Perhaps the biggest challenge playing the lowly San Jose Sharks presents is a sense of overconfidence.
To their credit, the Flyers didn’t fall victim to that trap on Tuesday night.
Philadelphia dominated the NHL’s second-lowest point team enroute to a 4-0 win at SAP Center at San Jose, bringing in the new year with a needed celebration.
After taking a 1-0 lead into the second period, the Flyers picked up goals from Ryan Poehling and Travis Konecny to pretty much send the Sharks to their eighth straight loss.
Starting goalie Samuel Ersson played two strong periods for the Flyers, allowing no goals. But he left after that,
and Aleksei Kolosov took over for the third. There was no immediate word of a possible injury to Ersson.
Poehling converted the rebound of an Egor Zamula point shot at 12:09 to get the offense going.
Then Konecny took a pass from Owen Tippett and scored on the power play at 13:44. That ended Philadelphia’s 0-for-17 drought with the man advantage.
Jamie Drysdale, who had two assists, said it was nice to get the dry spell on the power play over with.
“We moved it well, moved it quick,” Drysdale said. “A lot of the power play is confidence. It’s a step in the right direction. It was a good game across the board.”
At the second intermission, Poehling explained why it was important not to let a three-goal lead slip away. The Flyers gave up a three-goal lead against the Sharks in an earlier meeting and needed a shootout goal from Matvei Michkov to secure the victory.
“You’ve got to keep the pedal down,” Poehling said in an interview. “(In the first game) we let the lead get away from us. We need to play a full 60 (minutes).”
He enjoyed playing on a new line with Konecny and Tippett.
“Yeah, we played fast and we played with possession,” Poehling said. “It felt great. We supported each other well. We’re holding onto pucks, being there for one another.”s
The Flyers scored one goal in the first period and had what they thought was another one disallowed by an offside call.
Nick Seeler broke through for the Flyers at 5:59. He rushed down the left side, made a nice deke move around Barclay Goodrow and sent a short shot past goaltender Alexandar Georgiev.
“I kind of faked to the middle,” Seeler explained. “Saw a lane and it went in. (In the first period) Our forwards did a great job forechecking, creating pressure.”
On the disallowed goal, Tippett fired a shot which nicked off Morgan Frost from the right dot beyond the reach of Georgiev at 13:53. But the Sharks challenged the play on offsides and were successful.
In the third period, Zamula banked a shot off defenseman Shakir Mukhamadullin for a 4-0 lead.
>Ersson injury cause for concern
If Ersson, who might have been injured in a collision with San Jose’s Luke Kunin in the second period, can’t be ready for Vegas on Thursday, it looks like Kolosov will get the start. He played so well in the third period against the Sharks, that’s probably not a bad thing.
“I don’t know what happened,” Tortorella said. “I think it happened in the collision. What the injury is, I’m not sure. The way it’s gone for Sam, it’s a concern.
“For a goalie going through some of the injuries he has, it’s not just getting healthy, it’s just mental. He probably played one of his better games. It’s one of the reasons why we won that game in Anaheim. And now he’s nicked up again.”
>Short shots
The Flyers make a stop at Vegas on Thursday to play the Golden Knights. Then there is one more game on this trip, at Toronto on Sunday night. . .Philadelphia leads the NHL shot blocks. They were stopping them at 18.22 per game going into Tuesday night. . .Sean Couturier was dropped to fourth line, centering Joel Farabee and Garnett Hathaway. . .Philadelphia’s penalty kill unit, which ranked as high as third in the NHL back in November, had fallen all the way to 21st at 77.9 percent entering the game. . .Bobby Brink’s goal drought reached 14 games.
