Owen Tippett’s highlight-reel goals can be traced to increased confidence ... and a new stick

Don’t let the name on the stick fool you, it is all Owen Tippett.

The Flyers forward has been on a tear with six goals in six games, including two highlight-reel stunners, but the stick he is using right now has someone else’s name on it: Travis Konecny.

Tippett was sent a few sticks from Bauer, but he ended up breaking those. Konecny uses a similar pattern — although his blade is a little thicker and has a little less curve to it — but it’s close enough, and, well, the proof is in the pudding.

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“No one is going to let him go back to his curve,” Cam Atkinson said with a chuckle.

He’s been scoring goals with the stick for a few games now, but none prettier than the one he scored Thursday night in the Flyers’ 5-1 win against the Dallas Stars. Tippett finished a spin-o-rama with a whipping backhander over Jake Oettinger. It came one game after he scored another beauty by dipping through the St. Louis Blues defense and finishing on the backhand.

“I’m still young and I’m still learning and there’s things that I need to improve on in my game, but I think I’m a big guy that kind of strives off confidence, and when that’s going for me, I think the game kind of slows down and it kind of opens more things up for me,” Tippett said.

The game must be moving like molasses for Tippett right now, as he is clicking on all cylinders. Although his 79 missed shots are tied for fifth-most in the NHL, with Mikko Rantanen and Nathan MacKinnon, he’s only missed the net with 10 shots in the past six games. And in those same six games, he has 31 shots, including a whopping 10 against the Blues.

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“I just tell him, we need to hit the net because he’s so dangerous with his shot, his release, how quick he gets it off, he changes angles with it,” coach John Tortorella said. “It just gives him a better opportunity to help us win hockey games if the puck is on net.”

Of his 18 goals this season, Tippett has three game-winners. Two came in the last two games, and the other came when he picked Luke Hughes’ pocket and scored an overtime thriller — but on the forehand.

“He’s dominant, right? Give him the puck,” said Konecny, who has been playing alongside Tippett lately. “I’ve been telling him over and over and over playing with him to just keep the puck as long as he can. Like, don’t give it up. We work so hard to get it back, and he’s so hard to get the puck from. His speed and his heaviness on the puck with a stick and everything, so, I mean, he’s doing a great job.”

Konecny added: “I told him today, I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing’ — it’s the same stick so don’t matter — but I said, ‘I don’t know, I wouldn’t switch anything.’ ”

Everyone was on the ice for practice on Friday, including Sean Couturier, who returned to the lineup on Thursday after missing two games with an injury. He did not participate in the morning skate ahead of the game against Dallas. ... Bobby Brink is struggling to maintain a presence in the lineup right now and has been a healthy scratch in two of the past four games, including the game in his home state of Minnesota. “It’s not fun not playing. I mean, everyone wants to play, but it’s out of my control, so I’m not going to sit and worry about it. I’m just going try to come to the rink and get better every day and do what I can to try to get stronger and faster and touch up on my skills so that when I do get back in that I play well and stick.” Brink hasn’t been given directives on what to exactly work on, but he knows he has made mistakes structurally and needs to be better there.