The Flyers are showing signs of getting their penalty kill back on track; Sam Ersson gets the call for 4 Nations

Nothing like staring down a four-minute power play less than five minutes into a game against the No. 2 power play in the NHL.

That was the scenario facing the Flyers on Monday at the Wells Fargo Center. The New Jersey Devils, the same team they will face Wednesday at the Prudential Center (7 p.m., TNT, truTV, Max), had a chance to break things wide open after Rasmus Ristolainen was called for high-sticking.

But, despite the Devils’ prowess with the man advantage, the Flyers not only held them at bay but didn’t really give them much to work with. New Jersey had just three shot attempts, including two shots on goal, while the Flyers created two quality scoring chances of their own.

“I thought the first seven or eight times they came in our zone, I think every one was under 10 seconds, which is a real tribute to how well we were not just holding the blue line, but then checking as a group and reading off one another,” associate coach Brad Shaw said Tuesday.

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Shaw, who is in charge of the penalty kill, thought his team was “exceptional” when challenging the Devils on their first good possession.

While they did it well last season — the Flyers were the No. 2 team in the league (85.9%) on this date a year ago and finished the season ranked fourth (83.4%) — they’ve struggled to bring the same intensity this season. It’s a big reason they have slid to the 19th overall penalty kill (78.5%).

But the Flyers played an aggressive 200-foot penalty kill Monday and will try to replicate it Wednesday against a Devils team that will again be without captain Nico Hischier; he is week-to-week with an upper-body injury. Running a diamond, as opposed to a box, allowed the Flyers flexibility to pressure the point, create turnovers, and send loose pucks down the ice on the occasions when the Devils did get set up in the offensive zone.

“We’re trying to be a little more proactive,” Shaw said. “And I think if you’re always waiting and you’re always reactive as a penalty kill, you tend to spend too much time in your zone, and you tend to have the game sort of handed to you.

“We’re always trying to find the one weak link or the one point where we can attack, and then sort of once one guy goes, we’re all trying to go and work in unison. ... I think that’s part of the challenge, is to be able to try and get a penalty kill and get them on a mindset and a collective mindset that can have success against any type of power play.”

The Devils like to use the middle, but the Flyers kept them to the perimeter, not just on the four-minute power-play but during the two-minute delay of game minor goalie Sam Ersson took in the third period. Ersson stopped all four shots he saw on the penalty kill and will look to replicate that Wednesday when he is in goal.

And it’s no coincidence that with Ersson’s game in top form, the penalty kill has been better. The Flyers goalie, who was officially named to Team Sweden for the 4 Nations Face-Off on Wednesday as an injury replacement for New Jersey’s Jacob Markström, is 8-2-0 with a 1.96 goals-against average and .925 save percentage since the holiday break. Across that same span, the penalty kill is 80.7% effective (No. 12 in the NHL during that span).

When the Flyers are shorthanded, Ersson has the eighth-best save percentage (.892) among goalies who have been on the penalty kill for at least 75 minutes, according to Natural Stat Trick. But he has allowed seven high-danger goals on 20 shots in that scenario this season.

Now the Flyers just need to get back to scoring on the penalty kill. Last season, they finished No. 1 in the NHL with 16 goals on the “power kill” led by a league-best six from Travis Konecny. This season, the Flyers have just three as a team.

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The Flyers had their chances on Monday with Garnet Hathaway and Scott Laughton, who stole the puck from Luke Hughes in front, getting good shots on Jake Allen. He will be in goal again for New Jersey on Wednesday night.

“It’s not a secret how we try and advance up the ice with numbers when we have a chance, and when you watch other teams power play against us, [it’s] very rare that we get those opportunities, or as many as we had last year,” Shaw said. “It’s something we just have to adjust to and we talk about it, how there isn’t that same sort of open ice. So we have to be smarter with pucks and if all we do get it 200 feet and get fresh legs out there, we’ll take that every time.”

Forward Sean Couturier returns to the lineup after missing Monday due to illness. Rodrigo Ābols will be a healthy scratch.