Jakub Voracek is still looking for his first goal of the season.
Four games in, all the right wing has to show is an assist.
Which no doubt intensifies his desire to come out fast and hard Tuesday night when the Flyers' five-day fiesta ends as they host the highly-competitive Dallas Stars.
Stars forward Jamie Benn already has five goals and eight points. He was one of the players Voracek had to battle with all last season in the NHL scoring race. Voracek finished fourth with 81 points.
“It’s been a long break and we got to use it to our advantage and not disadvantage,” Voracek said, admitting he is antsy to get back on the ice. “It’s not the best scenario you want to be in.
“Three of four games, we played very good hockey. We’ve practiced hard and we’ve got to make sure we’re ready. It’s going to happen to every team.”
The Flyers have three games this week. They play back-to-back Tuesday and then Wednesday in Boston, before hosting the Rangers on Saturday.
Several players insisted they needed extra practice time to better comprehend coach Dave Hakstol’s systems, particularly, in the neutral zone where the Flyers have their defense covering wide toward the boards, as opposed to the forwards.
Both defensemen are asked to keep a tight gap close to the blue line.
“You are learning throughout the season,” Voracek said. “You can get better … that is what we tried to do during those five days, focus on things very hard in practice.”
Hakstol contradicted his players, saying they already had his systems down during training camp, but a number of players said during the break they needed more familiarity so they could react instinctively on the ice, instead of having to take a moment to think about what they were doing.
“We worked on our systems, and it’s starting to become second nature,” Wayne Simmonds said. “We’re not stopping to think, we’re just doing it. That’s a positive we got out of these five days.”
Simmonds admitted he had to brush up on a few things.
“Getting our neutral zone coverage down,” he said. “It’s a little bit different from last year. For everyone, that [five days of practice] was huge.”
Hakstol said he didn’t think the extra systems work “had any great impact.”
“It’s been a continual push each day to try improve everything we are doing from systems, but that hasn’t been the focus, the last couple days,” Hakstol said. “It’s just improving what we do on an overall basis.”