Flyers captain Giroux has come of age

IT'S A subtle thing, maturity. Rarely, if ever, is it marked by breakthrough moments like a birthday. It is, instead, a gradual process, unnoticed until one day, pow, it hits you like a bag of frozen pucks.

So it was for me the other day, standing in the dressing room at the Flyers' practice facility, watching Claude Giroux command the room - command his room. Handling layers of interviews with patience and the analysis of a veteran who now sees the game more through the eyes of a coach than a superstar. Later, walking a French-speaking television crew around the place, bellows of laughter erupting periodically, a chocolate cake to mark his 28th birthday finishing it all.

It's his team now. There's a leadership core, sure, but he commands a presence that really wasn't there in his early years as this team's captain. You can see it on the ice, sure, and on the bench. But it is in the "room," as hockey players call the various places they dress, where it's evident that Giroux finally has those skilled hands of his completely around this captain's role that was thrust upon him at the ripe old age of 24.

He has done this despite some uneven offense from him that mirrors his team's powderless attack. Giroux's three assists in Wednesday night's improbable, come-from-behind, 3-2 victory over the Boston Bruins doubled his point output over the previous 11 games, a stretch that has included only one goal.

"You have no idea," he said with a grin when someone asked him earlier this week whether it was hard not to be frustrated by it.

This would be of great concern, or greater concern, if this were 2013, not 2016, and he were still trying on that "C" on his jersey, still feeling its weight. But Giroux appears to have figured out the tricky merge of creative individuality - which catapulted him from an overlooked junior player to NHL stardom - with the kind of play that makes those around him perform better and play harder, and he has leaned heavily on this knowledge to avoid becoming ineffective.

"The biggest enemy for you," he said, "is getting frustrated."

Frustration leads to doubt, which leads to indecision, and ultimately, a lack of confidence. There have been those moments for Giroux - he passed up several shots Wednesday night to make what he considered a better play. But none materialized.

"It's huge, the head," said Jake Voracek, who scored one goal over his first 30 games this season. "Sometimes it lets you feel better physically. If your head is OK, you don't play the game in your head.

"When you're not there in your head, you try to force plays that are not there. You overskate pucks. You're skating too much. When everything is right in your head, you're just slowing things down. You're making smarter decisions. You know you're not going to get to that puck, so why am I going to skate 100 miles an hour to get it? If you're not doing well, you tend to skate to it anyway and then he passes it and you're behind the play, skating like hell to get back."

Giroux's been there. It's why he's making the small plays, like digging deep into his own defensive zone to pull out a puck and start a rush, as he did during a second-period shift Wednesday night; feathering a pass from deep in his zone midway through the third period to send linemates Voracek and Wayne Simmonds toward a jail-break rush and tying goal.

There was no trepidation on his first assist, either, Giroux pouncing on a puck late in the first period after Mark Streit squeezed it from the corner, firing a quick what-the-hell shot through traffic and into the crease, where Voracek outmuscled a trio of Bruins to twirl the rebound past Tuukka Rask as he flopped to the ice. And he was in the middle again during another jail break, the winner, sliding the puck to Streit in front of the net for the game-winner.

Three plays, three points, on another one of those nights that could have gone the other way easily - and did until recently. Enough to beat a struggling Bruins team that has now won only twice in its last 10 games, free-falling its way toward the bog of surging and sliding wannabe playoff teams.

One such team, the Flyers, entered the game surging, winners of three in a row despite the absence of Shayne Gostisbehere, despite Giroux's offensive struggles. It ended with him doubling his production over the previous 11 games with a slew of heady plays, all needed from a captain now in the prime of his career both mentally and physically, capable and willing to handle anything that comes his way.

Email:  donnels@phillynews.com

On Twitter: @samdonnellon

Columns: ph.ly/Donnellon