The inexperienced Flyers stole the Penguins’ will in their Game 2 victory. Now, the series shifts to Philly

PITTSBURGH — The puck came trundling to Penguins goaltender Stuart Skinner late in the second period Monday night, and he extended its fateful journey by backhanding it along the boards. His teammate Tommy Novak took his good sweet time retrieving it, as if he were a rollerblader coasting along a Southern California boardwalk, and Owen Tippett wasn’t about to let Novak get away with such passive play.

“I was reading what way Skinner was going,” Tippett said later. “I came in one side, and he continued to go backhand, and I just followed it. Wasn’t too worried about what was going on behind me, and as soon as I got the puck, I saw one guy was coming behind me, and I thought I was going to get hit.”

He did not. He did the hitting himself, and more. Tippett bumped Novak, took the puck away from him, and fed Garnet Hathaway a nifty pass for a tap-in shorthanded goal. The Flyers now led by two on their way to a 3-0 victory, and at the conclusion of the sequence, Novak found himself in the perfect position to symbolize the state of this first-round series: He was flat on the ice, having tripped and fallen in pursuit of the two Flyers.

» READ MORE: Dan Vladař, Flyers take commanding 2-0 series lead behind their first shutout of the season

Two games here at PPG Paints Arena, two Flyers performances that were as solid and smart as could have been expected from a team so young and inexperienced in the postseason, and consider what we’re looking at now. They’re coming back for Game 3 on Wednesday, for the first playoff game in the Xfinity Mobile Arena in eight years, with a two-games-to-none lead and a home crowd that will be bathing in a kind of barbaric joy. The damn place promises to be a pot of boiling water.

What’s most important, though, is this: There is no reason at the moment to think the Flyers will lose this series. It’s not merely that the Penguins will have to beat them four times in no more than five games to pull off a minor miracle and advance — and that three of those games will be in Philadelphia. It’s that the Flyers aren’t playing like the team they are on paper.

On paper, they have so many players who had never been through the jungle of the NHL playoffs before — 10 regulars, to be precise — that it was fair to wonder whether the heightened intensity and pressure of the postseason could cause them to wobble. On paper, who in the world knew what to expect from them?

But in practice, the Flyers are faster and more physical than the Penguins. In practice, they have mostly kept Pittsburgh’s most skilled players on the perimeter of the offensive zone, even when the Penguins have maintained control of the puck. In practice, they’re playing not like a team that hopes it will meet the measure of the NHL postseason but like one that already knows how to do it.

“Hope is a scary thing,” Hathaway said. “Once you start leaning on that, you’re in trouble. You’ve got to stay even-keeled.”

The Flyers have, and none of them has been more impressive in his maturity and steadiness than Porter Martone. He has scored the winning goal in each game of this series. At 19, with just 11 NHL games under his belt, he has become an instant superstar, and he has cast the contrast between the Flyers and the Penguins in stark relief.

Sidney Crosby is a great and proud player, and hell, nobody can draw penalties without punishment the way he can. But Martone is ascending, and Crosby, though still a force and a threat, no longer is. The Flyers are the team on the rise here, and the Penguins’ lineup, while top-heavy with future Hall of Famers, doesn’t have the overall depth to sustain any momentum or territorial advantage.

» READ MORE: Don’t be surprised by Porter Martone’s spectacular start. The Flyers knew what they had all along.

Lord knows, they tried in the third period Monday. Desperate, they fired seven shots at Flyers goaltender Dan Vladař in the frame’s first six minutes, and Vladař stopped them all. He threw his left pad in front of a Samuel Girard wrist shot from the slot, then kicked away a Crosby one-timer from the right circle. He finished with 27 saves. He was perfect, and the Flyers were as close as could be. The Penguins kept coming and coming, and Vladař didn’t care, and ironically enough, it was a power play, on a Travis Konecny interference infraction, that spelled the end for them.

They surrendered a shorthanded two-on-none breakaway to Sean Couturier and Luke Glendening, and minutes later handed Tippett a penalty shot. Skinner staved off the inevitable with a great save on Glendening, and Tippett’s shot sailed wide, but those scoring chances alone were enough to make clear where the two teams stood. The Penguins wilted thereafter. They had nothing left. The Flyers had stolen their will. They have two days to get it back, if they can. Good luck, Sid.