Flyers Keeping Top Line Together For Now

VOORHEES — Claude Giroux remembers the feeling well.

Two seasons ago, it took him 16 games to score his first goal. Now his linemate, Jake Voracek, has eclipsed that goalless stretch.

“The thing is you think about it 24/7,” Giroux said. “When you wake up, that’s the first thing you think about. When you go to bed, that’s the last thing you think. You just need to stop thinking about it. It’s easy to say, but it’s hard to do. When he’s gonna get out of this little scoring slump, he’s gonna start going.”

And whenever he does, it will be on the same line. The Flyers have lost eight of their last nine games and rookie coach Dave Hakstol has decided that he’ll leave the big red button untouched. He won’t blow everything up and reconfigure all the lines.

Not yet.

“There’s a fine line there,” he said. “The new things that you look at also have to make sense to a certain degree on paper. You can’t just throw something at the wall and hope it sticks. We’re gonna keep at it. We’re going to keep looking. We’ll also do it with a good degree of thought process that goes into it.”

Only one game this season was it the case that Giroux, Voracek and Michael Raffl weren’t together. Some other lines have changed, but recently the Flyers’ fourth line has been best. Scott Laughton put the Flyers up a goal early Thursday night after Chris VandeVelde provided the work on a turnover and Ryan White screened Washington goalie Braden Holtby.