The Flyers needed to get back to their game from last year – the one they're banking on getting them on track and out of the early-season hole they dug.
Tuesday night in Boston was a start.
Against a Bruins team that has always given them problems, the Flyers kept to checking, pushing Boston entries as far outside as possible, and eating any and every shot that the Bruins tried to thread through unless Sam Ersson could take care of it himself.
The Flyers grinded to a 2-0 win on the road, but that only had to be the first step.
"It's something I like to see happen for us to play two or three in a row," head coach John Tortorella said ahead of Thursday night's return home to face the St. Louis Blues. "Then it starts to be instinctive how we play. I think we showed more of our identity against Boston, on what our standard of play is and the style of play, minus still some struggling offensively, but you need to put two or three in a row."
So make it two.
The Flyers stayed on their game and beat the Blues 2-1 at the Wells Fargo Center to improve to 4-6-1 on the season.
They blocked more shots, a lot of them, Nick Seeler especially; kept their sticks in the way; and on the night's first major break, Ryan Poehling skated through everyone and dished a perfect cross-ice feed to Garnet Hathaway for the game's opening goal; then Bobby Brink tapped home the winner late on a neutral zone takeaway from Scott Laughton.
All the while, Sam Ersson was stellar again in net, stopping 20 of 21 St. Louis shots.
There's still a ton of work to do, but the Flyers have won two in a row for the first time in an albeit still young season, and three of their last four, playing the game that caught much of the league by total surprise last season.
It definitely isn't all pretty, but it's a start.
"This is how we have to play," Ersson said from the Flyers' locker room postgame. "We know that, and I think you can kind of sense it, like when we're blocking shots, when we're doing all the small things right. You can kind of feel it on the bench and on the ice that we're rolling."
St. Louis got the first couple of looks at the outset, when a couple of Matvei Michkov turnovers at the defensive point and then along the boards, followed by some passive checking, led to Jordan Kyrou stickhandling straight to the Flyers' net though without any good angle to shoot from.
When the star rookie returned to the bench, he stayed there for the next three even-strength shifts, not getting back on the ice until an offensive zone draw with 5:54 left in the opening period – outside of a run on the power play that didn't amount to anything.
"He's a 19-year old kid playing in the best league in the world, and I think he's beginning to see what the National Hockey League is, as far as the speed, as far as time and space, all the things that come with it," Tortorella said postgame of that stretch where Michkov sat. "There are going to be some major struggles with him 5-on-5. We expect that.
"Where I'm going to have to teach, and in that teaching moment – I'm not going to tell you what it's all about – but if we keep seeing the same mistake, and it just totally is not concentrating on a certain part of the game, that's when – and I've been very honest with him about that – he's going to miss some ice. He's going to watch the game."
It'll be an early lesson learned – likely the first of many.
The rest of the period swung back and forth until Poehling and Hathaway connected on the opening goal just over midway through, and was defined by the Flyers staying committed to some heavy shot-blocking with Seeler the star of it all.
The hard-skating blueliner stepped in the way of three shots through the first, including two on his last shift of the frame. The latter shot hit him square in the chest – he felt it, too – but it gave possession back to the Flyers so that they could clear themselves out of trouble, which was met with a standing O from the crowd as the puck exited the defensive zone.
By the end of the second, which the Flyers had titling more to their advantage – though without the results on the board to really show for it – Seeler had absorbed one more to make it four. By the end of the night, in 16:53 of ice time, he blocked six in total, and the Flyers 24 on the whole after eating 28 two nights ago against Boston.
"We have to outwork teams," Seeler said. "We have to block shots. We have to play, sometimes, play an ugly game."
But the Blues found the equalizer midway through the third when the Flyers lost track of Walker coasting in toward the net. A rebound fell straight to his stick, and the Flyers were still struggling to cash in offensively to pull away. Tie game.
Laughton sparked the answer though. The veteran center clung to Kyrou trying to skate with the puck through the neutral zone and stripped it away by the offensive blue line. He then slipped it to Brink on the zone entry, then Joel Farabee carried it up the wall to give it right back to a crashing Brink who got enough of the puck to send it trickling by St. Louis goaltender Jordan Binnington.
The Flyers got the lead back, and sold out defensively to hang on with the help of a couple more clutch saves from Ersson to make it to the buzzer.
They pulled off a gutsy win in Boston, but the next step was to string together another couple after.
They got two now, with a style of play that isn't pretty – painful even.
But it's a start.
"We know we're getting some wins now, but we gotta keep playing like this, too," Ersson said. "We see the effort level. What it's gotta be for us to get results."
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