There’s no denying the Flyers’ good vibes. What’s behind this season’s positive shift?
The Flyers have defied outside expectations by playing winning hockey throughout the early days of the Rick Tocchet era. Is the good feeling here to stay?
CHICAGO — Travis Konecny walked into the visitors’ locker room long after the Flyers’ 3-1 victory against the Chicago Blackhawks.
The alternate captain had just wrapped up doing TNT’s postgame show on the bench. He sat down at his stall, wearing everything but his helmet and gloves, ready to chat with the assembled reporters.
» READ MORE: Flyers hold off the Chicago Blackhawks for a 3-1 road win heading into NHL’s holiday break
Konecny unwrapped the tape holding his shin guards in place and answered his last question. In a video recorded by the Flyers’ content staffers, you can see a big grin on his face as he pauses while talking about notching his 300th NHL assist. Teammate Trevor Zegras is standing behind the media, peering in before saying, “Take your gear off,” with a chuckle.
It was just one example of many seen around this team since the start of training camp — the Flyers are light and loose this season.
“I think in here we know we can have as much fun as we want, but when we go on the ice, we have a job to do,” forward Owen Tippett recently told The Inquirer.
“I think that’s what makes it more special, is that we know we can kind of joke around and mess around with each other off the ice, but as soon as the puck drops, we’re all ready to go to battle for each other.”
There are several factors contributing to the Flyers’ good vibrations.
One could be that they wrapped up a perfect back-to-back for the second time this season, after beating the Vancouver Canucks 5-2 on Monday.
The wins halted the Flyers’ fifth losing streak this season at two games. The longest? A measly three-game swing Dec. 11-14, with each loss coming after regulation. There’s still a lot of runway left in the season but the last time the Flyers didn’t have more than a three-game slide was 2011-12. That season, current general manager Danny Brière was pulling on a hockey sweater every night instead of a suit, and captain Sean Couturier was a rookie.
“Enjoy the game. Enjoy everything that goes around you,” Couturier said before playing his 900th game on Dec. 7. “I feel when I was 18, I was just so serious, so focused, which is not a bad thing, but I think throughout the years, I figured to kind of balance it out and take the game on a little lighter side at times, and don’t want to be so serious and focused.
“That’s probably the thing I’d recommend to myself [back then]. Just loosen up a little bit and enjoy it.”
The Flyers are loose and enjoying it. And playing well. Yes, the 12 regulation wins — second fewest in the Eastern Conference — are an issue, given that regulation wins are the first tie-breaker for a playoff spot.
But a team many outsiders expected to be at the bottom of the standings is sitting, not just in second place of the Metropolitan Division and two points back of the Carolina Hurricanes at the NHL’s holiday break, but has the sixth-best points percentage in the entire league.
“I don’t think we care about what they think,” Dvorak said after Monday’s game when asked about the Flyers starting to make the rest of the division believers.
“We just care about how we believe in ourselves and how we’re playing. And there’s a lot of belief in our room here, and we’re confident in ourselves, and that’s all that really matters.”
Some would point to the maturation of players who have bonded and built a strong culture over the past few seasons. Others would say it’s the injection of veterans and youngsters. Zegras, center Christian Dvorak, forward Carl Grundström, and goalie Dan Vladař (who coach Rick Tocchet compared recently to the vocal goalie in the movie Slap Shot, Denis Lemieux) specifically have injected balance to the lineup.
“We’re a really, really tight group,” Konecny told The Inquirer in mid-December. “And that’s the thing. I’m sure every team says it, but for some of the guys who have been elsewhere that are here, the staff that’s here, we hear how tight this group is from those guys. ... Like, for me, I don’t know any other team, but from what I hear, when guys come in here, this is a great group.
There is one obvious answer that everyone would probably cite when it comes to the change: the new bench boss.
There’s no denying the different coaching style Tocchet has when compared to predecessor John Tortorella. When things go bad, you look to the bench and, while he will have his moments, Tocchet is often as cool as a cucumber on the bench.
During practices, he is constantly spotted feeding pucks to players as they work on a specific skill. Notably, Tocchet was seen sending passes recently to Zegras in Voorhees for one-timers like the one he scored on Monday night. Other times, he’s at the whiteboard drawing out a system or structure he wants, or, at 61 years young, the Flyers Hall of Famer is showing players how to shift or move on the ice when trying to evade defenders.
“Regardless of the winning and losing, I think that when players respect each other, and they have fun with each other, and they care about each other, it goes a long way. If somebody has a bad game or something bad happens, you have people to rally around,” said Tocchet, who played 621 of his 1,144 NHL games in orange and black.
“Even as a coach, like, I might give a couple of guys crap, and you know when I leave, there’s three or four guys picking those guys up. And that’s so valuable for me as a coach. ... It’s a huge thing to have that closeness.”
That closeness can be felt whether in the room or on the ice. The players go to bat for each other during games and chirp and pick on each other in the room. But they also sit around and discuss what just happened in practice or during a game, and what they did well or need to work on.
Maybe that’s why they are 19-10-7 through 36 games and playing not just well but putting the NHL’s top teams on the ropes while beating bad teams.
Last season it took the Flyers 44 games to reach 19 wins and two seasons ago, when they looked like a playoff team before a late-season collapse, it took them 34. (By the way, win No. 19 that season was against Tocchet and the Canucks).
The Flyers rank 19th in goals per game (2.94) — roughly one-tenth better than last season — but have skyrocketed from the fifth-worst team in goals allowed (3.45) to the ninth-best (2.75). The penalty kill has stabilized lately after a drop and is the ninth-best in the NHL (82.5%) and the power play is not the worst in the league! It’s tied for 23rd with the Hurricanes (16.8%) and has connected three times in the last three games.
Why are things working? There’s a buy-in.
“I think you’ve got to be committed to getting to the right areas,” Konecny said Tuesday when asked about the Flyers scoring two more goals by getting to the net.
“And I think, I forget, might have been Jay [Varady] our assistant coach, he said, ‘You do the right thing 20 times, and nothing happens. But that 21st time is when it goes in, and if you have that mentality of just like doing the right thing every shift, and your opportunities will come, then I think everyone’s gonna be in a good spot.’”
And right now, the Flyers are in a pretty darn good spot.