Highlights Beyond Highlights – Nov. 11 at Los Angeles

The Flyers played what head coach John Tortorella called a “patient” game late Saturday night in the final tilt of their three-game stay in California. Tortorella was referring to a style of play where the Flyers didn’t panic when the Kings brought pressure, and waited for opportunities to nullify dangerous situations. Plays that fit the mold happened throughout the game, but here are a couple early examples.

An early Kings rush developed off a Los Angeles takeaway just inside their blue line. It turned into a 2-on-2, but one of the two Flyers defenders was Noah Cates, who was covering for Sean Walker after Walker jumped into the previous rush. Cates waited for Carl Grundstrom to make his move and then simply stepped in front of him, not even letting him get the puck in deep.

A minute or so later, Sean Couturier showed poise during a sneaky-dangerous Kings breakout that looked innocuous on the surface, but had Adrian Kempe lurking as a trailer. Couturier sensed Kempe coming, however, and left the first two Kings to the Flyers defense while staying a little higher in the zone. When Quintin Byfield tried to feed Kempe, Couturier was there to get his stick on the pass and prevent Kempe from fielding it cleanly, taking care of what would have been a high danger scoring chance.

The Flyers’ first goal came thanks to a team philosophy of trying to drive offense whenever possible. In this full-ice shot, watch the Kings defenseman in the lower left set up for a shot.  Travis Konecny closes to the point to try to block it; he doesn’t, but Sean Walker does in the slot. As soon as Walker makes that block – if not even before he does it – Konecny and Owen Tippett are three strides into flying the zone. Konecny actually doesn’t even stop. Walker then finds Tippett for the breakaway goal that started the evening in motion for the Flyers.

Cam Atkinson’s goal was the fourth of the night and as such it won’t count as a game-winning goal, but it might have been the most important given how the game was trending towards LA at that point. A couple great plays made this goal possible. First, Cam York kept a puck in at the point. Then, as seen in the clip below, Tyson Foerster swoops in and picks the pocket of Vladislav Gavrikov to set up the tally. It’s been multiple times this week that Foerster has caused turnovers down low and set up either goals or high-danger scoring chances.