Flyers-Panthers takeaways: Sam Ersson comes up huge; John Tortorella sends important message

SUNRISE, Fla. — It was the worst of times. And then it was the best of times.

It was ... a tale of two teams.

Playing their first game after a 10-day break, the Flyers came out on their heels against the Florida Panthers. By the first commercial break just over six minutes into the game, the Panthers had a 15-1 advantage in shot attempts. Woof.

From the press box perch, it was pretty clear coach John Tortorella was laying into his group as his hands moved furiously about during the TV timeout. As he said after the game, “Well, [expletive], we were just watching them play.”

“We were just on our heels. He was just saying, ‘Let’s go at these guys. Let’s stop letting them skate in our zone. Let’s check forward,’ ” winger Joel Farabee said. “And once we did that and started high-flipping pucks, we started to get our offense going.”

Things did start to turn after that. The lackadaisical play, the miscues, the giveaways (six in the first period compared to three the rest of the way), and the inability to defend or create offense were things of the past. When the puck dropped for the second period, it was a different Flyers team.

» READ MORE: Flyers return from the All-Star break with 2-1 win over the Florida Panthers

Here are four reasons the Flyers ended their five-game losing streak with a 2-1 statement win against Florida.

The only reason the Flyers had any chance in this game was because of their No. 1 goalie. Sam Ersson was phenomenal.

He faced only 21 shots on goal, but 10 of those were in the first period alone, when it seemed like every opportunity by the Panthers was from a high-danger spot.

A scoring chance by Niko Mikkola, as he cut around Jamie Drysdale just 50 seconds into the game, appeared to set the tone for how things were going to go. After Ersson stopped Matthew Tkachuk, the Swedish goalie made a big-time save on Mikkola 15 seconds later from the slot, and later stopped Anton Lundell on a redirect and a rebound.

Ersson faced 28 shot attempts in the opening frame and allowed just one goal on the power play to Carter Verhaeghe; the Flyers had 11 shot attempts by contrast.

“Erss was great, especially in that first period,” Farabee said. “A lot of shots coming his way and he’s just so solid. He provides that trust out there that we all need, and when he’s playing like that, it gives us a chance to win every night.”

The 24-year-old netminder made 11 saves the rest of the way. He stopped Gustav Forsling’s point shot with Tkachuk creating a screen in the second. Although the official play-by-play says Sam Bennett shot the puck wide, Ersson positioned himself perfectly as the Panthers forward cut across the crease to force the errant shot.

Ersson needed to bounce back. He said the 6-2 loss to the Boston Bruins right before the break was “something I kind of carry with me and knowing that it was important for me to bounce back.” For Tortorella, it once again showed that the young goalie can be the guy between the pipes.

“I just think he has a mental capacity for that position that is so strong,” Tortorella said. “Really good one for kind of an up-and-down game for him, with how much action he got right away, and not action but [he] still stayed with it.”

» READ MORE: The Flyers’ Travis Konecny has blossomed from ‘rat’ into one of the NHL’s top goal scorers

Tortorella may have been ripping into his team on the bench, but back in the locker room, he sent an important message to his group that helped settle things down.

“He just said, ‘Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, just do it hard,’ basically,” forward Noah Cates said. “Obviously, a nice green light from the coach to find our game, to help us think a little less and to do what we do best.”

Mistakes come. They’re bound to happen across a 60-minute game. But the fact that the fiery coach told his young group it was OK to make a mistake in a 1-0 game the Flyers had been outplayed in is huge — especially considering he has been quick to bench players in the past. Without having to worry that one mistake will have them riding the pine, it allowed the Flyers some room to breathe and the ability to take chances.

“We need to get some sort of swagger back and some confidence and they should feel really good about [the win],” Tortorella said. “I went in there after the second period, and I said, ‘Are you [expletive] me?’ I said, ‘That’s how we play.’ I said, ‘Do you understand how good we can be when we play that way?’ And, hopefully, they gain some confidence and just be consistent.”

» READ MORE: Former Flyer Sergei Bobrovsky ‘not surprised’ by the team’s success under John Tortorella

Tortorella knows how important it is to get guys going at this stage of the season — and his two goal scorers on Tuesday night needed to get on the board.

Travis Konecny may have been the Flyers’ lone representative at the All-Star Game over the weekend, but he entered the game against the Panthers with just one goal in his last 11 games. On Tuesday, from the jump, he was one of the few Flyers who were locked in.

In the first period, he had the Orange and Black’s best chance when he broke in and put a low glove-side shot on Anthony Stolarz. In the second, he cashed in.

Sean Walker got the puck in the Flyers’ end, and as Konecny was looping to head back up ice, he sent a stretch pass to Farabee at the Florida blue line. The forward then sent a nifty backhand saucer pass to his streaking buddy, who pulled off his own beauty of a move to tie things up.

“I just kind of looked up and I saw TK had a lot of speed so I just tried to throw to an area,” Farabee said. “Once TK got it, he made a [heck] of a play, being able to lift that. It’s kind of one of those plays, you just are kind of looking for speed on the outside, so I just tried to throw it there and glad it worked out.”

As for Cates, it had been quite a while since he notched a goal — 106 days, to be exact. Of course, he missed a couple of weeks due to a broken foot, so the goal drought was only 22 games. But getting the forward going is key for the Flyers’ bottom six.

Considering how the Flyers flipped the switch in the game, it was only fitting that Cates’ game-winner came off a Panthers miscue. In the third period, a cross-ice pass by Forsling in the Panthers’ end didn’t connect with his teammate along the boards. The puck went off the boards to Cates, who corralled it, cut around Aaron Ekblad, gathered the puck again when Forsling tried to poke-check it away, and scored stick-side.

“Just one of those plays where, a little extra effort kind of gets you to that spot and that’s kind of what you’ve got to do to score in this league,” Cates said. “It’s so hard, and when you when you don’t score for a while you feel like you never will again. So to get on the board and get that confidence is big for me.”

» READ MORE: The Flyers’ Travis Konecny has blossomed from ‘rat’ into one of the NHL’s top goal scorers

After getting run over in the first period, the first shift of the second period by the line of Sean Couturier, Owen Tippett, and Cam Atkinson set the tone. They got the puck deep, did some work, and Tippett had a scoring chance — in his first game back since suffering a lower-body injury against the Colorado Avalanche — when the Panthers goalie had to freeze the puck. It set things up for the next line to have a chance to work the offensive zone.

The Flyers began to take over from there. Florida had just eight shots in the middle frame and three in the third. Cates scored the go-ahead goal just 2 minutes, 36 seconds into the final period. The Panthers couldn’t even register a shot on goal in the final 6:44. It probably didn’t hurt that the Flyers blocked eight shots during that span.

“The whole overall play, as far as our determination away from the puck, was just night and day from the first 20 to the last 40,” Tortorella said. “We have a good team. We have a team that’s willing. We just have to make sure we have the right mindset that we can play with these teams and take a chance, we cannot be safe. I thought we looked so safe, just kind of almost paralyzed in the first period. We have no chance if we play that way.”