Highlights Beyond Highlights- Dec. 19 vs. Devils

Ryan Poehling’s first goal arrived via courier from points unknown.  Let’s first appreciate the active stick by Poehling, which is made possible because he recognizes that Jack Hughes has gained possession and has an outlet opportunity across the ice. Poehling accelerates and gets himself into that lane, picking it off before Hughes even sees him.

Then when he crosses paths with Farabee and hands it off. Poehling heads to an open area. Probably nobody on the ice expected Farabee to go across the grain like that, because most times that would have become a shot with a look to the net-front player for a deflection. And that’s the direction Farabee was looking, not at Poehling.  But Farabee had an idea where Poehling was going, and the crossing of paths caused the Devils to switch assignments and Poehling wasn’t picked up. It was a great read by Farabee that resulted in a goal at a very important time of the game.

Poehling’s second goal was set up by Travis Konecny, but it was fueled by Travis Sanheim. Poehling initially tried to chip this puck up the wall to Tyson Foerster, but it took a bad bounce off the snow and went to a New Jersey defender, who tries to force the puck down the wall into the Flyers zone in front of the benches.  In steps Sanheim, who not only stops that play but sends a slap-pass to Konecny in the neutral zone to start the 2-on-1. That pass immediately neutralizes two Devils and doesn’t happen if Sanheim holds onto the puck for as much as a second.

Konecny, for his part, stays with the breakout.  After the brief turnover, Konecny turns around, but he doesn’t stop moving towards the offensive zone.  If Konecny had stopped or even slowed down, this play doesn’t become a 2-on-1.  It’s the attack mindset at work that has served this team well this year.

There were a lot of other individual contributions in the contest that didn’t result in goals, but this one focuses on Cam York because of his ever-developing two-way play.  In the first half of this, he plays a two-on- one extremely well and gets his stick to a position where there’s no chance this puck gets to the net.  In the second half, he sees Garnet Hathaway breaking out to center ice, but there’s too much traffic in between. A direct pass would no doubt result in a turnover.  So instead, York spies a lane down the boards and banks it to Hathaway with the precision of a champion billiards player. It’s a great scoring opportunity that doesn’t happen without York’s excellent read.