In weirdest game of the season, Flyers battle lights and Lightning yet come out on top

Recently, the Philadelphia Flyers launched an intermission diversion game of hockey tic-tac-toe. In it, two fans face off head-to-head, earning the right to place their X or O cards on a full-sized 3×3 board at center ice by shooting pucks into an open net.

During the second intermission on Tuesday, the fan representing “X” scored a goal, picked up an “O” already placed on the board, went over to cross-check his O foe, and then tossed the letter aside before placing his own X down in the now-vacated spot to “win” the game. After being disqualified for this clear affront to the classic test of wits, X-man picked a hockey fight — probably fake, but impossible to know for sure — with his victorious opponent, an opponent sporting the recognizable No. 19 jersey of 2017 second overall pick Nolan Patrick, the furthest thing from a Philadelphia sports winner.

Yet this was maybe the fifth-weirdest event of the night on Tuesday — the night the lights went off at the Wells Fargo Center.

Well, sort of. Kind of. Halfway.

“Almost felt like the outdoor game, with the darkness around us,” Travis Sanheim noted after the Flyers’ 6-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning. “Then it started to get really hot, and the ice started to get terrible there as it got warmer.”

After just 6:17 had passed in the first period and the Flyers already up 1-0, the lights in the building flickered for a couple seconds in the middle of play. And then, about half of them shut off entirely. The top LED ring between the concourse and mezzanine levels went black, and the lower ring shut completely off on the press box side. The entire center of the press box-facing jumbotron was also no longer visible. The result was an arena that, as starting goalie Sam Ersson put it, was as well-lit as one might have imagined an NHL building from 50 years ago.

“I mean, when you try prepare yourself for the game, for eventual challenges, that might not be one you’re prepared for,” Ersson admitted with a soft smile. “Things are gonna happen, you just have to find a way to deal with it.”

But why did this particular “thing” happen? According to Phil Law, president of the Wells Fargo Center, a transformer on the event level blew out during the first period. There was no fire and, thankfully, no one was injured in the accident. But the result was about half of the Wells Fargo Center’s electrical power was out — including audio control (so no public address announcements from Lou Nolan) and scoreboard control (so no running clock in the arena).

“This is a new one tonight,” Laws sheepishly admitted in between the first and second periods.

After bringing the game to a stop, the officials circled up with the two head coaches — John Tortorella and Tampa’s Jon Cooper. Both men still wanted to continue the game, but the two decided they would first check with their goalies (Ersson and Andrei Vasilevskiy), given they would face the biggest challenge due to increased shadows and adjusted puck sightlines.

“We’re up 1-0 at that time. I don’t think Erss was too crazy (about playing). I don’t really give a shit what Erss thought – we’re up 1-0,” Tortorella cracked after the game. “(But) I think that’s the biggest thing, because the goalies (are who) it affects the most.”

Preexisting lead aside, there was no way for Tortorella to know how the unique circumstances would impact his team the rest of the way. And while more and more of the lights did slowly come back on as the second and third periods progressed — by the end of the third, it looked mostly like a normal NHL game, sans the functioning jumbotron — the incident appeared to dramatically slow the game’s pace.

“It was weird though, because it kinda took a little bit of energy out of the game, I thought,” Morgan Frost acknowledged.

So the Flyers struggled to build on their early 1-0 lead. And then, in the second, Nick Paul blasted a shot past Ersson to tie it up. Suddenly, the Flyers were staring at a possible three-game losing streak, after a frustrating weekend of two tight defeats at the hands of Metropolitan Division rivals.

“I think last year, we might lose ourselves, get a little antsy when they score and tie it up,” Tortorella said. “But we just kept it together, got through the second period, where I thought they were better than we were. And then had a really good third.”

And now, it’s time for the other weird parts of Tuesday’s clash of Eastern Conference playoff hopefuls. Not the fact that the Flyers delivered that strong final stanza — that’s been a regular occurrence this season. It was the manner in which they did so, namely by exploiting an off night from Vasilevskiy, a future Hall of Fame netminder. Yet surprisingly, it was Ersson who handled the odd shadows and weird circumstances of the evening best, while Vasilevskiy whiffed on a harmless Tyson Foerster backhand to hand the Flyers back the lead just 54 seconds into the third period — a lead they would never relinquish.

But it wasn’t Philadelphia’s best-known players who locked down the win. In fact, pretty much all of those players were non-factors.

Travis Konecny remains out with the injury he suffered last Friday at practice, and based on Tortorella’s apprehensive postgame comments, his return might not be imminent despite Flyers GM Daniel Briere designating him as “day-to-day” on Tuesday afternoon. Owen Tippett — he of the newly signed $49.6 million contract — went pointless, and has just one assist in the Flyers’ past four games. Respected veteran scorer Cam Atkinson — scoreless in his last 11 games — was a healthy scratch. And most surprisingly, Sean Couturier, the team’s new captain and longtime 1C, was deployed in a fourth line role, centering enforcer Nicolas Deslauriers and recent call-up Olle Lycksell, receiving just 12:12 minutes of ice time in the process.

“I’m playing other guys,” Tortorella offered after the game when asked for clarity on Couturier’s apparent demotion. “That’s where it’s at right now. It’s been a little bit of a struggle for him.”

So how did the Flyers deliver that third period surge, without the help of Messrs. Konecny, Couturier, Atkinson and Tippett? It was the team’s depth players that led the way — the depth players who spent months being carried by their teammates, at least in terms of offense production.

Foerster scored his fourth goal in three games, after going 16 without a goal in December and January. Noah Cates popped in a goal and an assist and now has points in three of his last four games — after producing just five prior to the All-Star break. Scott Laughton’s seven-game scoring streak may have come to an end on Tuesday, but he was second among Philadelphia forwards in minutes and appears fully back to his old self. Speaking of those who are back, Bobby Brink made his long-awaited return to the NHL club after a month-long demotion to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, and celebrated his recall in style, via the game-opening goal and his first NHL point of 2024. Even Travis Sanheim’s offense has reemerged, after he posted just two points in 14 January games; Tuesday’s two-point performance gives him nine points in his last 10.

So on this night, the Flyers played in a building functioning at half electrical power at times, faced a HOF-caliber goalie delivering a dud performance, deployed their usual 1C as a 4C, scratched one of the head coach’s longtime favorite players, were carried by once-struggling supporting pieces, and shared an arena with a tic-tac-toe cheater who beat up a still-loyal Nolan Patrick supporter.

Yup, this qualifies as the Flyers’ strangest night of 2023-24.

“Definitely a weird game, but I’m happy with the result,” Sanheim said.

The result, of course, matters most. After falling to the Rangers and Penguins this past week — and with Washington entering play on Tuesday with an opportunity to cut Philadelphia’s hold on the final guaranteed Metro playoff spot to just two points — the Flyers very much needed a victor. And despite the craziness, in spite of facing a quality opponent who blew them out in this very same arena only a little over a month ago, in spite of lacking their best players either physically or in spirit, they won anyway.

Unlike tic-tac-toe man.