Tippett’s hat trick a promising sign for future as Flyers rout Sabres originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
Owen Tippett put up his first career NHL hat trick and the Flyers rolled the Sabres, 5-2, Friday night at the Wells Fargo Center.
The 24-year-old winger made the hats rain down after scoring on a filthy breakaway move in the third period.
John Tortorella’s team needed a morale-boosting win and was able to get one emphatically, improving to 1-1-0 on its season-long seven-game homestand.
Joel Farabee and James van Riemsdyk each netted their 10th goal of the season.
The marker for Farabee snapped his slump of 26 straight games without a goal. Sigh of relief for the 23-year-old winger.
Ten different Flyers registered a point. Kevin Hayes and Tony DeAngelo tallied two assists. Tyson Foerster recorded his first career NHL point with a helper.
With the victory, the Flyers (25-32-11) matched their win and point total (61) from last season’s long and dreadful 25-46-11 campaign. Tortorella’s club has 14 games remaining on the season.
The Flyers are 2-0-0 against the Sabres (33-29-6) this season and have outscored them 9-2. The clubs meet a final time in a little over two weeks back at the Wells Fargo Center.
• Tippett entered this season without a multi-goal game in his NHL career.
He has three multi-goal games this season and 21 markers overall on the season.
The 24-year-old winger has arguably been the Flyers’ biggest positive in 2022-23. He came to the Flyers last March in the Claude Giroux trade and is looking like a legit piece to the future.
• The Flyers are rebuilding and purely focused on development for next season. But some victories don’t hurt in the process.
They had lost 16 of their previous 20 games (4-12-4), a stretch in which they scored just 2.05 goals per game.
So while this win didn’t help their NHL draft lottery odds, it’s good for the confidence of a team trying to build something.
Victories now can help for the future. And there hasn’t exactly been a ton of positives around the Flyers the last couple of weeks.
“We’ve got to try to get everything in order — our discipline and continue to work hard and try to find a way to win,” Tortorella said Friday morning. “When you’re developing people and you’re trying to find a way to teach them how to be pros, winning is important. That’s why they put the uniform on. So it’s been very frustrating for everybody.”
The Flyers hadn’t scored five or more goals since Jan. 17.
• Carter…