by Bob Herpen
Phanatic Hockey Editor
Hockey lingo is heavily infused by a few choice phrases that pass in and out of style with every philosophical change in game strategy. Some of them are so deeply lodged in a player, coach, broadcaster or pundit’s consciousness, it can’t be dislodged with a laser beam.
One of those which has proven to be more adhesive than barnacles on a boat hull, is the notion that each night, teams need to score that all-important first goal, or else they’ll work themselves into exhaustion due to “chasing the game.”
This season, under new head coach Rick Tocchet, the Philadelphia Flyers are doing their best to lay waste to that biting phrase.
After Saturday night’s 6-3 dispatch of the New Jersey Devils, the home squad has allowed the first goal in a mystifying 15 of 20 games. Even more out there, their record when other clubs get the jump improved to 8-4-3. That’s 19 of their 25 total points.
A breakdown:
10/9 Florida 1-2 (L) 0-1-0
10/11 Carolina 3-4 (OTL) 0-1-1
10/16 Winnipeg 2-5 (L) 0-2-1
10/18 Minnesota 2-1 (OTW) 1-2-1
10/20 Seattle 5-2 (W) 2-2-1
10/25 Islanders 4-3 (SOW) 3-2-1
10/28 Pittsburgh 3-2 (SOW) 4-2-1
11/2 Calgary 1-2 (L) 4-3-1
11/6 Nashville 3-1 (W) 5-3-1
11/8 Ottawa 2-3 (OTL) 5-3-2
11/12 Edmonton 1-2 (OTL) 5-3-3
11/14 St Louis 6-5 (SOW) 6-3-3
11/15 Dallas 1-5 (L) 6-4-3
11/20 St Louis 3-2 (OTW) 7-4-3
11/22 New Jersey 6-3 (W) 8-4-3
Of note - twice already the Flyers have erased an early deficit in three straight games. Eight times they’ve won beyond regulation when initially behind.
With a league schedule condensed due to February’s Olympic break, there are going to be more opportunities for 3-in-4’s or 4-in-6’s to wreak havoc on the club’s energy level. It’s crucial to be able to store energy, to manage energy and to have a sharp mental edge when energy is flagging. Tocchet is well aware.
“You can still win those games with your ‘B game’ if you’re smart, if you play team hockey. Game management comes into play when you’re tired,” he said in Saturday’s pregame. “That’s something we’re working on here every day.”
For the sake of comparison consider the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers. Surely a roster competent in all three zones, playing a 200-foot game, giving a 60-minute effort, gets on top a lot and stays there, right?
Not so much.
Last season, the Cats allowed the game’s first goal in 39 of 82 regular-season games, going 14-21-4. That’s right. Fourteen wins and 32 points when supposedly caving in, allowing the opening salvo and “chasing the game” from the drop.
This season, things are not quite as rosy. As of Saturday night’s 6-3 home loss to the two-time defending Cup losers, the Edmonton Oilers, Paul Maurice’s club has yielded first in 12 of their 21 tilts thus far, going 4-8-0.
10/7 Chicago 3-2 (W) 1-0-0
10/13 Flyers 2-5 (L) 1-1-0
10/15 Detroit 1-4 (L) 1-2-0
10/18 Buffalo 0-3 (L) 1-3-0
10/23 Pittsburgh 3-5 (L) 1-4-0
10/28 Anaheim 3-2 (SOW) 2-4-0
11/4 Anaheim 3-7 (L) 2-5-0
11/8 San Jose 1-3 (L) 2-6-0
11/13 Washington 6-3 (W) 3-6-0
11/15 Tampa Bay 1-3 (L) 3-7-0
11/17 Vancouver 8-5 (W) 4-7-0
11/22 Edmonton 3-6 (L) 4-8-0
Of course, there are several mitigating factors between the Flyers’ and Panthers’ respective situations. Maurice’s continuity of coaching, the confidence of being a three-time Eastern Conference playoff champion which has overcome virtually every obstacle, an obvious talent-level gap, then the two pressing this year which may explain the discrepancy – the expectation of losing Aleksander Barkov for the entire season and fatigue of participating in 335 games from October 2022 up to the present.
History Always Repeats
Looking back nearly 30 years, to the 1996-97 season which ended up being the tip of the spear for the Dead Puck Era, the Cup Final-entrant Flyers under Terry Murray finished second in their division and third in the East while allowing the first goal in 43 of 82 contests.
They were 16-19-8 overall, 5-8-0 without Eric Lindros as he slowly recovered from a hamstring injury at the start of the year and 11-11-8 thereafter. The club was even scored upon first 7 times during their season-changing 17-game unbeaten streak from late November through early January. Clearly the effect of playing from a deficit wasn’t as dire as some might suggest.
Nothing truly ensures success like getting ahead and staying ahead, and the franchise’s last Stanley Cup Final entrant is proof. During the Flyers’ 2009-10 season which ended in a surprise four-round journey the club was absolutely dismal when playing catch up, going 8-25-0
overall – 2-8-0 with John Stevens and then 6-17-0 with Peter Laviolette.
Do you know where I *suspect* the phrase originated and gained steam? When Jacques Lemaire implemented the neutral-zone trap full-time after the Devils won the Cup in 1995.
In stark contrast to the Panthers under head coach Doug MacLean, who would revert to the bottleneck with a lead at the start of the third period, New Jersey robotically fell into the full press immediately after scoring first – whether that be 5 minutes after puck drop or midway through a contest. It made for boring hockey which forcibly drained the lifeblood from opponents for half a decade.
Old habits die hard. Those three loaded words seemed to vanish in the vapor of an Alex Ovechkin breakaway when the NHL came back from its implosion in 2005. It started to creep back in around the time the Orange and Black made their last Finals run, dipped back out of existence when Jaromir Jagr arrived, then somehow became harder to kill than cockroaches and Keith Richards.
Bemoaning an initial deficit is the province of small minds. Give up a goal 4 minutes in? There’s 56 minutes to tie and go ahead. Give it up halfway through regulation? Half of the game to get it back.
That antiquated attitude simply doesn’t hold water since 2021, the last round of expansion which welcomed Seattle and left the NHL at its current 32-franchise bloat. Since then, teams coast to 3 and 4 goal leads only to surrender like anesthetic was suddenly pumped through the benches.
It’s the hardest of hard sells when the Washington Capitals put up 15 goals over their last 2 games this week. Or when the Flyers nearly overcame a 5-1 first-period deficit in Detroit two Christmases ago, falling 7-6 in a shootout. Or when they battled back from a pair of 2-goal deficits in St. Louis 8 days ago to win a 6-5 thriller – their third multi-goal comeback victory in the season’s first quarter.
Saturday Night Special
If there is a book coaches consult which contains other sage words of wisdom, including “never give up a goal in the first or last minute of a period,” on Saturday night, the Flyers tore that book to shreds.
After the Devils enjoyed the early territorial advantage as well as an 8-2 shot edge in the first eight minutes and a 1-0 lead thanks to a Timo Meier second-chance power-play strike, all Hell broke loose.
“I think we were pretty predictable,” Tocchet admitted as an opener to his postgame presser.
Noah Cates followed up an Egor “Prince of” Zamula shot to tie the game after exactly nine minutes elapsed. Then, in a franchise-record span of 26 seconds, Matvei Michkov was sprung on a breakaway by Sean Couturier off a defensive-zone turnover and Tyson Foerster followed 9 seconds later with a one-time laser and added another strike on the same shift, this time from the right circle, only 17 seconds after the fourth puck drop.
The hosts were now up 4-1 and started attacking.
“It’s a big thing,” Tocchet said about the history-making staccato burst. “That team can come back. They tried. They had some chances there. That’s why you have to bear down. That’s why you have to stay structured in your system. It was nice to have that killer instinct.”
Get a lead and keep a lead? That’s at least an evergreen saying.
The Flyers kept up the pressure in the second period, severely tilting the ice for 16 ½ minutes and ended up maintaining a three-goal edge after a Nico Hischier goal neutralized a Bobby Brink tracer.
Flyers starter Dan Vladar, ever deepening the chasm between he and his backup Sam Ersson, smothered 32 pucks for the victory. He was dented just once in the third period, with 6:33 to play on a long blast tipped in by Hischier he couldn’t see and therefore, didn’t stop. The Devils finally awoke and had two opportunities, one in a vacant net, to cut their deficit to one, but Trevor Zegras put an end to the fans’ agita with a brilliant breakaway marker at 15:21 for the 6-3 final.
“The last two games we were confronting at the blue line and that’s how you get odd-man rush chances, right?” Tocchet added. “Once you counterattack, you take off.”
Gravity almost pulled Cates under during his postgame pool interviews, but he deftly demurred, saying, “Obviously you don’t want to give (that first) one up but to get one then get the building into it … a couple quick after that was awesome.”
In the microcosm of the Rick Tocchet era, resilience not control, seems to be an effective strategy. The Flyers will need it facing a 4-in-6 this coming week on the road against Tampa, Florida, the Islanders and Devils.They’ll also have overlapping 3-in-4s in mid-December and just before Christmas, then yet another out West before the turn of the new year.
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