PHILADELPHIA \u2013 Scott Laughton spent the first 12 years of his NHL career with the Flyers, so Thursday night\u2019s return to Philadelphia as a Toronto Maple Leaf was emotional.<\/p>\n
At the first break in action, the Flyers played a video tribute to Laughton, who received a loud ovation from Xfinity Mobile Arena. Laughton was injured for the Leafs\u2019 first trip to Philadelphia on Nov. 1.<\/p>\n
During his time here, Laughton was one of the most popular players in the locker room, a workhorse who competed at a high level even when the team struggled for a number of years.<\/p>\n
When former coach John Tortorella decided to go without a captain the season after trading Claude Giroux, he had to at least appoint one player to wear a letter to communicate with referees during games.<\/p>\n
He gave Laughton an alternate\u2019s \u201cA,\u201d a signal of a certain respect among players.<\/p>\n
One of those was defenseman Travis Sanheim, who was looking forward to seeing Laughton skate for the first time here and gauge the fans\u2019 reaction.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m more interested to see how he is,\u201d Sanheim said after morning skate. \u201cHe likes to be involved in chirping, get under the other team\u2019s skin a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then Sanheim chuckled before completing that thought.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe TK (Travis Konecny) and him can have a little bit of a battle,\u201d Sanheim said with a grin.<\/p>\n
Laughton said he\u2019s both a friend and, or this night, a rival of Konecny.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a rat, he\u2019s a long-time rat,\u201d Laughton said with a smirk. \u201cSo I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll be chirping. But he can back it up for sure. He\u2019s a really good player and a really good friend. We grew very close with my time here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old native of Oakville, Ontario, played in 661 games with the Flyers. He tallied 106 goals and 265 points. The Flyers selected him in the first round (20th overall) of the 2012 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n
Matvei Michkov returned to action after missing one game due to a foot injury suffered last Saturday in Edmonton.<\/p>\n
Both Jamie Drysdale and Bobby Brink were injured in Tuesday night\u2019s win over Anaheim and did not play against the Leafs. Coach Rick Tocchet didn\u2019t provide a timeline for their returns.<\/p>\n
Noah Juulsen took Drysdale\u2019s spot, paired with Emil Andrae. Carl Grundstrom moved up to play in Brink\u2019s spot on a line with Noah Cates and Michkov.<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n
Konecny just completed one of the best half-seasons of his career. His 37 points are commendable, but his plus-13 jumps off the page. He could very well challenge his full-season career best of plus-17 set in 2017-18.<\/p>\n
Konecny and Trevor Zegras seem to have found chemistry on the ice, which might explain why Zegras is off to such a hot start with 17 goals. Konecny was named an alternate captain last season and takes the role seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the kid,\u201d Tocchet said. \u201cFor me, he does some stuff where you go \u2018what is he doing?\u2019 But then he does some stuff like, \u2018Wow!\u2019 There\u2019s a balance there but he\u2019s an unreal guy in the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a close room and this is one of the reasons why. Whether it\u2019s a football pool or a (team) dinner, he\u2019s leading the brigade. If it\u2019s an unacceptable first period, he\u2019s saying it. He\u2019s very responsible for that room being close.\u201d<\/p>\n
It took a while for Konecny to catch on to Tocchet\u2019s system. But now that he has, good things are happening.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a sweet spot that he\u2019s trying to find,\u201d Tocchet said. \u201cEarly in the year he was just throwing pucks away. He wasn\u2019t moving his feet. That\u2019s stuff he had to clean up. He would come to the bench and say, \u2018I can\u2019t believe I just did that.\u2019 And I would say, \u2018well, then don\u2019t do it. Now he\u2019s just making better decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2013 Scott Laughton spent the first 12 years of his NHL career with the Flyers, so Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5112],"tags":[1468,5,4,1467,56,5205,43,5095],"class_list":{"0":"post-398605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-flyers","8":"tag-flyers","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-flyers","13":"tag-philadelphiaflyers","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115862423839736324","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}