Refusal to panic gives Flyers their best chance to succeed
PHILADELPHIA » The atmosphere can be wild, bodies stumbling over one another, sweat and equipment spilling, noisy, combative, confused.
Where? Last call at a nuisance bar? The upper deck at a football game? The DMV?
“Have you ever,” Wayne Simmonds was saying Thursday, after a morning workout at the Skate Zone, “looked at a hockey bench?” There. That’s where. Simmonds is 29 and has spent most of his life spilling into, out of, over and around hockey benches, and has been doing it at the highest level since 2008. He’s seen how they can turn uncivil in a hockey game, and into hockey lawlessness when a team is trailing late. More recently, though, he’s seen it the other way, too. Later Thursday, the Flyers would drag their 4-2 record into the Wells Fargo Center and face the Nashville Predators. They didn’t know what would happen. They did know how they would react to anything that did.
“We’re not panicking at any point,” Simmonds said. “We go down, 3-0, in Nashville, we just stay calm. There’s no extreme overreaction on the bench from anybody and we just work our way back into the game.
“I think we’ve done a really good job with that in our first six games and in order to be successful in the league we need to stay even-keeled like that.”
The Flyers tumbled into a tight game Thursday, with Pekka Rinne and Michal Neuvirth each dominating in goal. When Colton Sissons scored with 16:11 to play, it seemed big, and it proved big. Yet the Flyers, proud of their new behavior pattern, played solidly for the remainder, had several chances to score, and were victimized by a good goalie on a good team to fall, 1-0, and have a two-game winning streak snapped.
“We did a lot of good things,” Claude Giroux said. “It was that kind of game where you’re frustrated. You are doing all the good things and playing the right way and just not getting rewarded.
“They have a good team. And I think, in the third, we really pushed on the gas and did a lot of good things. It’s just that kind of game.”
Through their satisfying if hardly dominating start, the Flyers have been proud of their late-game demeanor. When they played the Predators in Nashville, they rallied from a 3-0 deficit to take a third-period lead. They lost that game, too, but seemed oddly boosted by its elements.
“We’re confident,” Simmonds said. “We know we can put pucks in the net. It’s about playing strong defensively and turning that into offense.”
Every hockey team builds its own character and behavior patterns. And there are enough teams in the NHL for a variety of bench cultures to sprout. The Flyers happen to have taken on the personality of Dave Hakstol. Emotionless is what they are. And it has been working for them, typically putting them in position to win in the third period.
But as for their general manager, he once was a goaltender of some achievement and rarely seemed to make it through a period without swinging his stick with intent to intimidate. And given the professional reputation of some of the former Flyers in attendance Thursday, it was borderline surprising that the statue-dedication ceremony to honor the late Ed Snider didn’t include a single overturned folding chair.
“Yeah, that’s a different day though,” Ron Hextall said. “In that day, guys had 250 penalty minutes and games were 5-4 and you didn’t win or lose based on one penalty. You know what I’m saying? The game is more fine now. The discipline every team shows, it’s different. The lack of fighting, the lack of bad penalties.
“In our day you could take a bad penalty and it was no big deal. You wouldn’t get reprimanded or anything. The game has changed in that way.
“We like emotional players. But controlled emotion is better than uncontrolled emotion.”
That’s what Hextall wanted when he pulled Hakstol out of the college game and into the big leagues. He’d like a Stanley Cup, too, but he’ll settle for one granted wish at a time. His team is calm. That’s enough at this point.
“It’s a credit to all the players, but I think you have to look at the coaches as well,” Hextall said. “Look at Hak’s demeanor. Look at our coaches’ demeanors. We have had the problem in the past with players flipping out. But there’s a maturity level with our group right now that I like.
“We have our older guys. You learn how to lead as the years go on. And thus far, we’ve done good job.”
At some point, that patience will face a stronger test. The Flyers are seven games into a season and are 2-1 on a homestand after a dignified 2-2 Western a Conference road the season.
They have had their chances to panic. They had one Thursday. They have not panicked yet.
“They are a good team,” Giroux said of the Preds. “They didn’t get to the Stanley Cup finals with luck. They have a lot of good players. They are a good team with a good system. As frustrated as we are that we didn’t get the win, we have to stay positive. We are playing some good hockey right now.”
To the Flyers, it is not time for noise, confusion or, as their general manager said, flipping out. They hope to keep it that way. They know it’s their best chance to cope. Might be their only one, too. trip to begin