Flyers 3, Blackhawks 1: Back on track

At long last, the Flyers are back, and with a direct challenge in front of them to rebound well from a disappointing showing in their Stadium Series outing, they were able to come into tonight\'s meeting with the Blackhawks, take care of business, and get things rolling in the right direction again.

The basics

First period: 6:18- Travis Sanheim (Laughton, Farabee), 7:35- Colin Blackwell (Anderson)

Second period: 3:15- Travis Konecny (unassisted), 11:55- Garnet Hathaway (Cates Poehling)

Third period: No scoring

SOG: 33 (PHI) - 23 (CHI)

Some takeaways

A messy start

For what was ostensibly just another regular season game, this one still had a bit of a high pressure feeling. The Flyers struggled in a big way against the Devils in Saturday\'s outdoor game, looking flat at times and struggling to make high quality plays in bulk, and they were challenged in their practice days that followed to step up, tighten up, and keep competing as well as we\'ve seen them compete through much of this season. And with that in mind, it didn\'t seem unfair to expect that they would be looking to come out hot in their first game back since the weekend. But that didn\'t quite happen.

Now, there were some positives in that first period, to be sure, namely Travis Sanheim\'s goal with put them up early in that frame. But things sort of broke down on them there. There were defensive miscues and players inexplicably running into each other -- and it was a similar breakdown with burned them on Blackwell\'s goal -- and an ill timed stick infraction, coming shortly after the Blackhawks were able to tie the game. It wasn\'t catastrophically bad, but it certainly would not have been up to the level of meeting the expectation of their coach.

Building up

That first period was a tough one, but the good news is that the Flyers didn\'t get too down, and were able to rally well and get themselves back on track for the second period. They controlled play well, dominated, even, holding a 14-5 margin in scoring chances at 5-on-5, and 1.42-0.2 margin in Expected Goals (as well as a 2-0 margin in actual goals, for those who prefer the basic stats).

And in some ways, on paper, this feels like something that was bound to happen. The Flyers are, after all, a much more talented team than the Blackhawks, and reason suggests that they would have been able to take over at some point and start to create some separation, and that\'s exactly what happened here. Of course, nothing is guaranteed in this league, and the Flyers still had to make that happen, so we want to make sure to still give them credit for that. It wasn\'t a perfect showing on the whole, but the works they put in ended up being enough. And now they\'ll just have to keep on building.

Ersson rebounds

And while we\'re on the topic of getting back on track, this was both a very strong showing and much needed win for Sam Ersson. The outdoor game was a tough one for him -- there were certainly times when the support from the skaters wasn\'t there for him, but he also seemed to be struggling to track the puck, and the results were just about what you would have expected from all that.

But credit to him, he did well to put that behind him quickly, and he showed up ready to work for this one. This wasn\'t his busiest of showings purely by the raw shot numbers -- the Blackhawks generated just 23 shots on goal -- but there were still some tricky chances he had to battle off to keep the Blackhawks from getting back into this one, and he took care of that with relative ease. A short memory is a good thing to have in this league, as they say, and it was encouraging to see Ersson pretty immediately rebounding well from a tough loss and turning around to lead his team to a much needed win.

Standings watch

The league kept on spinning while the Flyers were off, and the playoff battles are still well underway, so before we move on, we should just take a moment to check in with exactly where we stand.

With tonight\'s win, the Flyers have secured 67 points in the standings. They\'re still holding onto that third place position in the Metro, and sit four points behind the second place Hurricanes, and seven points ahead of the fourth and fifth place Devils and Islanders (though each of those teams now have two games in hand). So for now, their position feels relatively stable, and the fact that they were able to bank a few more points is pretty major. The Flyers have been a bit extra streaky of late, and we\'ve seen how quickly things can go sideways when that\'s happening, but the good news is that, while we\'re taking things one day at a time, on this day, they were able to take care of business and make their margin for error just a bit wider. Some breathing room (for now).

All stats via Natural Stat Trick and NHL.com

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