Flyers give Taylor Leier chance to keep his lineup spot

NEW YORK — There are times, the rookie knows, that he can be somewhat of a sacrificial lamb.

Lose a couple games? The Flyers will make changes. Taylor Leier has been that change twice this season after Flyers’ losses. On two other occasions, he has come out after a defeat due to injury. The last three games he’s sat out followed a 6-4 win over the New York Islanders in which he was a minus-3.

“When we lose consecutive games like that, obviously something is going to change. I’m not a dummy,” he said. “I know something’s gonna happen. Sometimes they do and I’m not going to get down and sulk about it. I’m gonna go the opposite way and keep my work ethic and drive up because I’m a part of this team and I want to be an impact player on this team someday. I’m just going to keep chipping away.”

His latest opportunity came Tuesday. The Flyers came into Madison Square Garden on a four-game win streak, but Tyrell Goulbourne played only 4:56 in Saturday’s win over the New Jersey Devils so Leier, who turns 24 in a month, came back into the fold.

To play the fourth-line role that Goulbourne and Leier have tried to is a challenge because it comes in limited minutes. It’s not usually less-than-five-minutes low, but still a condensed role.

“We’re playing fourth line, so you gotta be simple, hard and smart,” said Scott Laughton, the center of that unit. “You’ve got to be smart against (the Rangers), especially the way they transition and move the puck up the ice. Especially in this building you’ve got to play a good road game.”

When the Flyers took Leier on board after three years with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, it was a change in what they asked of him. He wasn’t playing limited minutes in the American Hockey League and was a big scorer with 37 points in 48 games.

Before Tuesday, he averaged 10:48 of ice time with four of his last five games under the 10-minute mark. He had only one goal and three assists to his name.

“I’ve never done it before. I’ve never played seven minutes,” Leier said. “It’s new for a lot of us like Scott and a lot of the other guys who came up through the American League. We played big minutes in the American League and even bigger minutes in junior. It’s a first, so you really have to make the most of the minutes that you get and try to contribute in whatever way you can to help the team win.”

It’s a challenge the Flyers are aware of, just as they’re aware that a player might be even more motivated to stay in the lineup if he was taken out at no fault of his own.

“Especially in Taylor’s case, he’s been out of the lineup for the last couple of games but he didn’t come out because he played a poor game,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “We put a different player with different abilities in the lineup injected into that line. For Taylor, just come back and do the things that he does well and he’ll help our team.”

Therein lies another challenge for Leier: the mental game of being out of the lineup after a career of playing almost every day.

He’s relied on phone calls with his parents, Cindy and Tim, to help him through the frustrations of not playing when he feels he can help the team. One of their happier chats came in September when the Flyers filmed Leier calling his parents and telling them he made the NHL. Recently they’ve offered advice instead of screaming in jubilation.

Things have been taken up a notch. Times are tougher.

Hakstol said he thinks the biggest challenge is the work a player has to do on days when they’re not in the lineup. Leier is hoping that he can stay in and be a key cog of the Flyers’ fourth line.

“I don’t mind the work part at all,” Leier said. “I think that’s just been engrained in me since I was young. I’ve never really been a heathy scratch in my life before. This is definitely new to me. It kinda takes the rhythm of the game out a little bit, so I think that’s the biggest challenge.

“I haven’t changed anything up whether it’s been good for me or bad for me. I’m just trying to stay the same and keep my habits the same and be the hardest worker and try to prove myself.”

Dave Isaac; @davegisaac; 856-486-2479; disaac@gannett.com

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