Big day and big night in South Florida for the Flyers.
This afternoon, in Sunrise, the press box at BB&T Center will be officially renamed the “Roger Neilson Memorial Press Box,” in honor of the Panthers’ first coach.
Later this evening, the Flyers will try to move past the .500 mark with a victory. They have come quite a ways since mid-October when there seemingly was no hope this team would recover from its 1-7 start.
But they have.
“I think we’ve been through a little bit this season, and I think the team has been playing well since the coaching change,” said Wayne Simmonds, referring to Craig Berube taking over for Peter Laviolette.
“We have stuck to our structure, we’ve gained confidence game in and game out and we are just getting better every game.”
Said Flyer captain Claude Giroux, “It’s huge. We have been playing better, and I really think we have a lot of things to still work on, but it’s looking better. Everybody is contributing and it’s a lot more fun.”
There’s a lot to like about the Flyers right now in their systems play. Defensively, they are much sounder though I agreed with Berube that they gave the Isles too much of the middle on Saturday in their 5-2 win that was a 3-2 nailbiter in the third period.
Their forecheck and neutral zone forecheck are working and of course, the biggest and best news continues to be outstanding goaltending from Steve Mason.
Ray Emery has recovered from a poor start and he is contributing nicely as the backup.
The Flyers only real concern right now remains their special teams. While the power play is getting goals, it’s not taking advantage of the number of chances every night and remains mired in the bottom third of the NHL.
The penalty killing has to move up. It’s 16th and was in the top six at the end of October. You need the complete package here to call yourself a solid contender and that means functionally, sound special teams.
A number of players mentioned how even when the team was 1-7, they were felt they had some strong games but couldn’t get any wins because they were only scoring one or two goals a game.
“It’s hard to say that our record was 1-7 and we were playing good, but I still believe we were playing good,” Giroux said.
“We had our chances, we outworked teams, we just couldn’t put the puck in the net. We have Mason and Emery shutting the door for us right now and the pucks are going in. We are playing better, but I don’t think we were that bad at the start of the year.”
Brayden Schenn had a clutch goal that gave Mason some breathing room on Saturday.
“We keep on believing in ourselves,” Schenn said. “I think we are doing alright. Our guys are playing as a team and that’s what it takes to win hockey games.
“We’ve still got a long ways to go. We can’t be happy with a .500, that’s probably not going to get you to playoffs. We’ve got a ways to go, but it’s good that we dug ourselves out of the hole from the start of the year and we’ll keep building off of that at this point.”
The biggest change has been the Flyers mental approach to the third period. When Berube took over, he echoed the thoughts of Jakub Vorcek who flat said the team would expect the worst to happen in the third period and “s--- the bed.”
Their confidence has now grown during a 6-0-1 points streak where they have owned the opposition in the third periods in terms of scoring but more important, in terms of making a “push back” when the opposition turns up the pressure like the Islanders did on Saturday.
The Flyers no longer fold, they answer. That’s something we have not seen from this club is a very long time, going back two seasons.
“I think they believe they can win,” Berube said. “I think that we killed off two big penalties there in the third period which were huge kills. I thought they did a real good job. That’s important.
“We have been giving up a power play goal the last four or five games, and they did a real good job against a real good power play tonight. So, I thought that overall the third period, we were on our heels but we did what we had to do to win the game.
Two –game road trip in Florida, then back home for Black Friday’s morning encounter against Winny-peg.
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