Owen Tippett put the icing on the cake in the Philadelphia Flyers’ 5-1 win over the Dallas Stars on Thursday night.
Having already scored once in the game, Tippett hungered for more with time winding down in the third period. The Stars still had a sliver of hope left despite being down 4-1 late in the third period, and one goal could have changed the complexion of those final few minutes. However, the only one that was going to be doing the scoring was Tippett.
Should Joel Hanley have hit the net on his one-time blast, the Stars might have caught life. Instead, Hanley got put on a poster. With the Stars defender’s shot producing a hearty bounce in the Flyers’ favor, Tippett picked up the loose puck and quickly raced down the ice, recognizing he was 1-on-1 with Hanley before whipping his howitzer past Jake Oettinger for Philadelphia’s fifth goal of the night.
“I looked up to see if someone was coming with me. I knew we had a couple of guys,” Tippett said, recalling the buildup to the goal. “Once I saw no one there it would have been a problem, but I just tried to grab a step on him and go to the net but he stayed with me pretty well.”
“It’s one of those thing where you’re kind of spinning and you’re just trying to get it on the net,” the Flyers winger added. “I knew if I could get it kind of far side it might catch [Oettinger] off guard, and I was just more just trying to create an opportunity than anything.”
Aside from blowing the roof off the Wells Fargo Center with his theatrics, Tippett managed to ‘wow’ his teammates and coaches too.
“SportsCenter Top-10, he did it again,” Scott Laughton quipped humorously.
“He has a chance to be something special,” head coach John Tortorella said of Tippett. “I think he just feels good about his game. Hitting the net more with his shot. And, I haven’t seen a goal like that. I’ve seen a lot of good goals; I haven’t seen one of those in quite a while.”
Usually when you impress the Flyers’ bench boss in that kind of way, that indicates you’re doing something right. With his pair of goals, Tippett has now scored in five of his last six games, with six goals and an assist across that span. Before that, No. 74 had gone five straight without recording a point.
All goal-scorers are streaky, but when Tippett is on for the Flyers, he’s on.
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