Three takeaways from the Flyers’ 4-1 win over the Canucks

VANCOUVER — It was just the start coach John Tortorella was hoping for to begin the dog days of the NHL season.

The Flyers topped the No. 1 team in the NHL, the Vancouver Canucks, 4-1, on Thursday night. But while the win was a great way to kick start things with the holiday break behind them and 49 games ahead, it was how they won that pleased the bench boss.

“If you’re going to survive, you have to check this time of year,” said Tortorella, after his team laid 16 hits on the opposition. “You have to just change your mindset a little bit here about the small little battles in the game. And after the break, they’re rested. We need to bring this into our game and quite honestly before the break, I don’t think we were playing hard enough. But I left them alone because we were finding ways to win.

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“I just wanted to get them to that break, but now we’re going to coach them. I just think we need to be a harder team to play against and hopefully, we can build on the checking tonight and bring it into [Friday] night’s game.”

Tortorella also appreciated the Flyers showing patience and, after they did “some dumb stuff” allowing the Canucks to get on the board, thought the most important part of the game was the “power kill” scoring the fourth goal and playing a good third period.

Here are three more takeaways from the game.

The Flyers scored four goals, and each one of the final trio was scored off a great play.

After Egor Zamula gave the Flyers a 1-0 lead on the power play in the second period, Sean Walker scored 81 seconds later thanks to a smooth swiping pass by Owen Tippett from his knees.

“A little bit,” Walker said when asked if he was surprised to be left alone on the right wing for the shot. “To be honest, I think nobody was really thinking that Tippett was gonna be able to make that play over to me. Unbelievable play to get that puck to me, so I was happy I had the chance to shoot it.”

The pass by Tippett was highlight-reel worthy, but the key play was by Sean Couturier deep in the Flyers’ end when he stepped in front of a Canucks player to move the puck up the ice to Travis Konecny and spring the Flyers on a 3-on-2. One of the Canucks did get back but failed to pick up Walker in time.

Joel Farabee then extended the lead to 3-0 less than a minute later. And while his goal was a beauty on the breakaway, it began with a great play by Bobby Brink in the neutral zone on Nikita Zadorov, a player who is nine inches taller than Brink.

“I think we’re more or less just trying to stay above our check, keep the guys in front of us and then once [Zadorov] got close to the red line, we realized he didn’t really have any options,” Farabee said. “So Bob, obviously, made a really good angle play. I just picked it up and happened to score.”

But while the play was key, the coach still has issues with how the youngster Brink plays overall.

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“Brink has got to learn how to check,” Tortorella said. “He’s driving me crazy, he is. I love the kid but he doesn’t know how to check his [expletive]. He has got to learn that part of the game. I don’t care who he stood up to. He’s got to learn that part of the game and we’re going to spend some time teaching him, that’s for sure.”

And although Garnet Hathaway scoed a short-handed goal on his own rebound, it was the speed of Ryan Poehling that led to the goal. Poehling, who has been elevated in the lineup primarily because of his speed, not only won the faceoff deep in the Flyers’ zone but won it to himself as he picked up the puck and then outraced the speedy Quinn Hughes to set up Hathaway all alone in front.

The Flyers’ power play saw some new configurations on Thursday. Although Tortorella said that assistant coach Rocky Thompson, who runs the power play, wanted to keep the same personnel so the units could jell, it was becoming more apparent that a change was needed. The Flyers entered Thursday’s game with the worst power play in the NHL (10.6% effectiveness) with just one power-play goal in the past 23 chances and 11 in 104 opportunities across the season.

After getting just two shots on goal during a 1-minute and 21-second power play in the first few minutes of the game, the Flyers broke through in the middle frame. Zamula told The Inquirer before the game that the coaches told him to shoot the puck on the man advantage — and he did just that. He found the net with a point shot through traffic after he stuttered when walking the blue line.

“It’s a new look on the power play, and I tried to put pucks on the net,” Zamula said postgame. “I think it’s the most dangerous shot from up top. So I tried to put the puck on the net, and I saw a couple of guys in front with traffic and it goes in. This goal I think helped the whole team play better and we just scored more after that.”

» READ MORE: Zamula moved to second power play as Tortorella tinkers with units

The Flyers went 1-for-3 with the man advantage and Zamula played 2:13 of it, leaving Tortorella impressed.

“Z has offensive skill. He has good vision,” Tortorella said. “... We liked what he did the last game on just one power play. Did basically the same thing on this power play, slid laterally, [and] I think just made a quick little move to get away from getting that shot blocked. We had a good screen. We scored a big goal. So we’ll keep them there and we’ll see where it goes.”

For what felt like forever, the Flyers were looking for a No. 1 goalie. Well, maybe they’ve found two.

Sam Ersson got the start against the Canucks and allowed just one goal on 19 shots before leaving 2:36 into the third period due to dehydration. The Swede made some big stops but seemed to be slightly off at times with his tracking. Tortorella revealed postgame that they knew he was having problems during the game, which could explain the slight delays in his reaction time.

And then normal No. 1 Carter Hart came in. After sitting on the bench for more than 40 minutes — and don’t forget to tack on four days off, a hard practice on Wednesday, and the netminder staying on extra long earlier Thursday as he thought he had the night off — Hart came in and shut things down. He made eight saves, including a big stop on Ilya Mikheyev on the power play with 14:07 left, as the Canucks pushed to come back.

“I think that’s the beauty of having two really good goalies,” Farabee said. “You know one guy is going to pick them up and when both guys are in the cage we have complete trust in both those guys. So, I don’t think anyone skipped a beat there.”

Added Walker: “Carter handled it the right way. He came in and played unbelievable, made some big saves. Erss played unbelievable the whole game as well. Credit to both our goalies, they’ve been huge backstops for us the whole year and they give us a lot of confidence back there.”

Konecny (illness) also left in the third period but should be OK, according to Tortorella. ... After the game, players said the ice was not very good at Rogers Arena. It seemed that snow was flying up with every turn and cut. Walker said it “seemed like it was getting chewed up pretty fast” leading to the puck bouncing and Farabee noted the Flyers bench discussed simplifying plays and shortening passes to avoid the bad ice. ... This was the 723rd career win for Tortorella. He passed former Flyers coach Alain Vigneault to move into sole possession of 10th place overall on the NHL all-time list.