After a tough loss to the Islanders at home on Monday, the Flyers hit the road again looked to shake that off and tap into some of the truly remarkable success they’ve found on the road so far this season. Their first stop brought them to Columbus last night, where they needed pretty desperately to find a way to hit the reset button, and get themselves back in the win column in short order.
What unfolded, though, was a somewhat stale effort from the team on the complete level of their offense, on the way to a gutting loss given up with under four minutes remaining in regulation. But in spite of all of this, too, somehow, it was a game that they were still able to keep close, remain competitive in, in no small part due to the work of one member of the team’s leadership group.
A singular effort
Travis Konecny’s effort in Columbus was little short of revelatory.
His goal in the first period gave them a bit of life, but it was also pretty quickly made clear that it wasn’t enough to jolt the whole team to life, as the offense elsewhere in the lineup was still pretty well lagging. Konecny’s determination to keep pushing through the challenges of this game, though, could not have been more clear, both on a more abstract level, but also on the painfully literal.
The end of the second period saw him deliver not more offense (not yet, at least) but a moment of putting his body on the line with a big shot block. And Konecny was clearly hobbled by that block, and while there was a moment when it looked like the team might have been left to close this one out without him — after going off gingerly at the end of the second period, he was a bit late coming out for the third — he did return, and though looking at times like he was truly left to play on one leg, his still put in some pretty tremendous work to stack a bit more scoring for his team.
And the work came in a variety of ways, too — his second goal of the night was on a play which he began when set up when his shot from the point was deflected around the netfront and created a bit of chaos, then a cycling opportunity for the Flyers, and ended when a second shot of his was snuck through traffic from the top of the circles, and then his third saw him capitalize on his work to get to the right areas, crashing laterally towards the crease for a deflection of his own to complete the hat trick.
The sum of all things
Konecny’s effort was a standout in terms of the pure production, of course, as it snapped the team out of their still-brief shutout streak, and also marked the third hat trick of his career, but it was equally meaningful in what it quelled as far as the broader discourse around the team and its individual members goes.
To put it plainly, for all of the questions that have been drummed up in certain corners of the Flyers’ fan and media spheres alike lately, about the Flyers’ culture (or lack thereof), Konecny provided about as emphatic of an answer to them as could be.
It is worthwhile to remember that culture is speaking up in the room, on the bench, finding ways to hold oneself and one’s teammates accountable, all of those intangibles that teams hold so dear. But even more than just that, lest we forget, culture is tangible too. Culture is not just voices, but actions as well, like stepping up in just the way that Konecny did last night, with pure will to keep his team in a must-win game, to do all in his power to drag them into the fight with him. Sometimes that work is enough, sometimes it is not, but the effort remains so complete that it’s impossible to argue that it’s anything other than, at its core, a type of good leadership.
Culture is, after all, the sum of all messages and actions alike brought by a team, and while there might well be room for new voices to be raised and brought into the mix, one would be hard pressed to watch that effort from Konecny unfold and argue that there is a vacuum of culture on this team.
Where do they go from here?
In all of this, though, Konecny’s status in the short term remains something of a question mark. The effects of that shot block seemed to ail him through the whole rest of the game, seemed more than just a stinger that he could walk off between shifts, and with the word out of Columbus being that he was still limping around after the game and awaiting further evaluation, his status for tonight’s quick turnaround game in Boston is very much uncertain. If Konecny’s unable to go, they have a couple of extra bodies on the trip with them to still be able to ice a normal lineup — both Nic Deslauriers and Garnet Hathaway were extras last night — but another call may need to be made once they return home, if it looks like his absence will be lengthier.
As for the rest of the team, the group on a collective level, the fact that they were unable to even limp on to overtime to collect a standings point from that game — and, in effect, still wasted that stellar performance from Konecny, as well as a standout effort from Dan Vladar in his first game back from injury — really stings. To dig themselves out of the hole they’ve been slipping into over the last few weeks is going to take a pretty monumental effort down the stretch — particularly as they have so many key games against fellow teams from the East also in the hunt for a playoff spot — it’s a big challenge, but it’s not insurmountable. And, if nothing else, a perfect example of the type of effort that will be needed to put them over that hump has been laid out for them, and it will be up to them to follow it from here.
