It was fun for all seven years that it lasted. But the all-consuming Philadelphia debate over whether Sean Couturier is a bad second line center or a good third line center finally has been shut down.

Turns out Couturier is a first line center, looking so productive that Flyer fans wish he could have been one all along, saving them a lot of angst over Jake Voracek’s long slumps, Claude Giroux’s diminishing yearly numbers, and the diehards’ worst fears that when all these wonderful young defensemen Ron Hextall is collecting fully mature into a Cup-caliber blueline, the team’s best young forward would be Nick Cousins.

Everybody can just calm down now. Giroux, healthier than he was a season ago, looks rejuvenated as Couturier’s left wing. Voracek, one of the most natural assist makers in hockey, went into this week already having nine of them. Couturier, as inoffensive a person as he has been accused of being on the ice, is no longer a figure of raging contention, just a centericeman playing both ends with both stars, ready to have some fun.

“I still try to be the 200-foot guy; that’s the type of player I am,” he says. “If I take care of the little details, my offense will come, especially with those two guys.

“It’s not like it used to be where I would get one or two chances a game and feel I had to score on them. So far we have been getting three, four or five a game. It takes pressure off.”

The line turned its hose on Washington for a combined 10 points. Couturier is working give-and-goes like Jaromir Jagr, burying chances like Jari Kurri, bearing no resemblance to an old Cout who, often as not, could get you just two-second assists in 13 games.

Couturier, a 17-year-old that many scout’s projected to be the first overall pick in the 2011 draft until a bout with mono factored into him dropping to eighth to Philadelphia, never has reached 40 points in a season, yet still came into this one plus-43 for his career.

That kind of contribution can get you 15 years in the league on teams that go far in the playoffs, nothing wrong with that. But potential is a terrible thing to squander, not part of the coach’s job description.

Turns out that Dave Hakstol has an innovative brain, just temporarily misplaced it last week in challenging an offsides that wasn’t, putting his team down by two skaters in the final seconds of a tie game that Nashville promptly untied. Hey, we all mistakes, like we’ve been hearing for five years that the worst thing the Flyers ever did was keep on the big club an 18-year-old two-time 96-point junior scorer (the second occasion in only 58 games), just to turn him into a checker.

However, he's teased before with five-game goal streaks, stretches of 10 points in 10 games, and 15 points in 16 games. Now, dating back to March 4 of last season, he has 23 points in his last 24 games including seven goals.

That season Couturier scored a hat trick in a playoff game, held Evgeni Malkin to eight points in a wild 6-game series -- only one point, a game 6 power play goal, came with Couturier on the ice. Meanwhile, Giroux was dumping Sidney Crosby on his backside, making the Penguins quit in Game Six. Unfortunately, that was the last time the Flyers won a series and Pittsburgh, may have done uh, a little better than that since. Meanwhile, disappointed Philadelphians have obsessed over what percentage of shifts Couturier started in the defensive zone and wondered if he was being wasted, while getting wasted to ease the pain of the average team the Flyers had become.

As Peggy Lee once sang–we always believed in reference to the career of Alexander Daigle–“Is that all there is?” Couturier would tease with production in spurts, then seem too content to just mind the store. Even so, the bursts of offense were tantalizing: a five-game goal streak and the playoff hat trick as a rookie, later stretches of 10 points in 10 games, and 15 points in 16 games.

Now, dating back to March 4 of last season, Couturier has 23 points in his last 24 games including seven goals. It's his most sustained production of his career, albeit over parts of two seasons.

In the meantime, a second-line center to make Wayne Simmonds as much a threat at even strength as he is on the power play was a position left unfilled, making the patience level in Flyer Nation almost as short as was Ilya Bryzgalov with defensemen shielding his view on 50-footers. The second line became a black hole, sucking a too-easy-to-match first line into the vortex. And while Couturier always anchored a reliable third line, who in upper bowl at Wells Fargo Center renewed to watch that when if it was a yearly struggle just to get to eighth place?

So here is the great irony: After Hextall picked up Val Filppula before the 2017 trading deadline to deepen the lineup, Hakstol put Couturier with Brayden Schenn and a heretofore-moribund Dale Weise. And they scored, even if it was too late to save the season.

So there may not have been a night this summer that Hakstol suddenly bolted up in the middle of the night exclaiming, “Eureka!” But he had seen Couturier finish 2015-16 with14 points in his final 17 games before being lost in the playoffs to an Alez Ovechkin shoulder check. And now the coach was seeing once more that a confident Couturier could find his way around the offensive zone.

“That was part of it,” says Hakstol. “But as soon as you mention two-way player people think, defense first and Couts also had been a pretty good player in the middle of the rink.

“Certainly that line (with the traded Schenn and Weise) did a really good job and Couts has picked up where he left off, albeit with two different linemates.”

Those linemates are once and again among the very best players in the league, Giroux outscoring everybody in it during a five-year period and Voracek challenging for the 2014-15 scoring title. There isn’t enough cypberspace in the universe for us to describe all the different combinations tried by Craig Berube, then Hakstol, including some with Voracek on left wing, to lengthen production on a team that did not have enough.

Whether they fully recognized it or not, Giroux, 29, and Voracek, 28, needed something or somebody to freshen their outlook. At first Giroux thought this line was just an exhibition fantasy of Hakstol’s but one game on left wing turned into three, has turned into a fine start, with no reason to change anything now.

A playoff spot in 2018 seemed like a lot to ask for, what with all the Flyers best players besides Simmonds coming off bad seasons and an exceedingly young defense. But maybe not. In the meantime, there is little question about the Flyers having a serious future and how much quicker they have become and how much more fun to watch. The early schedule has delivered to them good opponents compromised by injury, but Philadelphia has carried the play every game.

Nolan Patrick, the second player taken in the 2017 draft, is the third-line center for more reasons than Hakstol trying to keep the kid from becoming overwhelmed. The two centers ahead of Patrick and now even one behind him are pretty good, another big reason Hakstol felt empowered to make one of the best pivotmen in the league a left wing.

“Absolutely [depth] factors into it,” said the coach. “I think we have options now.

“Nolan Patrick is doing a very good job. Fil is excellent, like Couts where he is at and Scotty Laughton has earn his spot up the middle in his role. We have a little bit of depth now. And we trust those players.”

That’s coaching code for “they can play their own end.” On his new line, Couturier still has the 200-foot responsibilities starting in front of the Flyer goal, while Giroux is free to be creative.

“He doesn’t have to do as much of the heavy lifting down low,” said Hakstol. “It’s hard work below the goalline line and at the tops of circles in your own zone. Normally, that’s against big bodies down there

“It helps in terms of overall energy. I see G playing a pretty fast game now with and without the puck. He competes as hard as anybody does but Couts is a big body in the defensive zone.

“Plus on that line we now have two centermen–one left, one right–a real positive at a time when a number of players are being removed from the faceoff dot.”

Faceoffs, the Flyers have been winning. Enough games they have not. That 2011-12 team was young, fast and dynamic, making you wonder where the offense went and the years have gone. But here is Couturier, maybe the oldest 24-year old in the NHL nevertheless moving into his prime.

“He doesn’t make mistakes,” said Voracek. “Always in position; any screw-up, he’s there to back you up.

“He will put up more points than he did. And the fortunate thing is he doesn’t have to change his game to do it.”

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