Maybe the best thing for the Flyers would be to start every game down by a couple goals.
It’s already been established Dave Hakstol’s team is notoriously slow at the start.
That urgency only kicks in midway into the second or late in the third when it’s all or nothing.
It happened again Wednesday night at the Wells Fargo Center against the Detroit Red Wings.
The Flyers fell behind, 2-0, rallied from the midpoint of the second to tie and then fell behind, 3-2, before rallying again to force overtime.
That’s when Jakub Voracek won it with his sixth goal off Claude Giroux’s 11th assist for a 4-3 OT victory (see Instant Replay).
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“We’ve been talking about it,” Giroux said. “We’ve got to find urgency to score the first goal. I mean, if we win every game this season with comebacks I wouldn’t mind, but that is not going to be the case. Some teams out there when they get the lead, they shut it down.”
Indeed the Flyers continue to live on the edge. They have been tied or led in the third period in all 11 games they’ve played this season even though their record is just 5-5-1.
If they had better starts, better defensive net presence and better goaltending, they’d be leading the Metropolitan Division given their 40 goals scored.
“We've got to stop doing this,” Giroux said. “It’s getting too old. We need to find a way to have better starts, but you can see the character of guys in the room when we play hard and are on our toes.”
Detroit’s regular-season losing skid in Philly hit 12 straight now since winning the Cup in 1997. The Red Wings' OT strategy was old school — rag the puck endlessly, almost trying to get it to the shootout in which they have a better roster of snipers.
It almost worked. The Flyers got one chance with Giroux and Voracek and that’s all they needed with a two-on-one.
“They possessed the puck and were showing patience and ended with a pretty good scoring chance just before we ended going the other direction,” Hakstol said.
“That’s one element of three-on-three. Sometimes it’s chaotic. But they possessed the puck for the vast majority of the overtime session.”
There’s nothing more lethal on the Flyers than the Giroux-Voracek combo on the rush.
“With G, you expect the pass anytime and I kind of knew he was coming,” Voracek said. “He’s one of the best playmaking guys in the league. He knows what to do. I was just shooting as hard as I could.”
Petr Mrazek faced 40 shots, so he knew what was coming.
All this aside, Voracek echoed the thoughts of several teammates that the Flyers need to get involved in games a lot sooner instead of waiting for urgency.
“If you’re gonna play like you are one of the top teams in the league … if you’re gonna play like Pittsburgh, like L.A., Chicago, those kind of teams, they’re not going to let you back into games,” Voracek said.
“It takes so much energy out of you, you’re gonna lose the game.”
Detroit scored twice within 16 seconds to stun the Flyers early. First, Dylan Larkin looped high across the slot for a wrister as the shot went off Voracek on goalie Michal Neuvirth at 13:15.
Then Andreas Anthanasiou had a leisurely two-on-one stroll up the right side and put the puck off Neuvirth high chest. It popped over his shoulder — a bad goal, making it 2-0.
Hakstol changed up his lines in the second period. He moved Brayden Schenn off the top line to Nick Cousins’ unit with Chris VandeVelde.
VandeVelde hasn’t had anything to be happy about this season until Wednesday morning when his wife Olivia delivered a baby girl, Larkin. Finally, something to celebrate.
It must have worked because VandeVelde took a cross-ice feed from Schenn and carried himself and the puck entirely into the net to cut the Flyers’ deficit in half.
That was followed by rookie Roman Lyubimov’s first NHL goal to tie it at 2-2 early in the third.
Detroit regained the lead at 8:18 when Flyers defenseman Radko Gudas turned the puck over under pressure outside the Flyers' blue line. Giroux was late on the backcheck and the Wings scored quickly off transition with Henrik Zetterberg.
That could have been it, but Mark Streit came up with his third goal and eighth point to force OT on a net scrum in the final 1:04 of regulation.
You sensed the Flyers would win at that point.
Schenn suggested, “The light switch turned on in our head.”
Lyubimov quipped, "Maybe it’s our style. I think it’s bad style, but it’s good what we can do, come back in this game."
Streit was realistic.
“We’ve got to find a way to be sharper in the first period. Sloppy and slow with the mind and legs and they took advantage of it,” Streit said. “But we stuck with it and it took a while to win the game.”