The Flyers are the NHL's comeback kids, for better or worse

The Flyers came back from their four-day layoff skating like they had hit snooze on their alarm clock – just five more minutes.

Then they made the comeback.

Rodrigo Ābols’ first goal of the season, on a shot from in tight late in the second period, finally got the Flyers on the board.

A slapshot that Tyson Foerster tee’d up on from an Emil Andrae dish tied the game in the third.

Then, approaching overtime’s final minute, Travis Konecny won a race to a loose puck on the wall and slipped a pass to Travis Sanheim, which sent the defenseman sprinting toward the net with teammate Sean Couturier on his right and the St. Louis Blues behind them both.

Sanheim ripped a shot to the top-right corner, the horn went off, the Philly bench cleared, and Blues goaltender Joel Hofer was left frozen.

The Flyers won, 3-2, after working from behind down two for most of Thursday night at Xfinity Mobile Arena. They just needed five more minutes.

It’s been the trend so far this season, and maybe it’s not much of a surprising one for a young team under a still relatively new head coach.

Thursday night marked the Flyers’ eighth comeback win of the season, which is tied with the Islanders for the most in the NHL.

Including shootouts, it was also their 12th game out of 19 so far that have been decided by just one goal. They’re 6-3-3 in those games, notably a perfect 4-0 in those once notorious shootout rounds for this franchise, and a modest 10-6-3 overall, which has them in the early playoff mix, though from the outside looking in on it.

It’s a double-edged sword.

Can the Flyers be better? Yes. In obvious ways, and looking at obvious names.

But is what they have managed so far meaningful? Also yes. Perfect, by no means, but they’ve proven resilient if anything, and that they’re never truly out of it if a game is kept to a difference of one or two goals.

Let’s start with the good…

• The Flyers don’t get scored on a lot: Following Thursday night’s win, the Flyers allow an average of 2.79 goals per game, which is the 11th lowest rate in the NHL. They’ve allowed no more than two goals in 11 of their 19 games played, and that’s up against the likes of Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers, a still elite Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins, the reigning champion Panthers, and Kirill Kaprizov and the high-flying Wild.

Defensively, they’ve been strong, and that’s a credit especially to the likes of Sanheim as their top defenseman, Cam York and Jamie Drysdale (who both quietly took leaps in suppressing chances), and from having an increasingly effective two-way center in Noah Cates up front.

• Dan Vladar helps them not get scored on a lot: Vladar was signed this summer with a stated chance to compete to be a No. 1 goaltender, though a curious one because his body of work coming over from Calgary wasn’t particularly impressive. But so far, he has been proving one of the shrewder free-agency pickups from the summer.

After getting beat by two Justin Faulk shots in the first period on Thursday night, Vladar settled in and stopped 16 of 16 St. Louis shots from the second period onward, and 26 of 28 in total.

He definitely got some help in front of him, which included a major shot block of a rebound by Emil Andrae late in the third period with the game still tied, but overall, Vladar has been excellent. He has a .911 save percentage through 12 starts, and with his 6’5″ frame and sound, calculated movements in the crease, he’s given the Flyers a chance at minimum more often than not, along with the confidence that he can stop a breakaway or two if something goes wrong ahead of him – like he did a couple of times against the Blues Thursday night.

“We got a bunch of guys in here that are hungry to win,” Vladar said postgame. “So obviously, that helps.”

And so has their other big offseason acquisition.

• Trevor Zegras is proving the Flyers’ gamble on him right: Ābols’ goal Thursday night started with Zegras. The highly-skilled 24-year-old carried the puck across the blue line and then down into the offensive zone corner, shaking away three St. Louis checkers that collapsed in on him with a blend of smooth skating and strength, all while Ābols in toward the net unnoticed.

Zegras chipped the puck down to Owen Tippett behind the net, who saw where Ābols was and fed him the puck quickly as he absorbed a check.

Ābols picked his spot and scored, Tippett got an assist, and so did Zegras as the spark of that whole sequence, who now stands at 20 points through 19 games.

Zegras was talented, but lost in Anaheim. The Flyers needed that kind of talent, and traded for him on the bet that he could tap back into that talent with a change of scenery in Philadelphia.

He’s been everything the Flyers needed, and the Flyers have been everything he’s needed.

• The Flyers aren’t afraid to trail: And let’s be clear, you don’t want to constantly be trailing in games, but when it happens, the Flyers aren’t folding, or letting things get quickly out of hand.

Much like their comeback record, they’re an NHL-best 7-4-2 this season when trailing first, and because they don’t let in a lot of goals, they’re always just close enough to catch you if you even slightly take your foot off the gas. Games like last Saturday’s 5-1 loss in Dallas are ugly when they happen, sure, but the silver lining in that is that night like these have so far been the exception, not the rule.

OK, the bad…

• The Flyers also don’t score a lot: They have a 2.63 goals scored per game average following Thursday night, which ranks 29th in the NHL.

• Because they don’t shoot a lot: They did pile up 28 shots by the end of Thursday night’s win, but the Flyers under Rick Tocchet haven’t exactly shot in bunches. Their 24.9 shots for per game average is also near the bottom of the NHL at 30th, and watching from night to night, it’s plain to see why that average count is so low.

When the Flyers’ skaters have the puck in the offensive zone, they struggle to move it consistently inside toward the slot, and haven’t typically sustained their offensive pressure for long.

Physicality along the boards is a factor in that, and so is care with the puck under pressure.

The Flyers didn’t have that out of the gate Thursday night, but it gradually picked up once they fell into a 2-0 hole and had to dig themselves out.

“I’m not ripping the player or nothing. It’s just we have to get better if we’re gonna get to the next level,” Tocchet said afterward of those parts of the game. “That’s something on the coaches. We gotta work with it every day…You gotta be able to handle the puck under pressure, and I think we’re not there yet.”

But eventually, they have to.

• They’re still waiting on Matvei Michkov: The prized 20-year-old winger did find a bit of a groove a week and a half ago, when he had three goals in three games against Nashville, Ottawa, and Edmonton, but then he went cold again over the next three with a minus-3 rating.

On Thursday night, Michkov skated 14:56 but only had a single shot on goal and didn’t particularly stand out.

He has star potential, can very much still reach, and is very much a core part of the Flyers’ future. But the sophomore slump has been real for the young Russian, and offensively, the Flyers are still a roster that can only really go so far as Michkov can take them.

Four goals and nine points aren’t a lot of mileage.

• You can’t always bank on OT and the shootout: It’s nice to have the security of knowing that if the Flyers extend a game past regulation, they have a pretty good chance of walking away with two points in overtime, and suddenly an even better chance in the shootout.

But they’re not going to get through 82 games that way, nor are they going to make it trying to constantly win low-event 2-1 slogs.

The defensive emphasis is admirable, and important, especially should they find themselves in the playoff hunt toward the home strech of the season if that is the next step for them – the low defensive numbers resulting from that focuse are an encouraging sign, too.

But they do need to start scoring, and the goals need to come from Michkov, Konecny, Foerster, Tippett, Bobby Brink, and their depth further down – like Nikita Grebenkin when he can get back in the lineup, or maybe even Alex Bump if his performance down with the Phantoms in the AHL is bringing him close to a call-up.

The Flyers are the NHL’s comeback kids, for better or worse

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