Carter Hart’s ‘intensity’ has Flyers finally playing like a band of brothers | Sam Donnellon
It's way less crazy to hear the team talk about the playoffs than it was five games ago.
NEW YORK -- The last time the Flyers put Anthony Stolarz in net, they broke him.
This was in Vancouver about six weeks ago, when Stolarz and his twice rebuilt knee represented their last goalie standing. Until he wasn’t.
He played three games in four nights, in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. All ended as losses, one of them epic. None of the losses were on him, really, not even an eye-popping collapse in Calgary when the Flames erased a two-goal deficit in the last 68 seconds of the game, before Johnny Gaudreau won it 35 seconds into overtime.
No, not his fault, for the opportunities tended to be uncontested second and third shots, juicy ones. But he was also human over that stretch, especially in his final two games, unable to offset or overcome the breakdowns of technique, ultimately succumbing to the lack of confidence that had infested his team.
He was set to be the No. 1 star in Calgary that night, before those fateful last 68 seconds of regulation. He made 35 saves that night.
He made 38 Tuesday in his return from his latest injury, described as lower body, believed to be groin related. “He was a monster back there,” said Oskar Lindblom, whose greasy goal early in the first period goal held up in a 1-0 Flyers victory over the Rangers -- their season-high fifth victory in a row.
Stolarz’s injury, which may or may not have been from leaning on him so heavily over those four days, was the tipping point to several changes over the six weeks he’s been out: a new assistant coach, new head coach, trades, demotions and promotions -- and the long-awaited promotion of Carter Hart.
Hart has breathed new life into this paradoxical team, creating a faith in one another that the players often professed to have off the ice, while playing like distrusting thieves on it. Even Stolarz has been affected.
“I think a lot of it has to do with Hartsy,” he said after Tuesday’s game. "I kind of want to match his intensity out there. It’s fun to watch him: He’s so poised, so calm in net. I’m just trying to take things from him and incorporate it into my game.
"If I want to get in there, I’m going to have to match him."
He did that and more. He split, he dove, he flopped, using every inch of his 6-foot-6 frame to blanket his net. Chris Kreider was a preferred victim, twice set up in front via pass or an initial shot, eyeing the heavens when Stolarz somehow covered the opening he saw, eyeing them again when he hit iron. Not counting that, the Rangers centerman had five shots.
"He mentioned something about me being a big guy," Stolarz said with a smile.
But this wasn’t just about him. Playing for second night in a row, the Flyers blocked an additional 19 shots. The Rangers had seven. This was a statistic that was habitually lopsided the other way for the front part of this season, but some tweaks in positioning and perhaps philosophy have created a buy-in.
“If you listen to what the other coaches say after the game,” said interim coach Scott Gordon, "and they talk about how they didn’t get a lot of traffic, we didn’t make it hard on their goalie, we turned the puck over. That was the same thing we heard about Winnipeg …
"Shots can generate multiple opportunities. But when you defend, when you protect the middle of the ice, which I actually thought we did a really good job of tonight, that is more important than giving up a shot that isn’t more than a perimeter shot."
For the second night in a row, Ivan Provorov was Ivan Provorov again. Playing with Sean Couturier and Jake Voracek, playing on the penalty kill, Lindblom has been a revelation. That’s just the start of a big list. It would be a shame if sacrificing GM Ron Hextall was the catalyst to the emergence of the team he envisioned.
But the names each night, win or lose, aren’t Giroux, Couturier, Voracek, or Simmonds. And crazy as this sounds, the Flyers' talk about making a playoff push doesn’t sound nearly as crazy as it did five games ago.
“One goal, two points,” said Lindblom. “A perfect game.”