The Flyers defeated the Arizona Coyotes Tuesday 3-0, which is all well and good. You need to beat the teams you are supposed to beat to be in the position you want to be at the end of the season – where you aren’t wishing you left points on the table against a winless team.

Great. Mission accomplished.

However, it was disconcerting to me that this game was still in doubt into the third period. The Flyers will tell you that no team is easy to play against in the NHL, and I will counter by telling you that with a few exceptions, the players on the Coyotes are not NHL caliber.

The Flyers will tell you that the first period was spirited with a lot of back and forth action and great chances both ways with goals only being prevented by great goaltending. And I will tell you it was a terrible period, in which the Flyers seemed to check in and check out of consistently, and that under no circumstances should they be trading chances with a team that coming into the game had averaged just 1.44 goals per game.

Yeah, Carter Hart played really well, and we’ll get to him later as he should have been the game’s first star, and that unknown goalie on Arizona, Karel Vejmelka, was competing like crazy too, but let’s not pretend this was Roy vs. Brodeur with the championship on the line.


The Coyotes’ chances were created by lackadaisical play by the Flyers. The Flyers’ chances were created mostly by their bottom two lines and were the result of Arizona being pretty pitiful defensively.

Coach Alain Vigneault wouldn’t say it postgame, nor would any of the players, but the reality of it all was that the Flyers played down to their opponent, plain and simple.

Now, to this team’s credit, there was a rose at the end of that thorny stem that was different from what we’ve grown accustomed to in recent seasons.

These Flyers stuck to the game plan, didn’t get frustrated, and finally figured it out, dominated late in the second period and into the third, and pulled out the win.

So many times before though, they would have found a way to blow this game. But not this team. Not this season. That’s why they’re off to a strong 5-2-1 start, in what has easily been the best division in hockey through the first three weeks of the season.

Sean Couturier, who had a goal and an assist because he didn’t want another empty-net tally on his ledger since he already had two, agreed with this assessment. He pointed out that this team has a different feel in that it plays for each other.

“We’re playing for each other and sticking up for each other,” Couturier said. “One guy makes a mistake, and we back him up. Tonight we gave up some chances or turned the puck over at times and Hartsy was there to back us up or the defensemen were there to break plays up. Collectively it was a good team effort with everyone stepping up at different moments.”

It wasn’t that long ago that the Flyers found themselves in this same situation.

It was Oct. 30, 2017. The Flyers entered the game 6-5-0 and faced an Arizona team that was 0-10-1. The Flyers sleepwalked through the first two-plus periods, got down 3-0 before waking up and storming back to tie the score 3-3, including two goals in the final minute of regulation before losing in overtime and costing themselves a point in the standings, one of a league-high 14 overtime and shootout losses in a season of what-could-have-beens.

That team was an example of many of the mediocre-to-bad Flyers teams we have come to expect in the past decade, but this time around, they find a way to win.

Sean Couturier scored the first goal, ending a drought of more than seven periods:

Then, Scott Laughton got the second goal (more on that in a bit) and Couturier set up Claude Giroux for the empty-netter to seal the deal.

Still, the Flyers can’t be happy with their play as they head into a pair of big divisional matchups on the road this week in Pittsburgh and Washington – their first games against Metropolitan Division opponents this season.

There are things to clean up. There are players who need to be better. But, 5-2-1 is 5-2-1 and it’s hard to argue the place they are at at this moment.

The thing is, a slightly better team than Arizona probably wins that game against the Flyers, and they know it. Expect practice to be a little more forceful today.

Here are some observations from the game:

Carter Hart is feeling it

The Flyers had no energy last Saturday in their loss to Calgary. Only Carter Hart showed up in that one keeping the 4-0 final at a more palatable figure than say 8-0 or 9-0 if  he was playing like he was playing last season.

Hart followed that up with an even better performance against the Coyotes.

In what should have been an easy night for the Flyers goalie, Hart had to make 29 saves – 22 of them in the first two periods while the game was still scoreless – to shutout the Coyotes:

https://twitter.com/BrodesMedia/status/1455687515969576970

He was very good again, and so far has looked a lot more like the goalie who carried the Flyers to within one game of the Eastern Conference Finals two seasons ago and not the emotionally brittle and broken guy manning the pipes last season.

“He seems in a real good place mentally,” Vigneault said. “He’s been playing extremely well. He played extremely well again tonight. We’re like every team in the NHL that wants to have success, you have to have good goaltending and we are definitely getting it right now.”

Vigneault knows that more than anyone. His system and style of play is only successful if it can be backed up by good goaltending. That’s because it’s a gambling system at times, one that will take a chance if an opportunity arises, but if that opportunity doesn’t pay off, the goalie is going to need to be there to bail the team out.

If you look at Vigneault’s success as a coach, most of it came with one of two guys in net – Roberto Luongo or Henrik Lundqvist. Vigneault is hoping Hart is the final link to that holy trinity.

In six games so far Hart is 3-2-1 with a 2.33 goals against average and a .928 save percentage. Both are well ahead of his career totals in those categories.

For his part, Hart is just saying he feels good and that his defense in front of him has been a big help this season and that there’s great communication on the ice.

That’s going to have to continue for the Flyers to be successful, for as long as this is what Hart is giving you, the Flyers have a chance to beat anyone in the league at any time.

Depth scoring

We mentioned above that Laughton scored the second goal Tuesday. Here it is:

Nice pass from James van Riemsdyk there to get him the puck and it got that third line of the schneid a bit as it was their first goal as a line since the Boston game on Oct. 20, when Laughton also scored. (Van Riemsdyk’s lone goal came on the power play and Oskar Lindblom has yet to score).

While they haven’t been rewarded often, this line has been really solid for the Flyers. It plays a good checking line game, is defensively responsible, and has created chances that they just haven’t cashed in on.

Lindblom, for example, had two really good opportunities against the Coyotes, but he’s been a bit snakebitten to start the season.

Meanwhile, the fourth line got a goal from Nate Thompson in Edmonton last week, and aside from that had been providing good energy – except for Nicolas Aube-Kubel, who was a healthy scratch for the previous two games before being re-inserted into the lineup Tuesday.

He deserved the benching, as he was the Flyers’ most noticeably inconsistent player in the first five games. Yet, given another chance, NAK looked his best against Arizona.

“It was exactly what I expected,” Vigneault said. “I thought he was solid with the puck tonight and when he didn’t have it. He was good on the forecheck. That line had some good looks. He went to the net hard a few times. He had a couple out number situations, so that’s the way I expect Q to play and that’s what we got tonight.”

Overall, AV has been happy with the bottom two lines:

“For a couple games on the road and tonight, Thompson’s line they’ve been very efficient,” he said. “They’re giving us the 7-9 minutes to 10 minutes that we’re looking for and they’re doing it the right way. They’re spending some quality time in the other team’s end and they’re defending well.

“I thought Scotty Laughton line tonight – I’m thinking Oskar at some point here is going to get rewarded for all his hard work and he got some great looks here tonight, just a matter of time before it starts spinning his way and starts going. I’m keeping a positive attitude, and I hope, I know he’s doing the same thing.”

New-look power play won’t last

The Flyers switched up their top power play unit. Cam Atkinson replaced JVR and Ivan Provorov replaced Keith Yandle. The latter move was more of a punishment for Yandle because the coach hasn’t been thrilled with his even strength play. Getting Atkinson out there makes sense in the fact that he’s a shooter and a goal scorer, but it also forces the Flyers to play Giroux on the right half wall instead of the left, which has been his office on the power play for years. It looks like a clunky setup and one I’m sure will ever find success, let alone sustain.

Maybe the coaching staff can find a way to keep Atkinson out there and put Giroux back where he belongs. Otherwise, don’t be surprised if JVR gets the call back to the top unit sooner rather than later.

Ghost Bear returns

Shayne Gostisbehere played his first game against the Flyers since being traded to Arizona over the summer.

The Flyers played this tribute to Ghost at the first timeout of the first period:

That’s nice and all, but I’m torn on these video tributes, I have to be honest. Yeah, he played here for seven seasons, which in fairness, is a considerable amount of time. But, he was only good for half that time, and the other half, not so much. He was liked by his teammates, but not always by his coaches – and the feeling was mutual.

He was a bit of a locker room lawyer, which is never great, and he never seemed to be happy with his role. He became a lightning rod for the fanbase on social media as the diehards who remember how he burst onto the scene as a rookie still clung to the love of that exciting, young defenseman and the hope that he would return to that form again, while others looked at him and realized he will never be more than a plus-offensive defensive and a minus-defensive defenseman who is being paid like a top four guy and isn’t one.

Shayne had his moments in the game too. He had a couple scoring chances, and would have scored a goal had not Zach MacEwen, of all players, made a fine defensive play in the second period to thwart it. But on the defensive end, he kept backing away from a play that for a brief moment was a goal by Atkinson, although it was overturned by the ref who made the call being talked out of his call by his fellow zebras. His non-aggressiveness in front of the net allowed the puck to squirt out to Atkinson

Later, Rasmus Ristolainen took a shot on net, then caught Gostisbehere flat-footed and skated around him like he was standing still to follow up his own rebound. Ristolainen almost scored on the play, but didn’t, which let Ghost off the hook for the Coyotes.

In the end, I think we’ve cheapened these “thank you for the memories” videos over the years. Radko Gudas got one. Now Ghost. These guys never won anything nor really did anything long-lasting.

I expect one for Jake Voracek. He never won anything, but he was here for a decade and ranks high on the Flyers all-time scoring list. That’s at least a worthy reason.

Ghost, I was on the fence with, more off it on the side that no tribute was needed, but hey… it wasn’t the worst decision.

Can’t wait for the Robert Hagg tribute when Buffalo comes to town. Or the Brian Elliott one when Tampa gets here. Is there a Phil Myers tribute in our future when Nashville strolls in? No wait, the Nolan Patrick tribute. Can’t wait for that one. Maybe Robin Lehner will narrate it for us from AV’s office dressed like Barney.