Scott Laughton is not supposed to be able to do this, but he did. On Thursday night against the Detroit Red Wings, the Philadelphia Flyers fourth line forward went ahead and scored all four goals in a 4-1 win at home. An electric performance that made everyone feel so warm and fuzzy as we head into the holiday season.
The surprise explosion of offense came in bunches. After a scoreless first period and several missed opportunities on the breakaway or odd-man rushes that Detroit was just letting Philadelphia have time and time again, Laughton took his chance in a very “screw it” sort of way by just absolutely wiring the puck bardingo on a breakaway chance. A solo shot clapper from far out beat Cam Talbot as clean as possible and it was just a beautiful sight to behold to open the scoring.
Scott Laughton went with the OLD SCHOOL clapper to make it 1-0 pic.twitter.com/jcltw60r3T
— Broad Street Hockey (@BroadStHockey) December 13, 2024
After the game, Laughton was asked about the missed solo opportunities by some Flyers forwards previously in the game and if he decided to pull off that move, to show that you don’t need to be fancy with it.
“I saw a couple of them. To be honest, I’ve been waiting for my chance in the shootout and I was going to let one fly,” Laughton laughed, “so it’s been in my head for two, three weeks now. I was thinking slapper the whole way down.”
Off the high of scoring on that rush, Laughton decided to revive his partnership with Travis Konecny on the penalty kill and actually get that unit scoring some shorthanded goals. Throughout last season, the Flyers scored 16 shorthanded goals and coming into Thursday night, they had just one through 27 games. A big part of their success was that unit taking advantage of opposing power play’s lack of defensive care. And thankfully, Laughton was able to give this season some juice.
“When you don’t have many on the year, I think scoring a big one like that on a breakaway and then to connect with TK on the shorthanded one, it felt good. We’ve kind of been struggling out there a little bit, so to play a little bit tighter on it and to get rewarded, it felt nice.”
After notching two — and being on Hat Trick Watch, thanks to the NBC Sports Philadelphia broadcast letting us know for what felt like several hours on the score bug — Laughton clinched his hat trick with an empty-net tally. And then, just for fun, scored another empty netter, which he didn’t even want to score.
On a 2-on-0 rush on the empty net with Garnet Hathaway, Laughton passed it off to his linemate so that he could get in on the scoring, but Hathaway quickly and selflessly gave it back so that the longtime Flyer could have his name in the record books.
“I thought he was shooting it,” Laughton laughed about Hathaway. “So, I gave him a touch on that one. I don’t even know. I think after the third one it was a blur out there.”
Laughton is now the first Flyer to score four goals in a game since John LeClair notched four in the 2002-03 season against the Montreal Canadiens. Over two decades have gone by since this has been done by a player in this city.
And another milestone was achieved on Thursday. Laughton finished the night with 102 career goals, hitting and going above the 100-goal milestone and making it an even more meaningful night for the 12-year Flyer.
“It’s pretty cool. Two empty-netters but I know they all count,” Laughton said. “I think 100 goals — you don’t look at it really but I’ve been in the league for a long time and it’s hard to score goals in this league. To score 100 is pretty cool to me. Pretty special. I know it’s not much compared to some guys but yeah, it feels pretty cool to get that especially the way I did with TK.”
Maybe this is where Laughton can jump into having a decent season. Hell, he more than doubled his season goal total as he now stands with seven on the year. Here’s to 102 more.
