It's all coming together for Tyson Foerster, just when the Flyers need him most

There were many reasons why the Philadelphia Flyers lost to the Washington Capitals in D.C. on Friday night.

But at the top of the list? The absence of a momentum halter.

The Flyers appeared in complete control after the first period against the Caps, up 2-0 and dominating. But in the middle stanza, Washington slowly clawed back, tying the game back up before the game’s halfway point. The situation was screaming for a Flyers player to deliver a singular effort, a standout shift, a tide-turning moment.

It never came.

“Not enough from our offensive guys,” John Tortorella said in the aftermath of the 5-2 defeat.

The Flyers head coach seemed in the moment to be referring to the team’s top veterans, such as Sean Couturier (who has been dropped to Line 4), Owen Tippett (who scored in the first period on Friday and then largely disappeared afterwards) and Joel Farabee (whose goalless drought had hit 14 games). With Travis Konecny still out with his upper-body injury, someone was going to need to step up and be the one to take over a game if it ended up on the brink.

Rookie Tyson Foerster wasn’t at the top of anyone’s list. But perhaps he should have been. That’s exactly the role he took up on Saturday against the Ottawa Senators.

“He makes a couple huge plays there out of kind of nothing, and that’s kind of what we need with TK out,” Scott Laughton noted.

With time running down in the second period, Saturday’s game appeared to be following a near-identical script as Friday’s defeat. Yet again, the Flyers controlled the opening stanza, this time outshooting their opponent a whopping 19 – 4. But they failed to put the Senators away, heading into the break up by a margin of just one goal — which would quickly disappear when Vladimir Tarasenko scored to tie the game back up just four minutes into the middle stanza.

The night before, a late-second period John Carlson goal broke both the tie, and the Flyers as well. All it would take was one mistake and Friday could happen once more.

Instead, Tyson Foerster happened.

The first sign of Foerster’s looming dominance came late in the period, when he overpowered Ottawa goalie Mads Sogaard with a blistering shot only to watch the goalpost deny him his expected reward. He wasn’t going to be rebuffed a second time. With less than a minute remaining in the period, Foerster took a pass off an offensive zone faceoff win by Laughton, and sent a distance sizzler past Sogaard to put the Flyers back in front.

“He obviously has the unbelievable shot. I feel like he’s really finding those areas for him to shoot,” Joel Farabee noted.

But Foerster wasn’t even close to finished. On his very next shift, with just seconds remaining in the period, he stripped Jakob Chychrun of the puck, raced down the ice for a breakaway, and when his attempt was obstructed, he finished the job on the resulting penalty shot, putting the game completely out of reach for the Senators.

It wasn’t the Flyers team as a whole that responded to the adversity of the night. It was 22-year old Tyson Foerster, putting the team on his back.

“I’ve been looking to him the whole time, because he was getting chances,” Tortorella responded when asked if Foerster has become one of the players he relies upon for key offensive plays. “It’s easy for a coach to look at a guy for scoring, (when you) also know he’s probably one of your best defensive players, too. So I’ve been looking his way pretty much all year long.”

The numbers support Tortorella’s claim about Foerster’s defensive acumen. Heading into Saturday’s game, Foerster didn’t merely grade out as the Flyers’ best defensive forward by Evolving-Hockey’s xG RAPM model, he ranked as the second-best forward in the entire league in terms of his impact on xG suppression at even strength, trailing only Dallas star Jason Robertson.

But Torts isn’t a numbers guy. He’s an eye-test guy. And plays like the one Foerster made on Chychrun only confirm his belief that he has a defensive stud on his hands.

“He’s done it all year long,” Tortorella noted. “It’s a big part of our job coaching, to teach players away from the puck. He’s well beyond (needing serious teaching) right now.”

Foerster has been driving play by the numbers and passing the two-way eye test all season. What he hasn’t done all season? Score. When 2023 came to an end, Foerster had just five goals in 35 games, finishing on a mere 6.8 percent of his shots on goal.

It didn’t make sense. Foerster was drafted in the first round back in 2020 largely due to the quality of his shot, which graded out as plus-plus according to the scouts. Based on those scouting reports, it seemed that the most likely outcome for his rookie NHL season in 2023-24 was that Foerster would be an offensive threat, but in need of serious tutelage to develop his all-around game.

Instead, it was the opposite: Foerster was killing it by advanced metrics and fully endearing himself to his oft-demanding coach, but he just couldn’t score.

Yet aside from a few skyward looks after missed opportunities in December, Foerster kept himself from falling into frustration — at least according to his roommate Farabee.

“He’s pretty even-keeled. Not like me,” Farabee cracked. “He’s a true pro for how young he is. Just how he carries himself around the rink and away from the rink, it’s really nice to see from such a young guy.”

Eventually, Foerster’s thinking went, the goals were bound to start coming.

“You just gotta keep playing your game,” Foerster said. “Like you said, I had a bunch of chances early on in the year, and they just weren’t going in. Now, they’re starting to.”

Are they ever.

With his two-goal night on Saturday, Foerster now has nine goals in his last nine games, including three two-goal performances, putting him on pace for 22 goals on the season. That’s right in line with what Konecny delivered in his fourth season after being drafted (he scored 24), except Konecny had the benefit of two full NHL campaigns at that point.

Foerster, on the other hand, is just a rookie. But his finishing talent is already emerging at the NHL level. Add in Foerster’s three goals on 15 shots during his eight-game audition with the Flyers last season, and he’s scored on 13.6 percent of his NHL shots now — higher than the career rates of both Konecny (12.6 percent) and Farabee (12.7 percent), the Flyers’ top two pure finishers.

“I don’t know if there’s a point where it clicks and they just start going in,” Laughton said. “You get a little confidence on your stick, start feeling a little better about your game, and then things start happening.”

It’s not merely confidence, though. The usually guarded Foerster revealed a bit of his thought process from his first goal on Saturday, and it spoke to his talent for seeing the entire ice when in shooting position — even without looking.

“I think my head was down, and the puck was rolling a bit,” Foerster recalled. “Beezer had a nice screen, he picked the guy. So I had a lane, and I just shot it with my head down, and it was lucky enough to go in.”

Sure, Foerster is getting some luck now, just as he was almost certainly a bit unlucky during the season’s first half. It’s not like he’s going to continue to finish on 37.5 percent of his shots as he has over this nine-game stretch. But even that luck is in part the residue of Foerster’s design.

So what comes next for the Flyers’ hero on Saturday?

In the here and now, expect the NHL club to continue to rely upon him. The hope expressed by Flyers general manager Daniel Briere on Friday night was that Konecny could be back in time for Thursday’s game against the powerhouse Florida Panthers, but that’s no guarantee. And even if Konecny does return, he’ll have missed a week and a half in the midst of the most intense part of the season, just as the Flyers jump into the toughest part of their schedule — a gauntlet that includes nine out of ten games against likely Eastern Conference playoff teams.

Assuming Konecny comes back at full strength, he’ll still need help. Couturier continues to toil away on Line 4, trying to rediscover his game. Farabee did finally break that goalless drought on Saturday, but he’s over a month removed from his last scoring hot streak. And Tippett has just four goals since the all-star break. The Flyers will need a player like Foerster to pick up the slack if those players don’t or simply can’t.

“He was great for us (tonight),” Laughton noted in the wake of Saturday’s 4-2 win. “And we’re gonna need him.”

In the long-term, however, the possibilities surrounding Foerster’s upside are even more exciting.

Throughout the season, as Foerster sustained stellar underlying even strength results, a fascinating question emerged: What if Foerster could stay an elite play-driver and fully tap into his plus shot at the NHL level as well?

Nine goals in nine games and his clutch performance on Saturday imply that Foerster might be doing just that.