The Flyers may not miss Sean Couturier that much. Which is a good thing. | Mike Sielski
This season's club looks much deeper than teams from years past, especially with Oskar Lindblom and Nolan Patrick healthy.
On the second shift of the season’s second game, Sean Couturier took a check, skated to the bench, and tugged at his torso in pain. He didn’t take the ice again Friday night, in the Flyers’ 5-2 victory over the Penguins, and so his team gets its first bona fide test of a quality that is supposed to help it contend for a Stanley Cup in this strange and shortened NHL season: its depth.
Couturier is arguably the Flyers’ best player, their No. 1 center, the reigning winner of the Selke Trophy as the league’s top all-around/defensive forward, and he’ll be out of action for at least two weeks, according to the team, because of a dislocated joint in the front of his rib cage. (The technical term is “costochondral separation,” if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.) For the moment, though, through two three-goal victories over their fiercest rival, the Flyers have given every indication that they can handle the loss of a player as important as Couturier better than any time in recent memory.
“He’s been one of the best centermen in the league,” forward Jake Voracek said. “It’s always tough to overcome it. He brings that poise to the game and to his line. He’s real smart on the puck, and he holds the puck really well. That was one of the reasons [Friday’s] game was so sloppy. We were missing Coots. It was an unfortunate loss, and hopefully he’s going to be better.”
All of what Voracek said there was true, yet the Flyers were at their best in the third period of each of these first two games, grinding the Penguins down to dust, outscoring them 5-1, and maybe the most revealing and encouraging statistic through those two contests is this: No Flyers forward averaged more than 19 minutes of ice time per game. There’s no more asking Claude Giroux to push himself past 20, 21 minutes a night, no more third- and fourth-lines made up of marginal NHL players.
Seven forwards have scored at least one goal already for the Flyers, and from the returns of Oskar Lindblom and Nolan Patrick to the presence of Carter Hart in net, having Couturier go down doesn’t have to be the debilitating bit of bad luck that it once would have been.
“Everybody knows he’s a big part of our team,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “But at the end of the day, injuries are part of the game. It’s next man up, who can come up and play. That’s what we did when we got down to 11 forwards.”
The Penguins “came out with more spunk and very physical,” Vigneault continued. “I thought for the first two periods, they had the better of the scoring opportunities, and Carter was the difference. But in the third, with the game on the line and us by one, I thought we played some solid hockey. We spent more time in their end, and we were able to get the win and win the third period.”
That’s been the striking thing so far – that the Flyers didn’t play well for extended stretches of these two games and still won them handily. Yes, Hart was the primary reason for Friday’s win, but his 31 saves and overall excellence don’t change the fact that the Flyers were the fresher, stronger team late in that game, just as they were in their season-opening 6-3 victory Wednesday.
» READ MORE: Sean Couturier will miss at least two weeks with injury
Travis Konecny had that unusual hat trick Friday – two goals with his feet, one with his stick – and Joel Farabee had that four-point night Wednesday, but the most heartening developments were the contributions of Lindblom and Patrick. The two combined for three goals, but more important for the Flyers’ long term is the manner in which they lengthen the lineup. Lindblom was a shell of himself when he came back, after his cancer treatments, for the close of that second-round series against the Islanders last year, and because Patrick missed all of last season because of his concussion-related migraines, it’s easy to forget the talent and potential he hadn’t tapped into yet.
Both seem perfectly healthy now, and if they remain that way, this Flyers season can get very interesting very quickly, even for all the games they will be without their best forward. In another year, at another time, the loss of Sean Couturier would have taken the Flyers to their knees. For once, there’s hope that they can stay standing.