Niskanen glad for ‘weird’ meeting with old mates
PHILADELPHIA >> Matt Niskanen has no problem taking the low-key approach when talking about his high-intensity work on the ice. It’s been that way for the 12 years in which he’s toiled as perhaps one of the league’s most underrated defenders. It’s been that way 17 games into this 13th NHL season, with the Flyers.
“Coaching against him, I always knew he was a very effective player,” Flyers head coach Alain Vigneault said Wednesday. “A good two-way defenseman that could be very dependable defensively, but also could be good with the puck. When we made the trade for him, I talked to my good friend Scotty Arniel, and he told me I was going to have a real solid leader, quiet leadership but a great role model. That’s exactly what we have.”
Arneil would know, because he helped coach Niskanen last season with the Washington Capitals, the team Niskanen worked for the previous five seasons before they traded him for Radko Gudas, the team Niskanen was to face Wednesday at Wells Fargo Center with undeniable emotional anxiety.
“I spent some time there, I’m playing against some old friends and teammates, so it’ll be a special one,” Niskanen said. “Any time you play a good team that there’s some familiarity with, it’s something different. In a long season sometimes games can feel a little blah. But this one, there’s something to it.”
Niskanen has been here before, playing a first game against an old team he toiled with for a long time. He spent nearly four years in Dallas and another threeplus in Pittsburgh before his five-year stay in DC in which he was part of a Capitals transformation.
A two-time President’s Trophy team led by Alex Ovechkin that couldn’t find its form in the postseason, the Caps finally broke through in 2018 to win the Stanley Cup. Niskanen has many fond memories, and in a way is still part of an annual title contender with one of the NHL’s most loyal fan bases, something that for years didn’t seem possible.
So for Niskanen, this strange hello to his old team wasn’t going to be the same as those first games played against the Stars or the Penguins.
“It’s a little different just because we won there,” he said of Washington. “There’s that special connection that you get when you have that kind of success with a team. It’s a little different feeling, for sure.”
Over his years in Washington and Pittsburgh, Niskanen helped hand the Flyers more than a couple of postseason series losses. At 32, the Flyers figured Niskanen was a player who perhaps wasn’t going to be the two-way force he once was but certainly was an experienced player with a lot of good hockey left in him.
In pondering the deal for him, Vigneault and general manager Chuck Fletcher had to recognize one thing about Niskanen: He’d be the only guy in this locker room wearing a championship ring.
“It’s not something that comes up all the time,” Niskanen said. “Usually not in front of a big group, and I try not to bring it up too much. But on occasion, I have.”
That’s because he had joined one of the youngest defensive corps in the league. So come training camp, Niskanen, along with fellow veteran offseason acquisition Justin Braun, became a voice of experience for a blue line full of millennials like Ivan Provorov, Shayne Gostisbehere, Travis Sanheim, Robert Hagg and Phil Myers.
With Niskanen, there was the added benefit of guidance from a veteran who had won the ultimate prize.
“It’s just by the way he conducts himself,” Vigneault said. “If you watch him in practice, he’s always doing things the right way and he pays a lot of attention to detail. When he talks to a teammate or even a coach, it’s soft-spoken, but right to the point. We’ve got a great person there and we’ve got a defenseman that’s really helping us out. He’s playing most of the time with Provy, and I think that’s going to have a lot of benefit for Provy as we move forward here.
“He’s playing big minutes for us right now, most of the time against one of the other team’s top lines. I feel he’s been able to make some great defensive plays but also some real good offensive plays that have really benefited our team.”
Niskanen entered this
Caps reunion having scored two goals and eight points while mostly supporting future star Provorov on his frequent zone attacks. Against the Capitals, who were typically rolling along on a streak of 12 games without a regulation loss
(10-0-2), perhaps those attacks would be plotted a little more carefully. Niskanen knows only too well how quickly the Caps can turn an opponent’s rush into a scoring chance the other way.
That’s one of the many thoughts about that team that have stayed with him. Nothing, of course, could match the memory of two springs ago.
“There was something about that group that in
2018, it just clicked, and probably at the right time,” Niskanen said. “It was the right combination of personnel, an influx of some youth and energy and the star players, obviously. They were awesome that spring. Not that they weren’t before, but they found another level then.
“And there was less pressure that year. Whether it was just perceived or inside the room, I think that benefited them. They played with a freer mind, I think, and their performance showed it.”
It was a Capitals team that had long had the talent, but eventually matured to learn how to win with the support of younger faces in the locker room. That situation might bear at least a slight resemblance to the Flyers’ current-locker room makeup.
Perhaps that’s why this first meeting “feels a little weird.”
“There’s a fine balance between wanting to say hi to these guys, and also you’ve got to cut the cord a bit, too,” Niskanen said. “My focus is playing well with the Flyers right now, but I’m not far removed from playing with these guys, either. So if I see somebody I’ll chat and say hi.
“So it’s going to be a weird feeling to step on the ice and play against them, but I have a job to do, too.”