John Tortorella started all three periods with the fourth line of Ryan Poehling centering Nick Deslauriers and Garnet Hathaway. It’s clear Tortorella likes the tone that line sets at various points in a game – in addition to starting the periods, Tortorella sent that line out right after Jake Bean scored to tie the game, and it played a short but effective 24-second shift entirely in the Columbus end. The line’s forecheck immediately caused a turnover and a scoring opportunity for Poehling, after which the Laughton-Cates-Konecny line won the next faceoff and continued the pressure. It quieted any momentum Columbus may have been able to take from their home crowd.
Joel Farabee’s goal came in a 2-on-0 situation with Sean Couturier that was nicely executed and benefited greatly from Columbus defenseman Andrew Peeke blowing a tire in the neutral zone. However, the whole thing was started by young Egor Zamula, who made a brilliant stick check on veteran defenseman Zach Werenski as Werenski entered the Flyers zone. That popped the puck free to Farabee and started the rush the other way.
The other non-empty-netter, scored by Travis Konecny, also had its origins just inside the Flyers blue line where the Blue Jackets mishandled the exchange on a drop pass. Scott Laughton was the one to handle this rush, and as he entered the Columbus zone, it appeared Ivan Provorov was going to just usher him to nowhere. But Laughton hit the brakes and let his old teammate fly right by, creating enough space to feed Konecny for a pretty against-the-grain wrister. It was a trademark sneaky-good play by Laughton, who had another one later on during a Columbus power play – his forechecking spooked Kirill Marchenko into a turnover, and Marchenko subsequently took a hooking penalty while trying to prevent Laughton from getting a scoring chance, wiping out the rest of the man-advantage.
The opener marked just the second game of Travis Sanheim’s NHL career that Provorov was not in the lineup with him. The only other time it happened was Jan. 4, 2022, which was Provorov’s first of three games in COVID protocol, but Sanheim also missed the next two of those three. When it comes to the question of how to fill Provorov’s minutes, Sanheim showed he could be up for the task. Sanheim played 26:17, which ranks 12th-most in his career; he only broke 26 minutes once last year, on Dec. 12 in Arizona, when he played 27:42. Meanwhile, Cam York took the left-side spot on the top pairing, which had been occupied by Provorov for all but three of about the last 500 games for the Flyers.
