Flyers seek ‘mature’ sense of calm

Five-game homestand begins tonight against Coyotes

VOORHEES, N.J. >> Claude Giroux is urging his Flyers teammates to keep the act going. You know, the whole acting like a grown-up 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-yearold Giroux. “We start pressing, we start changing what we’re doing, because we want to come back

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DARRYL WEBB – THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Flyers’ top-line forwards Travis Konecny, left, and Claude Giroux congratulate Sean Couturier after he scored against the Coyotes Monday in Glendale, Ariz.