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Not Only Did the Flyers Score on the Power Play, but they Won a Shootout
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These are both beautiful whether you watched them live or passed out on the couch and saw the morning highlights:
Rise and shine, Philly. ☀️ pic.twitter.com/mYHaqsq0wR
— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) October 12, 2024
Tic-Tac-Goal. @tfoerster8 nets our first tally of the season with a PPG. Credit @FarabeeJoel and @BobbyBrink19 with the helpers. #PHIvsVAN | #LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/m1vnc3IfKk
— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) October 12, 2024
A power play goal AND a shoot out win? To what do we owe the pleasure?
You didn’t need to watch a lot of Flyers hockey over the past two years to know that these were two things that needed to improve. Last season, they were dead last on the power play, just 12.2% and three full percentage points behind the Blue Jackets and Penguins. That was combined with an 8.2% power play shooting percentage (also dead last) despite getting 3.1 power play opportunities per game, which was 9th across the NHL.
In the shoot out, they scored on 27.3% of attempts last year, tied for 17th. They won four but lost three, and maybe the bigger problem was getting there in the first place. Eight overtime losses before the shootout was tied for 5th-worst in the NHL, and you’ll recall the grumbling about John Tortella’s 3v3 personnel choices down the stretch. Friday night, he opened with Sean Couturier, Travis Konecny, and Travis Sanheim, then Jamie Drysdale and Matvei Michkov jumped on with Morgan Frost, so on and so forth, so they avoided the ole’ “go heavily defensive and give up the early goal anyway.”
Good start by the Flyers. They came back twice to force OT and then won the shootout.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com