More conservative style working well for Flyers

MAX TALBOT is right. There's usually an underlying reason when one player has a career season offensively. And when a slew of them do, like the Flyers of last season, there's a slew of underlying reasons, too.

For the Flyers, the emergence of Claude Giroux from really good to the level of elite and the revival of Jaromir Jagr were two such reasons last season. Jagr's on-ice affect as a passer, and his off-ice influence on Scott Hartnell, created an offensive machine so prolific the Flyers sometimes fell irresponsibly in love with a style that created breathtaking excitement one minute and exasperation the next.

The Flyers scored 264 goals last season - 40 more than the league average. They also allowed 232 goals, which was eight more than the league average.

But Jagr is gone and Hartnell is hurt and Wayne Simmonds, one of those career-year guys, is now out with a concussion. With Danny Briere missing at the start and still looking for his groove, the Flyers have begun this season with nowhere near the firepower of a year ago, forcing them - after six losses in their first eight games - into a style of play that resembles not how they reached and succeeded in the playoffs but how they were eliminated.

"You look at our division with the way teams are playing,'' Briere was saying after the Flyers' 2-1 victory over Tampa Bay on Tuesday night. "New Jersey, the Rangers, even Pittsburgh is a tough team to play against. The Islanders are that way too now.

"We're going to need to be gritty to be able to win a lot of those games.''

You know what? That might not be a bad thing over the long haul.

Provided they can qualify for the long haul.

On Tuesday night, the Flyers defeated one of the Eastern Conference's better teams with two goals from Tom Sestito and some tremendous defensive play by Giroux and some of their more offensive stars like Briere. They defended in front of Ilya Bryzgalov with playoff desperation, deflecting pucks with their sticks, blocking shots with skates, playing pucks to the corners, fending off one of the league's more prolific teams right to the final horn, when a stick-holding penalty with 13.5 seconds remaining left them at a two-man disadvantage. Tampa Bay was 0-for-4 on the power play, its talent-rich special-teams play frustrated by well-disciplined penalty killers, much tighter gaps than in the Flyers' one-sided loss in Tampa, and active stickwork.

"We've been working on it,'' said Talbot, who squared off with Lightning captain Vincent Lecavalier in the third period. "The track back from the forwards was great. And we were more sharp with the puck.''

Tampa Bay entered the game with second-highest point total in the Eastern Conference. The Lightning has outscored opponents by 13-3 in the first period. Some of that has to do with six of its first nine games at home and some of it has to do with fast starts. It had neither Tuesday night.

Peter Laviolette can still talk the talk about a relentless offensive mentality, but there is no doubt the construction of this Flyers team, as it stands, is markedly different than the one that outslugged the Penguins last spring before the Devils wrapped and bound them on the way to a stunningly easy elimination series.

Amid his unsuccessful pursuit of brand-name defensemen to fill the void left by the quasi-retired Chris Pronger, Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren allowed Matt Carle, a well-skilled and good-skating defenseman, to sign in Tampa.

Instead, Holmgren went big, bigger and biggest in offseason defense acquisitions. In the early going, the Flyers are not as quick out of their zone, but they don't leave without the puck as often as their jailbreak mentality of last season - at least they haven't amid their modest two-game win streak.

The size in front of Bryzgalov is noticeable. And now that the forwards are getting their legs, the horrific gaps that marked their early shorthanded efforts are not as prevalent. The best thing, though, is this forced approach to playing a style that seems better suited to the roster as it is right now, and to a goaltender who is clearly relishing the company around him.

So what happens when Hartnell returns? Simmonds? When Danny finds his groove?

"I always hate talking about injuries,'' Briere said. "Because we might get more. We play a lot of games. So it's good to have some depth. It's good to see guys like Tom coming in and getting big goals for us, in a season where it's going to be very physically taxing.

"It's still early to tell. But I think we're just going to get better and better.''

On Twitter: @samdonnellon

Columns: philly.com/

SamDonnellon