right before the holiday break<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u2022 Tocchet had been pleading for more shots and guys driving to the net.<\/p>\n
The Flyers gave him that against the Blackhawks.<\/p>\n
“The one thing with the team, they take the information,” Tocchet said. “We had a good presentation on it, we talked about things that we have to get better at and stuff like that. I thought we played in the interior tonight.”<\/p>\n
Their second, third and fifth goals came right around the blue paint, with pucks going toward the net.<\/p>\n
“It’s usually that inside stuff that really wins playoff series,” Tocchet said before the game. “It’s talking about it, we have a young team, just keep talking about it.”<\/p>\n
His players clearly heard him.<\/p>\n
Couturier made it 2-0 in the first period when he scored in close off a feed from Luke Glendening. <\/p>\n
In the second period, Barkey cushioned the Flyers’ lead to 3-0 by flushing a rebound after Trevor Zegras attacked the net.<\/p>\n
Dvorak scored at the doorstep in the final minute of the middle stanza when Owen Tippett found him. That made it 5-1 as the Flyers were in complete control.<\/p>\n
“We have to build on it, though,” Tocchet said. “You’ve got to do it every night if you can.”<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChristian Dvorak scored his 15th goal of the season off of Owen Tippett’s pass late in the second period against the Blackhawks.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Samuel Ersson has been giving the Flyers what they need when his number is called.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old was sharp, converting 25 saves on 26 shots.<\/p>\n
He made an excellent first-period stop to bail out the Flyers’ power play, which allowed an odd-man break. That save kept the Flyers’ lead at 2-0.<\/p>\n
“He came up with huge saves,” Tippett said. “That one on the power play that we had, him sliding across. He gave us a chance to win early.”<\/p>\n
Chicago cracked Ersson over halfway through the game when Connor Bedard trimmed the Flyers’ lead to 3-1. But the Flyers countered with two more goals before second intermission.<\/p>\n
In five appearances (four starts) since the Olympic break, Ersson has recorded four wins, a 1.58 goals-against average and .931 save percentage.<\/p>\n
“He has got a good swagger, he has had a bunch of really good games,” Tocchet said. … “He looks rock solid.”<\/p>\n
The Flyers jumped on Spencer Knight with two goals in the opening 2:33 minutes. The Blackhawks’ netminder finished with 37 saves on 42 shots.<\/p>\n
Bump opened the scoring just 48 seconds into the game after Dvorak forced Knight into a turnover. Bump, a 22-year-old rookie, has three goals and six points in his first 10 games with the Flyers.<\/p>\n
“I think it has kind of been a little bit of a roller coaster,” Bump said. “I’ve definitely had some tough games, but I’ve definitely also had some good games, too. I think right now, for me, it’s just come into each game and bring my best game. Don’t worry about anything else. I’m still trying to solidify myself here, so I think that’s the biggest part.”<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSamuel Ersson, Owen Tippett and Christian Dvorak spoke on Ersson’s play in the Flyers’ 5-1 win Thursday over the Blackhawks.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u2022 Tocchet’s club didn’t get a whole lot of help on the out-of-town scoreboard.<\/p>\n
With 11 games left, the Flyers are five points back of both third place in the Metropolitan Division and the Eastern Conference’s second wild-card spot.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Cates has 40 points, which is a new career high.<\/p>\n
His 16th goal restored some order for the Flyers in the second period. It came a minute and a half after Bedard scored. Cates received a superb pass from Matvei Michkov, who was being checked along the side boards.<\/p>\n
“We did a video session and he has been very active in these meetings, talking about that, body position and stuff,” Tocchet said of Michkov. “That was a hell of a play. All of our young guys, the body position is everything. We’ve been really wanting to teach that sort of stuff and he did a nice job with it.”<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNoah Cates made it a 4-1 game when he scored off a tough pass from Matvei Michkov in the second period against the Blackhawks.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Flyers didn’t have Nikita Grebenkin, who will be out for at least seven to 10 days with an upper-body injury<\/a>.<\/p>\nOn the back end, Emil Andrae drew into the lineup for Noah Juulsen. In the first period, Andrae and Nick Seeler made a heads-up play right at the Flyers’ net to help prevent a goal.<\/p>\n
Tocchet said Juulsen was banged up. The third-pair defenseman didn’t practice Wednesday after playing the night before in the Flyers’ loss.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Flyers are back in action Saturday when they visit the Red Wings (8 p.m. ET\/ABC).<\/p>\n
It’s their first of three matchups with Detroit, a team they’re trying to jump in the wild-card race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Flyers broke out offensively with a 5-1 win Thursday night over the Blackhawks at Xfinity Mobile Arena.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[339,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-526800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-flyers-analysis","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116304343553382957","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526800","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=526800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}