Adjusting to life in the world’s top hockey league hasn’t been a total cakewalk for Philadelphia Flyers forward Bobby Brink. As is the case with most young players, he’s experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.
Just a year ago, the Minnesota native learned a difficult lesson when he was scratched for a road game against the Minnesota Wild in Minneapolis. It would have been his first time suiting up as an NHLer in his home state with friends and family in attendance. Instead, he watched from the press box as his teammates celebrated an overtime victory on the ice below.
But with time and lots of patience, Brink’s highs have gradually begun outweighing the lows. Thursday, for example, was a testament to how far he’s come since that bittersweet night in his return to Minnesota.
With the Flyers trudging through a miserable five-game losing skid, Brink led the charge against a high-powered Tampa Bay Lightning club, logging a pair of goals and an assist to help his squad earn a 4-3 shootout win on home ice — the Flyers’ first victory in nearly two weeks.
Brink hadn’t lit the lamp in seven straight games leading up to Thursday night’s tilt, but the scoring slump was more a result of bad luck than poor play. Frankly, Brink’s recent play has been anything but ineffective.
“Bobby’s been playing good, period. He just hasn’t finished. He hasn’t scored,” Flyers head coach John Tortorella said after the game.
Finishing certainly wasn’t an issue against Tampa.
He scored his first goal off the rush, beating Lightning netminder Jonas Johansson with a quick glove-side wrister following some nifty passing from Olle Lycksell and Ryan Poehling. His second marker came soon after he was assessed a two-minute hooking penalty. After a successful kill by the Flyers’ PK, he stepped out of the box, aided his teammates in the defensive zone, then darted up the ice to find open space in transition. Captain Sean Couturier hit him with a cross-ice feed on the rush, and Brink turned on the jets to pull away from a pair of Tampa defenders before beating Johansson again, this time with a silky backhander to the blocker side.
“You’re not gonna score every game. Some games you’re gonna get two, so I think you just kind of stay even-keeled and don’t ride high or low,” said Brink.
“Sometimes when the pucks are going in, you just look better out there.”
But perhaps Brink’s most impressive play of the night came on a goal scored by Poehling. Owen Tippett shoveled the puck into the Lightning end, and Brink raced after it to gain possession deep in the zone with three Tampa defenders closing in on him. He fended off a pursuer along the boards and alertly zipped the puck to Lycksell, who fed a wide-open Poehling with a pass between the legs of Erik Cernak. Poehling proceeded to take care of the rest.
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It was a highlight-reel goal for Poehling — his first in over a month — and it wouldn’t have been possible without Brink’s hustle.
“He does the little things right, which is super important for a guy like that. He has top-end skill. Some of the best I’ve seen,” said Poehling. “For him to kind of do the little things, to teach other skill guys that, ‘Hey, this is how you get more ice time,’ and on top of it, he’s helping his game a lot creating more offensive chances too, so he’s a great guy and I couldn’t be happier for him.”
Poehling doesn’t typically skate on a line with Brink, but in an effort to get Travis Konecny out of his slump, Tortorella opted to bump Konecny up to the second line with Noah Cates and Tyson Foerster.
The Brink-for-Konecny swap turned out to be a worthwhile experiment — just not in the way Tortorella was planning.
“[Brink] is a good match for Tyson and Catesy. I need to get TK going. I need to get something going with him. That’s why I switched that,” said Tortorella. “But he’s such a good match with them, and the part of the game is he works so hard away from the puck. That helps his offense. You look, he has eight goals coming into tonight’s game, but he ends up with a ton of chances during the year. He just hasn’t finished. I take him off that line, he scores two.
“Not a big guy, and I think we have to get bigger as a team, but he’s taken a huge step in his development as far as what it is to be a pro first of all, how he carries himself, and how well he’s played consistently throughout the year.”
Still just 23 years old, Brink is far from a finished product. But his maturation as a creator of offense has been a major development. Most impressively, he’s doing the lion’s share of his damage at 5-on-5.
Believe it or not, with just 15 games left to play in the regular season, Brink leads all Flyers — yes, including Konecny, Tippett and rookie sensation Matvei Michkov — with 2.18 5-on-5 points per 60 minutes. Only Konecny has registered more points than Brink at 5-on-5 this season, and that’s with a whopping 247 additional minutes of 5-on-5 ice time compared to Brink.
Brink’s growth over the last year has been encouraging. He’s already set new career highs in assists and points, and there’s a good chance he’ll end up setting a personal best in goals as well. Unquestionably, there’s still work to do in rounding out his game away from the puck, but the progress he’s made in that realm hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“I have been all over Bobby for the first couple years, and I just like the way he’s handled it. He’s just taken it on. I think he’s accepted the challenge, and I’m happy for him,” said Tortorella.
“I think he’s found an area that I don’t think he thought he could play. He was a scorer in college. Small guy. Probably doesn’t think he’s good enough to check, but he’s found a way to play hard in those areas, and I think that’s taken him to another level this year. It’s good to see.”
Statistics courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and NHL.com.