The Flyers should have a cheerful spirit for the holidays.<\/p>\n
They beat the Blackhawks, 3-1, Tuesday night at United Center and have turned some heads around the league.<\/p>\n
Travis Konecny, Noah Cates and Carl Grundstrom provided the Flyers’ goals in Chicago. Grundstrom’s marker was a game-sealing empty-netter.<\/p>\n
Konecny (one goal, one assist) and Sean Couturier (two assists) had multi-point performances.<\/p>\n
It was a quality effort from a Flyers team that was playing on the second night of a back-to-back set and had to finish the game without two players (more on that below).<\/p>\n
The Flyers (19-10-7) have recorded at least a point in 19 of their last 24 games (13-5-6).<\/p>\n
Going into the holiday break, Rick Tocchet’s club has the Eastern Conference’s second-best points percentage (.625), behind only the Hurricanes (.653). The Flyers are just two points back of first-place Carolina in the Metropolitan Division<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last season, the Flyers were 15-16-4 at the holiday break<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Blackhawks (13-17-6) have lost six straight and were without young star Connor Bedard, who’s recovering from an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n \u2022 Samuel Ersson had arguably his best start of the season with 20 saves on 21 shots.<\/p>\n He was real solid and made the necessary stops after an 0-2-2 stretch in his previous four outings.<\/p>\n Ryan Donato scored Chicago’s only goal with 1:30 minutes left in the second period when the action was at 4-on-4. It trimmed the Flyers’ lead to 2-1.<\/p>\n Ersson closed the door the rest of the way.<\/p>\n Blackhawks netminder Spencer Knight stopped 23 of the Flyers’ 25 shots.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Flyers went up 2-0 against the Blackhawks after a great pass from Travis Konecny to Noah Cates. It marked Konecny’s 300th career assist.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \u2022 With 12:31 minutes left in the third period, Travis Sanheim went down after being interfered by Alex Vlasic.<\/p>\n The Flyers’ minutes leader was shown on the TNT broadcast heading off under his own power, but he didn’t return to the game. We’ll see about his status come the weekend.<\/p>\n The break is coming at a good time for Sanheim, a guy the Flyers have relied on a lot. Just three days ago, he was left bloodied after taking a puck to the face in the Flyers’ 5-4 shootout loss to the Rangers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Denver Barkey was also missing down the stretch. The 20-year-old winger didn’t play in the third period.<\/p>\n He appeared shaken up after he was jumped by a pair of Blackhawks following a boarding penalty on Wyatt Kaiser with 2:13 minutes left in the second period.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2022 With a sharp feed on Konecny’s game-opening goal in the first period, Trevor Zegras extended his career-best point streak to nine games.<\/p>\n