Finally healthy, Flyers trying to open some distance against Penguins in tight East race

The Flyers, finally healthy after having six regulars on the COVID-19 list at one point, will try to build off their three straight victories when they open a baseball-like, three-game series in Pittsburgh starting Tuesday.

With the East Division standings tight and the Big Five battling for four playoff spots, this series is being viewed as critical, even if it is fairly early in the condensed 56-game season.

In a shortened season, “every game counts. Every game is a divisional game, and our division is definitely a tough one,” said defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere, whose team recorded consecutive 3-0 wins in Buffalo over the weekend. ”I think for us, three games against Pittsburgh is a good test. We started the road trip on a good note and we want to keep rolling.”

The Flyers (11-4-3) are fourth in the division with 25 points, but they have played fewer games than any of the Big Five, and they have the highest points percentage (.694) in the division.

Pittsburgh (11-8-1), which has played two more games than the Flyers, is in fifth place in the eight-team division. The Penguins lost the first two games of the season to the Flyers, 6-3 and 5-2, at the Wells Fargo Center.

“Everyone said it’s a hard division,” Pittsburgh center Evgeni Malkin told reporters after the Penguins’ sleepy 2-0 loss Sunday to the Islanders. “It’s OK. If we want to win a Cup, we need to play against hard teams. Every game is like the playoffs for us right now in our division.”

Adding spice to this already-heated rivalry: Ron Hextall was recently named the Penguins general manager, the same position he used to hold with the Flyers. Most of the current Flyers team was built by Hextall, who did not respond to a request to comment on the series.

Right winger Travis Konecny, a Hextall draftee who had his first career hat trick in a 5-2 win over the Penguins on Jan. 15, became the last Flyer removed from the COVID-19 list Sunday. Konecny skated Monday in Voorhees and then joined the team in Pittsburgh. He will be a game-time decision Tuesday.

When Konecny returns, it will have a ripple effect through the lineup and might move Nolan Patrick back to center — he has played at right wing in the last three games — and could make fourth-line center Connor Bunnaman a healthy scratch.

When Konecny is ready, the Flyers will be at full strength for the first time since the season’s second game. In that contest, Sean Couturier suffered a rib injury in the opening period and missed the next 10 games.

The players who have returned from the COVID-19 protocol “have looked really well,” Gostisbehere said. “They jumped into the fold and obviously made us a batter team. With TK coming back, he’s just going to jump on the train and we’re going to keep rolling. For us, we just have to keep playing our hockey. Play simple [because] it’s working.”

The line of Couturier centering James van Riemsdyk and Joel Farabee, which was put together Feb. 18, has excelled in its five games together. During that time, the unit has combined for eight goals, 19 points, and a plus-7 rating.

Like all teams in the league, the Flyers and Penguins are playing brutal schedules because of COVID-19 postponements during the season.

The Flyers are in the midst of playing six games in nine days, and this will be their third game in four days. The Pens are in a stretch in which they play 14 games in 23 days.

Samuel Morin was sent from the taxi squad to the AHL’s Phantoms. ... When the Flyers blanked Buffalo, 3-0, on Sunday, it was the first time they had ever shut out an opponent three straight times during a season. In franchise history, they also shut out three other opponents three times in a season — Los Angeles in 1967-68, the Islanders in 1973-74, and Minnesota in 1974-75 — but it wasn’t done consecutively. Bernie Parent had eight of the nine shutouts in that span. Doug Favell had the other one, against the Kings. ... The Phantoms’ Max Willman was named the AHL’s player of the week after scoring five goals over three games.