offensively, so you don’t want to create those odd man rushes against.

“But yeah, when you have two big teams who are trying to establish the physical aspect of the game, and you have the big bodies to respond, you can definitely play that way, and that’s what we did.”

Ghost Update

Shayne Gostisbehere had an MRI on his knee Wednesday after he “tweaked” it late in the game Tuesday in Carolina. There was no post-game update from the Flyers, although it was indicated that there might be one.

A pre-lunch request for information said that the team hopes to provide an update on him today.

Usually if an injury is day-to-day, it doesn’t take this long to report it. That’s not to say this is definitely something longer-term. It may not be. But, odds are that when it takes this long to provide a timetable for a player to return it’s not game-to-game.

Mark Friedman played well in his first game of the season (and second career NHL game) in place of Ghost and there’s a chance he’ll be part of the rotation for a little longer and we should find out later today.

Quote of the night

Vigneault is so honest about his job – and when he’s ready to clock out at the end of the night. In the past he’s cut press conferences short to have beers with his French buddies who were in town to see the Flyers play the Canadiens, or to hustle home to Quebec to go see his parents. But when he was asked if he had time to think about why the team plays so differently at home than on the road, he offered this response:

“You know at this time right now; I’m going home and I’m going to have a martini and enjoy the win and I’m going to get back to you on that.”