Sean Couturier has been at his best against the Penguins. The Flyers could use that version of him now.
Eight years after their last postseason meeting, it’s another Flyers first-round playoff series against the Penguins. And another Sean Couturier, too.
The best and biggest moments of Sean Couturier’s career came six years apart, at the same time of year, against the same team. They were high times for him, full of promise.
In mid-April 2012, in the Flyers’ six-game first-round victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins, Couturier had a hat trick in Game 2, bounced up from a vicious blindside hit from Gary Neal in Game 3, and frustrated Sidney Crosby for much of the series. He was 19, a rookie who had made it clear he could be more than a player whose primary responsibility was to shadow another team’s superstar.
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In mid-April 2018, in the Flyers’ six-game first-round loss to the Penguins, he scored the winning goal in Game 5 and had a five-point game — including another hat trick — in Game 6, all after colliding with a teammate in practice and tearing the medial collateral ligament in his right knee. He took a great leap forward that season, becoming a No. 1 center, scoring 31 goals, finishing as a finalist for the Selke Trophy as the NHL’s best defensive forward. He was 25. He would soon win the Selke, sign an eight-year contract, and his performance in that playoff series would feel like a torch-passing, as if he had shown himself to be the franchise’s new centerpiece.
And here we are, eight years later. He is centering the Flyers’ fourth line, playing fewer minutes a game than he has in more than a decade, taking faceoffs in the defensive zone then scurrying off the ice. He is 33. Another first-round series against the Penguins. And another Sean Couturier, too.
Game 1: Flyers at Penguins, 8 p.m. Saturday, NBCSP/ESPN
Game 2: Flyers at Penguins, 7 p.m. Monday, NBCSP/ESPN
Game 3: Penguins at Flyers, 7 p.m. Wednesday, NBCSP/TNT/truTV/HBO MAX
Game 4: Penguins at Flyers, 8 p.m. April 25, NBCSP/TBS/truTV/HBO MAX
*Game 5: Flyers at Penguins, April 27 (Time TBD)
*Game 6: Penguins at Flyers, April 29 (Time TBD)
*Game 7: Flyers at Penguins, May 2 (Time TBD)
*if necessary
“You say it’s a new role,” he said after the Flyers practiced Thursday in Voorhees. “It almost feels like my first couple of years. It’s a similar role — a lot of defensive responsibilities. At the same time, I’m playing a little less, so I try to be more physical. We don’t really have much of that on our team, so I try to bring that side, use my body as much as I can to help out in that way.
“When I was going through the surgeries and rehab, there were some tough days for sure, a lot of ups and downs,” he said. “But I feel quitting was never really an option. I knew I was going to come back, and I wanted to come back as good or better than I was before. I’ve shown at times that I can still be an elite player, and it’s just finding the consistency a little more. It’s not always easy.”
How could it be? He is three and a half years removed from the second of two back surgeries that cost him nearly two full seasons. He is the team’s captain. An accomplished pro athlete has his pride. But he was not the player he used to be, and the team’s need for depth and stability demanded that coach Rick Tocchet drop Couturier to the fourth line. It took Tocchet calling him in for a meeting and spelling out that cold reality for Couturier to find a way to contribute close to the way he once did.
“As a coach, you can only be honest with him,” Tocchet said. “You’re not crushing a guy, but you have to be honest with him. Some guys take it better than others. Some guys leave your office and they take it and analyze it and come back the next day, and they don’t want to talk about it again. It was a great talk. It was deeper than usual, and he has really played good hockey for us in the role that he does. He gets the crap minutes sometimes. He’s got to take those faceoffs. In overtime, he wins the draw, comes off. He does the selfless stuff, and I think he’s embraced it, and I think the players respect him for it. …
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“There have been some games in these last 10 games where we weren’t physical early, and I remember a couple of shifts where he ran [over] a couple of guys. Yeah, that’s what captains do. They try to wake up the team.”
The arc of Couturier’s career isn’t an unusual one, not for a player who has lasted so long. It makes him an outlier on the Flyers, on a team whose most talented players are young and still developing, but not in this series. The Penguins have at their core Crosby, who is 38; Evgeni Malkin, who is 39; Kris Letang, who is 38; and Erik Karlsson, who is 35.
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There are no shortcuts for an athlete at that age, or at any age. But when a player enters the NHL as a teenager and is still around into his mid or late 30s — as all five of those players did and are — it will seem as if he has been around forever, and though he will be a step slower, his mind and instincts will get him where he needs to go, most of the time.
It’s why Sean Couturier is still here, still hoping that, for the first time in a long time, he can be a major factor in a Flyers’ playoff series against the Pittsburgh Penguins. That he can make the old feel new and big and bright again.
