Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek won't be split up...yet

VOORHEES — Claude Giroux remembers the feeling well.

Two seasons ago, it took him 16 games to score his first goal. Now his linemate, Jake Voracek, has eclipsed that goalless stretch.

“The thing is you think about it 24/7,” Giroux said. “When you wake up, that’s the first thing you think about. When you go to bed, that’s the last thing you think. You just need to stop thinking about it. It’s easy to say, but it’s hard to do. When he’s gonna get out of this little scoring slump, he’s gonna start going.”

And whenever he does, it will be on the same line. The Flyers have lost eight of their last nine games and rookie coach Dave Hakstol has decided that he’ll leave the big red button untouched. He won’t blow everything up and reconfigure all the lines.

Not yet.

“There’s a fine line there,” he said. “The new things that you look at also have to make sense to a certain degree on paper. You can’t just throw something at the wall and hope it sticks. We’re gonna keep at it. We’re going to keep looking. We’ll also do it with a good degree of thought process that goes into it.”

Only one game this season was it the case that Giroux, Voracek and Michael Raffl weren’t together. Some other lines have changed, but recently the Flyers’ fourth line has been best. Scott Laughton put the Flyers up a goal early Thursday night after Chris VandeVelde provided the work on a turnover and Ryan White screened Washington goalie Braden Holtby.

That was just about the only positive moment for the Flyers in a 5-2 loss to the Capitals, but the team is preaching patience with what they have instead of starting from scratch with new trios.

“I think we’re trying to get chemistry,” Giroux said. “Some likes are there. Laughts’ line with Whitey and Vandy, I think they played a great game last game. They were our best line. When lines like that go, you keep them together and try to build on it.”

The only line that looks like it may change Saturday against the Carolina Hurricanes is the third line. Pierre-Edouard Bellemare has missed the last eight games with a “lower-body injury” and is ready to return.

He had been centering White and VandeVelde, but that line may be too good for Hakstol to break up so instead Bellemare is likely to center a line with Brayden Schenn and either Vinny Lecavalier or Sam Gagner.

“I think we have a couple of good options there,” Hakstol said. “I think Laughton between White and Vandy has become an effective unit. We definitely know that Belly there makes them an effective two-way unit as well. We’ve got a couple different options.”

Bellemare has had to watch from afar as his teammates struggled. He only started skating on Monday.

“I think it’s been like everybody else in Philly. It’s been a tough week and a half or two weeks,” Bellemare said. “That’s behind us now. I have to focus on what I can do to help the team (Saturday).”

The Flyers need all the help they can get. They are 5-8-3 so far this season, even worse than last year’s 7-7-2 record through 16 games.

“You try not to watch the standings, but it’s also inevitable in the position we’re in,” goalie Steve Mason said. “You can’t focus on the starts now because we’re well past the start of the season. We’ve got to look toward the next game and you go into a rink in Carolina where I don’t think we’ve won in a little while. Again, there are no easy games. No games where you can put your skates on and expect to win.”

“Right now there’s a lot of frustration in this room, but we’re gonna stick together here,” Giroux added. “Everybody cares here and it’s like we’re trying to work to hard. We need to just calm it down, play smarter. When we’re going to do that, we have a lot of skill in this room. We need to calm it down, play the game and it’s hard to enjoy the game when you’re not winning, but we need to find a way to enjoy the game and have fun.”

Loose pucks

Defenseman Mark Streit did not take part in practice. He has been battling through a nagging injury lately. … The Flyers have lost each of their last five trips to Carolina.

Dave Isaac; (856) 486-2479; disaac@gannettnj.com .

FLYERS AT CAROLINA

When: 7 p.m., Saturday

TV/Radio: CSN/93.3 FM