Highlights Beyond Highlights: December 28 & 29

Here’s a closer look at some plays from the weekend starting with the Anaheim game and the goal by Noah Cates that extended his scoring streak to five games. But it’s Bobby Brink we want to look at the most on this goal. Brink turns on the shake-and-bake mode as he swoops down behind the net; as he heads there, he fakes a move to the net that starts to get the Anaheim defensemen off their stride. That helps cause two of the Ducks to go with Brink as he comes out the other side, which leaves Cates open for the goal. It’s just a display of high-level skating ability from Brink, whose confidence has soared in recent weeks.

The Brink-Cates-Foerster line has powered the Flyers of late, and it continued in the Los Angeles game beginning with Foerster’s opening goal. When Foerster receives this pass from Cam York, it looks like he’s not going anywhere – he’s got his back to the offensive zone and a Kings defender right there. But in one deft move, he pulls the puck between the stick and the skate of the Kings player and turns around to where he’s now got a step, and as a right-handed shot, he’s able to shield the puck until he can slide it along the ice past David Rittich for the goal.

Here’s a moment early in Sunday’s second period where Egor Zamula makes a tiny but crucial play. The Flyers have had a few issues with line changes as of late, some of them bad luck but others that are self-inflicted to varying extents, including Saturday’s moment where, during a change, they had nine of their 18 skaters on the ice to some degree.

This had the potential to be another such problem, as the Flyers changed two forwards in a manner where the two jumping on the ice did so with a slight hesitation. That resulted in a 3-on-2 going the other way that could have been a huge issue, especially if Alex Laferriere was able to get the puck through to Kevin Fiala coming down the left side. But Zamula was able to effectively neutralize Laferriere, and the Kings weren’t even able to get a scoring chance out of it.

The Flyers are trying to get back to playing better team defense, which has been their bread and butter for nearly two seasons now. We show Owen Tippett’s offensive highlights all the time, but when there’s a defensive highlight to mix in as well, it’s a sign that the objective is certainly spreading through the lineup.

And with all his success lately, Noah Cates has maintained that he doesn’t want to change the way he plays, and that all the little things that make up his game are what’s resulting in his scoring run, not anything that he’s changed. But there are even new little things starting to show up in his game, such as here when he first picks a guy’s pocket and then wrecks him along the boards.