Giroux, Couturier seek ‘mature’ sense of calm for Flyers
VOORHEES, N.J. >> Claude Giroux is urging his Flyers teammates to keep the act going. You know, the whole acting like a grownup thing.
Coming off a four-game road trip that began with speculation about the stability of head coach Dave Hakstol’s job and ended Monday with a 5-2 victory over the Arizona Coyotes for the third win on a trip that netted the Flyers seven points, Giroux pointed out that for the first time this season the club had displayed some “maturity” in its game.
That’s something that should be old hat for the Flyers by now.
“It’s not about being immature,” Giroux clarified. “When I say playing mature, it’s just being professional. I’m not saying we weren’t doing that earlier in the season and that’s why we were losing. What I’m saying is if we want to be successful this season and in the future, we just have to be a mature team and be able to shrug things off.”
Despite a core group of forwards that have played together for several years and a veteran goalie in net — at least he was until some kid knocked him out during the road trip — that mature ability to get back up when down was something the Flyers were having difficulty doing.
When you allow the other guys to score first in 10 of your first 11 games, no wonder things were a little frantic.
“When the other team scores the first goal or it’s not going well, I think we start trying a little harder, and we stop thinking about our game instead of just going out and have fun playing the game,” said the wisened, 30-year-old Giroux. “We start pressing, we start changing what we’re doing, because we want to come back and tie the game right away. We just have to let the game come to us.”
“Sometimes when you try to do too much you get frustrated, and the plays aren’t there,” added Giroux’s mature, 25-year-old linemate Sean Couturier. “You just keep trying to force things and that’s when you get away from the good things. I thought we did a good job (on the trip) to refocus, relax and just get set.
“The season is still young,” Couturier added. “We got seven out of eight points but we have to keep going and climb in the standings.”
The Flyers played largely the same way those first 11 games, which is, they didn’t play well enough. Top line stalwarts Giroux and Couturier weren’t clicking like before, though secondline center Nolan Patrick showed signs of coming into his own as a blooming star.
The mostly youthful defense was a big problem, which in turn helped produce problematic goaltending. To make matters worse veteran guru Brian Elliott was accidentally waylaid Sunday during a practice drill by an energetic youth named Travis Konecny, forcing Elliott out for the game in Phoenix. And, of course, backup goalie Michal Neuvirth got healthy just in time to go on the road ... and get hurt again.
So third goalie Cal Pickard had to go for a second straight night in Glendale, Ariz., and he oversaw a win over an upstart Coyotes team that came in having won their previous five games. The Rick Tocchet-coached Coyotes come into Wells Fargo Center Thursday looking to make amends against the Flyers, who are commencing a fivegame homestand and are in the process of making up for the way they played for most of the month of October.
In 10 of those games, they played from behind.
“We control the way we start the hockey game, the mentality we take into a hockey game,” Hakstol said. “We dug ourselves a little hole here before we went on the road and our team did a good job of sticking with it, sticking together and digging out of that hole.”
Oddly enough, that show of mature determination on the road trip was mostly led by young, second-line players Patrick and Oskar Lindblom, who lately have been the Flyers’ most productive forwards. Hakstol said the panicky play during October wasn’t just a show of the youth that has joined the lineup in recent years.
“It wouldn’t be fair to just put it on the young guys,” Hakstol said. “You go through stretches where you’re pressing and you try to do a little bit too much and more times than not that comes back to haunt you rather than help you. (It’s) great to score the first goal if you can. That empowers you to play with a little bit more patience. But even if you get down by one or by two, you can’t get that all back in one shift. You have to go back and work the right way.”
And do so with a sense of ... maturity?
“It’s just being a good professional,” Giroux said. “Being able to be at your best. Teams that do that usually are pretty successful. Right now we’re going pretty well, playing well as a team. It’s good to come back home. We weren’t successful earlier in the season at home but I think we’re a different team now. This road trip was great for us and I think we’re excited now to come home and play in front of our fans.”
*** After a hard and lengthy
practice Wednesday at the Skate Zone, Elliott said he’s recovered from the surprising head knock he received at the road practice Sunday.
“I had a test out there today,” Elliott said. “I passed the test.”
As for whether he’d be able to play in the home rematch with the Coyotes, Elliott gave a somewhat vague answer.
“It’s been a couple, three days without skating,” he said. “I’m trying to not push things. We’re going to talk about it.”
Elliott described the injury by adopting his trademark half-smile and adding, “It was a 2-on-1 drill, there was pass across and I tried to slide across and ... a player to be named later came and hit (me). It was either a knee or a leg or something but it went right to the melon. I wasn’t feeling the greatest right after, but progressively got better throughout the three days.”
Asked if player-to-benamed-later Konency had offered to buy him dinner in a show of redemption, Elliott said, “Well, that’d be a first if he did.”
*** NOTES >> In a hint as to whether Elliott was healthy enough to at least back up Pickard Thursday, the Flyers sent goalie Alex Lyon and extra forward Tyrell Goulbourne back to the Phantoms Wednesday night . ... Coyotes brought goalie Hunter Miska up from their AHL affiliate. He may back up Coyotes backup Darcy Kuemper as starter Antti Raanta has a lower-body injury.