Egor Chinakhov glided in towards the boards to get better a rolling puck for the Penguins, and Sean Couturier closed in to crush him into them.
Sidney Crosby skated on a beeline, intending to crash Dan Vladar’s crease, and Travis Sanheim tossed him down to the ice for even daring to strive, even when it ended with the defenseman taking an interference name for it.
Then the final seconds had been dwindling down. Crosby sat alongside the wall ready for the puck to jar unfastened so he might strive to take off with it, however Sanheim drifted in to give him a shove. The Pittsburgh captain pushed again, Sanheim threw a cross-check, after which Crosby upped the ante with a slash that lastly drew a whistle and introduced on matching two-minute minor penalties for each.
But the key half was: it meant that a urgent Penguins group was left with out its finest participant for the remainder of the recreation.
There’s an everlasting adage that in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, a group has to be more durable simply as a lot because it has to be expert and smarter.
The Philadelphia Flyers, at the lead of two of their longest-tenured veterans, rose to that event for their 3-2 win Saturday night in Game 1.
Couturier, who has taken to his adjusted function as a bottom-line checker and skating with possibly the most physicality of his profession due to it, completed Saturday evening with a game-high seven hits.
Sanheim was credited with simply three checks, however complemented them with suffocating top-pairing minutes alongside a postseason-debuting Rasmus Ristolainen, which largely saved the Penguins’ high line with Crosby pushed to the outdoors.
Then, with a misleading transfer and a step into a ton of open house halfway via the third interval, Sanheim took his time, picked his nook, and fired in the go-ahead aim.
On the street in a hostile PPG Paints Arena, and up in opposition to a far more playoff-experienced Penguins core, the Flyers had been meaner, smarter, and total, simply higher.
And that each one began with their vets – primarily, their captain.
“It’s the playoffs,” said Couturier, the just one left to have performed in that fight-filled barn-burner of a collection in opposition to the Penguins again in 2012. “Everyone kind of steps up their intensity, and [I was] just trying to have an impact in any way I could early on.”
Which satirically, or possibly even fittingly, wasn’t all that totally different from the mentality that a 19-year-old Couturier carried into that legendary first-round collection from 14 years in the past.
Back then, Couturier was simply a rookie, however a hard-working and defensively devoted one who shortly turned a fan favourite, together with changing into former coach Peter Laviolette’s go-to for a shutdown heart.
When that collection started in Pittsburgh, Laviolette known as Couturier’s quantity at any time when Evgeni Malkin, the Penguins’ different generational star and that season’s eventual MVP, stepped onto the ice.
And for no matter Malkin tried to do, he simply might by no means shake a relentless and annoying Couturier away. That caught via the whole collection, Malkin bought more and more annoyed together with the remainder of a Penguins lineup that was regularly melting down in opposition to a pestering Flyers squad that saved one-upping them.
The Flyers gained that collection in an emphatic six video games, a younger Couturier gained and ran with a highlight as certainly one of the NHL’s best-developing protection facilities, and a complete lot has occurred since, for higher and worse.
Charles LeClaire/Imagn ImagesFaceoffs are nonetheless a huge manner for Sean Couturier to make a distinction.
Couturier went from an up-and-coming heart to a Selke-caliber two-way star, however then into his again points, and when he got here again from them after practically two years, the Flyers’ acceptance of and leaning into a rebuild. Then, in the late levels of this season, after a future of ineffective and even non-existent offensive play, got here a gradual acceptance that a now 33-year-old Couturier could not be skating as a Line 1 or 2 heart anymore.
It was robust for the captain and longest-tenured Flyer to slip down the lineup and into, at floor degree, a lesser function.
It initially occurred in the earlier two seasons beneath former coach John Tortorella, together with some notorious wholesome scratchings and brazenly on the market disagreements about the decision-making and messaging of it between coach and participant.
For present head coach Rick Tocchet to arrive at the similar conclusion, each he and Couturier admitted it took some prolonged and sincere conversations to get on the similar web page about it, together with, on Tocchet’s finish, empathy as a former participant and belief that he might nonetheless look to Couturier in huge spots – like to win an necessary faceoff, to kill off a pivotal energy play, or to maintain the line in the final minute of a recreation.
“We all go through it, right?” Tocchet said last Thursday after apply at the Flyers’ Training Center in Voorhees. “I mean, I’ve gone through it. I remember my last run here, Simon Gagné and [Justin Williams], they’re taking your jobs. You have to accept your role, whatever you can give the team.
“And with Coots, like, typically he performs 13 minutes, typically he performs 18-20 minutes. It is dependent upon the recreation. So, whether or not you need to name him a fourth-liner or no matter, I do not even put a tag on it.”
Really, there’s probably no reason to. Either way, the work with Couturier to get him to buy back into a more defensive-minded, checking-heavy role, which isn’t much unlike the one he carried in his rookie year all that time ago, has been one of the major difference-makers in the Flyers’ rally back into the playoffs.
Ever since coming back from the Olympic break, and especially down that last stretch from late March into April, when the point gap in the standings was rapidly shrinking, Couturier settled in and noticeably started throwing the body around way more, and with a lot more authority and aggression.
It sent jolts through the arena, especially when the Flyers were in front of their home crowd. It jarred the puck loose, and at minimum, kept the opposition from getting anywhere, or at the maximum, changed possession to send the Flyers sprinting toward the other net.
Couturier adjusted, accepted, and did his part; the Flyers rallied back into the playoffs for the first time in years; and once they were finally there on Saturday night, his physicality helped establish the tempo and tone for an otherwise young team that was largely unfamiliar to the postseason stage, but didn’t want to leave Pittsburgh with a moment to breath nonetheless.
The Flyers are leading the best-of-seven series, 1-0, now because of it, with the aim of keeping their momentum rolling straight into Game 2 Monday night back in Pittsburgh.
But doing so will continue under the guidance of their vets.
It will continue with Couturier going right back out there and stapling a Penguins skater to the boards again.
“That’s a chief proper there, proper?” longtime teammate Travis Konecny said last week of Couturier’s impression, earlier than the collection even began. “He found out what was gonna assist the group and he bought in 100% to that function.
“I mean, you talk to him, he just wants to win. That’s what drives all of us, but you can tell when it starts from the top with him, it’s infectious, the whole team sees it, and you want to buy in to your role, too.”
SIGN UP HERE to receive the PhillyVoice Sports newsletter
Follow Nick on Twitter: @itssnick
Follow Nick on Bluesky: @itssnick
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice Sports
