Youthful Flyers show the moment isn’t too big, grab an impressive series-opening win in Pittsburgh
The Flyers were good money for their 3-2 win, as despite 10 debutants, there was nothing to suggest that they were nervous or tight or unprepared for the rigors of playoff hockey.
PITTSBURGH — It would be wrong to say that the whole thing turned when Travis Sanheim decided that, for a few precious seconds, he would split a double team as if he were Kobe Bryant at the top of the key.
Sanheim did, in fact, make that skilled and spectacular move, darting through two Pittsburgh Penguins, hovering in the slot, and ripping a shot inside the right post with exactly 10 minutes left in regulation for a tie-breaking goal Saturday night. Game 1 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals: Flyers 3, Penguins 2, a road victory, home-ice advantage stolen, all wonderful developments for the Flyers in their first playoff game since 2020.
» READ MORE: Flyers beat the Penguins 3-2 in Game 1, as young Porter Martone stars again
But it would still be wrong because nothing turned. Nothing shifted suddenly in the Flyers’ direction. They were better than the Penguins for most of Saturday night. The only true surprise, based on their performance, would have been if they had lost the game, if they had fallen victim to one of the old forces that stymied them so often in the playoffs years ago. The hot goalie on the opposing team. The incompetent goalie on their team. Injuries. A lack of timely scoring, or any scoring at all. Over time, they’d become cliches. In Game 1, they didn’t apply at all.
“As a team,” captain Sean Couturier said, “we were ready.”
Ten Flyers who suited up Saturday night had never appeared in a postseason game before. You never would have known. There was next to nothing about Game 1 to suggest that the Flyers, despite their postseason inexperience, were nervous or tight or unprepared for playoff hockey.
“To play at this pace,” coach Rick Tocchet said, “the development is huge.”
Forget development. Development hints at the future. Game 1 was all about right now for the Flyers. They were the faster team, the crisper team, the team that created terrific scoring chances for itself. Christian Dvorak rang a wrist shot off the goalpost less than two minutes after the opening puck-drop. He seemed to score minutes later on a power-play surge toward the crease, only to have the goal disallowed because he crashed into Penguins goaltender Stuart Skinner. Owen Tippett zoomed down the left wing, pulled off a half-spin-o-rama move, and swept a shortside backhander that Skinner batted away. Couturier steamrolled Penguins forward Egor Chinakhov, one of 40 hits the Flyers delivered.
They maintained that territorial edge through the first half of the second period. And when Jamie Drysdale took a centering pass from Trevor Zegras, stickhandled to a better angle for a heartbeat, and snapped a wrist shot that skidded through a Denver Barkey screen and under Skinner’s pads, the Flyers finally had the lead that they’d spent so much time and effort earning. Only then, the tenor and style of the game shifted, as the contrasting strengths of the teams emerged more clearly. The Penguins can’t skate with the Flyers. But they can maintain possession of the puck by winning faceoffs — and they won 21 out of the 33, nearly two-thirds of them, through the first two periods.
What’s more, they can forecheck the energy out of the Flyers, grinding them, tiring them out until every Flyers player is as mobile as a sack of laundry. It was that mode of hard, thumping, tenacious play that allowed Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, among others, to hem the Flyers in their own defensive zone on a long shift late in the second period — a shift that culminated in Malkin freeing himself in the right circle and slipping a shot through Flyers goalie Dan Vladař’s legs to tie the game.
» READ MORE: Sean Couturier has been at his best against the Penguins. The Flyers could use that version of him now.
Even into the third — if there was an advantage to be had, it was natural to think Crosby and Malkin and the savvier Penguins would seize it. They didn’t. Sanheim scored his gorgeous goal. Porter Martone, the 19-year-old who can barely grow playoff peach fuzz on his face, made it 3-1. And after the Penguins inched closer, Vladař made the save of the night, closing his pads to stop an Anthony Mantha foray into the crease with less than five seconds to go. It was the last of Pittsburgh’s 17 shots on goal. Just 17, the figure a testament to the Flyers’ solid and stout play.
And still ... it was that close to overtime, to more hair-raising minutes. Well, welcome back to the NHL playoffs, everyone. Here’s a bet: No one in Philadelphia who watched this game went to bed for another three hours after it ended. No way. Too tense. Too wired. But they and the Flyers could rest well … and wake up Sunday morning knowing that, if nothing else, the moment wasn’t too big for this team.
