Travis Konecny back up top in latest effort to kick start Flyers

PHILADELPHIA — The season is nine games old and already the Flyers need a kick in the pants.

They’ve won four, lost five, which is not good enough by their own standards after expectations were raised in the offseason.  Their efforts and execution have been spotty at best with only two games that showed a solid effort from the first minute to the last.

“We’re a game under .500. Boy, that’s mediocre at best,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “Now you have to back away and really look at the performances and evaluate the performances of your team but I think if we want to be honest with ourselves, the performance of our team equals our record right now. If you want to put mediocre on it, I’d say mediocre is at best (considering) what our expectations are.”

General manager Ron Hextall made it seem like no trades were imminent in his media address Tuesday, but he’s always looking to improve the team. A report from Rogers Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos says that the Flyers’ coaching staff is among those in the NHL that is “closely watched by their ownership. They want to win now.”

Something had to change and the only tangible move since Monday’s loss against the Colorado Avalanche is to reunite last season’s most effective incarnation of the top line: Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier and Travis Konecny.

Generally, the Flyers have worked with the same pairs on lines with a third player, usually a winger, rotating. There have already been a lot of changes as the Flyers try to find stable footing. Konecny is up with the top duo of Giroux and Couturier for the second time this season. He began the season there and it lasted two games before Jake Voracek took over and then, most recently, Wayne Simmonds.

“The two of them together have been good. They haven’t been great yet,” Hakstol said of Giroux and Couturier. “I think G has had a couple of great games, no question. I think I talked a little bit about it with Andrew MacDonald, the difficulties of missing training camp and Coots did that. Coots is working at his game. He’s always good in a two-way sense, but I believe there’s another step to his game early in the regular season that he can get to.”

The numbers back up Hakstol’s assessment. He’s been OK with the quantity of opponents’ chances in the last five games so from an offensive standpoint Couturier has certainly not done much to repeat last season’s breakout performance. Giroux is still carrying the team up front. Last year he factored in on 41 percent of the team’s goals. So far this season it’s close at 36 percent. Couturier has plummeted from 30.5 percent last season to only 10 percent so far with three points.

It’s still early in the season, but the Flyers are betting on Konecny bringing the best out of the top offensive pair.

“When I play with them I just use my speed to get pucks back for them,” Konecny explained. “Obviously I try not to be just along for the ride. I’m trying to be a big impact as well. I think my speed brings a lot to the line. If you can have the puck more in G and Coots’ hands more than not it’s obviously better for us. My job is creating a thread off the rush and backing teams off to give them space.”

Konecny began the year rather snake-bitten, hitting more posts than the net itself, and now has four points in his last four games.

He can bring a different element to the line than Simmonds, who protects the puck well but doesn’t have the game-breaking abilities that Konecny offers.

 “They’re two different players,” Giroux said. “Whoever it is, you try to adapt your play to who you’re playing with and trying to find plays that work with the guys you’re playing with. It looks like we’ve got TK (Thursday). We had success last year together. Hopefully we can get back on it.”

“The biggest thing with TK when he plays with that line, I don’t want him to change his game and become all about just trying to generate offense,” Hakstol added. “He’s gotta be a worker and he’s gotta let his dynamic abilities help him be a good player on that line.”

Because the Flyers are still relying heavily on their top line to produce offense while expensive acquisition James van Riemsdyk recovers from a knee injury, getting that unit to work is one of their biggest priorities.

If it doesn’t click soon, it might change again because the Flyers want to rid themselves of being mediocre as quick as possible.

“Obviously it’s nice when the team is rolling nice and the chemistry is being built but I don’t blame him the way we started this year,” Konecny said when asked about all the line changes. “We need to try new things out and shuffle lines around to get some wins. It’s short-lived with lines sometimes so we should get used to it.”

Dave Isaac; @davegisaac; 856-486-2479; disaac@gannett.com

Up next: at Boston Bruins
When: 7 p.m., Thursday
TV/Radio: NBCSP/97.5 FM