Heading into Game 1 of a series in which 10 of your players are playing their first career postseason game, the physical battle is not necessarily something you would expect to win. That should only be amplified when you consider that players like Denver Barkey, Matvei Michkov, and Trevor Zegras aren’t exactly players who look to set the tone with their physical play.
But despite a gap in experience and even physical stature, The Flyers came out hitting anything that moved. In the first period alone, they came out and threw 19 hits on the road, setting a tone for the game and extinguishing any thoughts the Penguins may have had about dominating this series physically from the get-go.
Flyers’ physicality set the tone right away for the series
The biggest hit of the opening frame didn’t even count on the scoresheet, when Rasmus Ristolainen plastered the 6-foot-8 Elmer Soderblom, after not hearing the whistle following an offside call.
While Ristolainen did get penalized for a late hit, he set the tone for a game in which the Flyers took the punishment to the Penguins. While the hits ended up 41-40 in favor of the home team, players like the aforementioned Ristolainen, captain Sean Couturier, and Garnet Hathaway were at the forefront of the physical battle.
The hits ended up 41-40 in favor of Pittsburgh, but the upstart Flyers seemed to throw the more effective checks. Six Flyers had over three hits in what was a short-tempered Game 1 between two heated rivals, including the 19-year old phenom Porter Martone, who didn’t look intimidated in the slightest by the raucous physical play.
And that’s really what’s so impressive about the Flyers physical performance. With 10 players making their playoff debut, there was a chance that the lights and pressure could have gotten to the young team. But on the contrary, the entire lineup seemed entirely engaged from puck drop to final horn.
Sean Couturier led the way for the Flyers
And a lot of the plaudits for getting the team into the fight can be placed on the shoulders of Sean Couturier. The captain has been trying to find his form throughout the entire season, and his sub-par play early in the year resulted in him being demoted to the fourth line alongside Hathaway and midseason waiver pickup Luke Glendening. And while it will be hard for him to hit his offensive stride alongside two career fourth-liners, he has found a rhythm as a classic defensive centerman that you can trust in basically every situation. This change led to a sort of resurgence late in the year, and Couturier was playing some of the best hockey heading down the stretch run.
And a matchup with the Penguins seemed to activate Couturier like some sort of sleeper agent who was just waiting for the opportunity. From his first shift of the night, he was setting a physical tone.
This isn’t even mentioning the job that he did on Sidney Crosby, helping to frustrate the Penguins star to the point that he turned back into the 20-year-old version of himself, and started taking retaliatory penalties while being largely ineffective.
Couturier would finish with seven hits to lead the Flyers in his 15:47 of ice-time, a total that ranked him fifth amongst forwards. Throughout the entire regular season, Couturier didn’t have a single game where he tallied that many hits. When his team needed a spark, Coots heeded the call and led by example, and there’s a very good chance that seeing their captain get into the mix from the jump freed up some of the younger players to follow his lead. Seeing a player that’s been fighting injuries and underperformance come out and lead the charge in such a visceral way, just epitomizes the sort of team that Philadelphia roots for, and the type of team that can make a bit of a run.
The Flyers took the fight to Pittsburgh in Game 1, and if they can keep this sort of pace up, they’ll be very hard to deal with in a playoff setting where the hits just keep on coming for potentially, seven games.
