Sean Couturier bought in to a more physical role. Now it’s set the tone for the Flyers’ playoff run.

Egor Chinakhov glided in toward the boards to recover a rolling puck for the Penguins, and Sean Couturier closed in to crush him into them.

Sidney Crosby skated on a beeline, intending to crash Dan Vladar’s crease, and Travis Sanheim tossed him down to the ice for even daring to try, even if it ended with the defenseman taking an interference call for it.

Then the last seconds were dwindling down. Crosby sat along the wall waiting for the puck to jar loose so he could try to take off with it, but Sanheim drifted in to give him a shove. The Pittsburgh captain pushed back, Sanheim threw a cross-check, and then Crosby upped the ante with a slash that finally drew a whistle and brought on matching two-minute minor penalties for both. 

But the key part was: it meant that a pressing Penguins team was left without its best player for the rest of the game. 

There’s an eternal adage that in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, a team has to be tougher just as much as it has to be skilled and smarter.

The Philadelphia Flyers, at the lead of two of their longest-tenured veterans, rose to that occasion for their 3-2 win Saturday night in Game 1.

Couturier, who has taken to his adjusted role as a bottom-line checker and skating with maybe the most physicality of his career because of it, finished Saturday night with a game-high seven hits.

Sanheim was credited with just three checks, but complemented them with suffocating top-pairing minutes alongside a postseason-debuting Rasmus Ristolainen, which largely kept the Penguins’ top line with Crosby pushed to the outside.

Then, with a deceptive move and a step into a ton of open space midway through the third period, Sanheim took his time, picked his corner, and fired in the go-ahead goal.

On the road in a hostile PPG Paints Arena, and up against a far more playoff-experienced Penguins core, the Flyers were meaner, smarter, and overall, just better.

And that all started with their vets – mainly, their captain.

“It’s the playoffs,” said Couturier, the only one left to have played in that fight-filled barn-burner of a series against the Penguins back in 2012. “Everyone kind of steps up their intensity, and [I was] just trying to have an impact in any way I could early on.”

Which ironically, or maybe even fittingly, wasn’t all that different from the mentality that a 19-year-old Couturier carried into that legendary first-round series from 14 years ago.

Back then, Couturier was just a rookie, but a hard-working and defensively dedicated one who quickly became a fan favorite, along with becoming former coach Peter Laviolette’s go-to for a shutdown center.

When that series began in Pittsburgh, Laviolette called Couturier’s number whenever Evgeni Malkin, the Penguins’ other generational star and that season’s eventual MVP, stepped onto the ice. 

And for whatever Malkin tried to do, he just could never shake a relentless and annoying Couturier away. That stuck through the entire series, Malkin got increasingly frustrated along with the rest of a Penguins lineup that was continually melting down against a pestering Flyers squad that kept one-upping them.

The Flyers won that series in an emphatic six games, a young Couturier gained and ran with a spotlight as one of the NHL’s best-developing defense centers, and a whole lot has happened since, for better and worse.

Charles LeClaire/Imagn Images

Faceoffs are still a big way for Sean Couturier to make a difference.

Couturier went from an up-and-coming center to a Selke-caliber two-way star, but then into his back issues, and when he came back from them after nearly two years, the Flyers’ acceptance of and leaning into a rebuild. Then, in the late stages of this season, after a long run of ineffective or even non-existent offensive play, came a gradual acceptance that a now 33-year-old Couturier couldn’t be skating as a Line 1 or 2 center anymore.

It was tough for the captain and longest-tenured Flyer to slip down the lineup and into, at surface level, a lesser role.

It originally happened in the previous two seasons under former coach John Tortorella, along with some infamous healthy scratchings and openly out there disagreements about the decision-making and messaging of it between coach and player.

For current head coach Rick Tocchet to arrive at the same conclusion, both he and Couturier admitted it took some lengthy and honest conversations to get on the same page about it, along with, on Tocchet’s end, empathy as a former player and trust that he could still look to Couturier in big spots – like to win an important faceoff, to kill off a pivotal power play, or to hold the line in the last minute of a game.

“We all go through it, right?” Tocchet said last Thursday after practice at the Flyers’ Training Center in Voorhees. “I mean, I’ve gone through it. I remember my last run here, Simon Gagné and [Justin Williams], they’re taking your jobs. You have to accept your role, whatever you can give the team.

“And with Coots, like, sometimes he plays 13 minutes, sometimes he plays 18-20 minutes. It depends on the game. So, whether you want to call him a fourth-liner or whatever, I don’t even put a tag on it.”

Really, there’s probably no reason to. Either way, the work with Couturier to get him to buy back into a more defensive-minded, checking-heavy role, which isn’t much unlike the one he carried in his rookie year all that time ago, has been one of the major difference-makers in the Flyers’ rally back into the playoffs.

Ever since coming back from the Olympic break, and especially down that last stretch from late March into April, when the point gap in the standings was rapidly shrinking, Couturier settled in and noticeably started throwing the body around way more, and with a lot more authority and aggression. 

It sent jolts through the arena, especially when the Flyers were in front of their home crowd. It jarred the puck loose, and at minimum, kept the opposition from getting anywhere, or at the maximum, changed possession to send the Flyers sprinting toward the other net.

Couturier adjusted, accepted, and did his part; the Flyers rallied back into the playoffs for the first time in years; and once they were finally there on Saturday night, his physicality helped establish the tempo and tone for an otherwise young team that was largely unfamiliar to the postseason stage, but didn’t want to leave Pittsburgh with a moment to breath nonetheless.

The Flyers are leading the best-of-seven series, 1-0, now because of it, with the aim of keeping their momentum rolling straight into Game 2 Monday night back in Pittsburgh.

But doing so will continue under the guidance of their vets. 

It will continue with Couturier going right back out there and stapling a Penguins skater to the boards again.

“That’s a leader right there, right?” longtime teammate Travis Konecny said last week of Couturier’s impact, before the series even started. “He figured out what was gonna help the team and he bought in 100 percent to that role. 

“I mean, you talk to him, he just wants to win. That’s what drives all of us, but you can tell when it starts from the top with him, it’s infectious, the whole team sees it, and you want to buy in to your role, too.” 

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