Steve Mason got back in the net Thursday night for the Philadelphia Flyers, and it was like the good old times. Mason was very sharp, particularly in a challenging second period push by the Vancouver Canucks, and made 36 saves for his second shutout of the season.

It was the Flyers third victory in their last 4 games, as the team is putting together more complete and more professional efforts towards the end of the calendar year. The Flyers now have one more point than Pittsburgh Penguins in the division standings.

Game Flow

Goals:

1 – 0. Raffl (Medvedev, Read). PHI on-ice: 12, 14, 24, 15, 82

2 – 0. Couturier (Simmonds, Voracek). PHI on-ice: 14, 17, 93, 55, 82

Forwards

First off, the good. The Couturier line with Jake Voracek again a good night. They played against the Sedin line, yet still had the best Corsi of all the Flyers' lines, and added the insurance goal in the closing minutes. The Bellemare line also played a lot of minutes, and generally did their job.

The bad news is a bit of a shocker from the Giroux line. They had what you would expect to be a favorable matchup against McCann-Hansen-Higgins, but couldn't get much going.

Defense

The chart doesn't look too great for the Flyers defense in this one, and the ice time is a little skewed above due to four minutes of 4v4 play. Medvedev–Schultz came out with the best Corsi, and Medvedev further had +2 to show for his night.

Lots of ice time for Del Zotto–Gudas last night, as Del Zotto played over 25 minutes in all situations. He's doing quite a job as the number one defensemen.

Marc Naples is a contributor to Flyerdelphia and Sports Talk Philly. Follow him on Twitter@SuperScrub47.