PHILADELPHIA — The expectation, or at very least the hope, was that it would have happened no matter where on the ice he was stationed.

Claude Giroux finally looks like Claude Giroux again.

He’s a left wing these days, instead of a natural center, and is back to being a point-per-game player. He has 20 points in 16 games. Last season it took him 24 games to reach that mark.

The Flyers captain had been in a statistical decline for three seasons and in only one of them could offseason surgery really be blamed. Sports hernia surgery claimed most of his campaign last year even though he didn’t miss time with injury. The same was true for Shayne Gostisbehere, who had a similar surgery on the same day.

They weren’t themselves. They sure seem to be now.

Giroux had a goal and two assists Thursday in a 3-1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks where his unit with Jake Voracek and Sean Couturier scored all three goals.

“The guy’s been in the league for 10 years,” Voracek said. “He was a Hart Trophy nominee (finished third in voting in 2014). I don’t think it was about confidence. It was about his health. Now he’s healthy and he can play. He has a little more room on the left wing than he did at the center. He’s more free to make the plays. If me and G screw up the pass, we have Coots in the back there. We can always depend on his safety.”

All three had goals and Giroux helped make all three happen. First he had a one-timer that looked like it was a vintage play from early in his career, beating Corey Crawford for the third time in his career.

He also started a tic-tac-toe passing play that ended with Voracek scoring and found an open Couturier for his team-leading 10th goal of the season. After four days off, the Flyers looked like a well-oiled machine instead of having to shake off rust.

Part of the intrigue of this preseason experiment that has stuck was that Giroux is in a new position. So far it’s gained him a lot more time with the puck and the results are looking good. Even at even strength it looks like Giroux is in power-play mode because he has the puck on the wing and only has to look in one direction.

“He can make more plays instead of dishing it out wide and going to the net,” Couturier said. “Him and Jake are doing good jobs finding each other cross-ice and stuff. We gotta keep doing that.”

Here are four more takeaways from the Flyers’ win over the Blackhawks…

Gostisbehere hits century mark

With his assist on the Flyers’ second goal, Shayne Gostisbehere notched his 100th point in his 155th NHL game. He is the quickest to reach the century mark among defensemen who started their careers with the Flyers. The record was previously held by Behn Wilson who did it in 163 games.

“It’s awesome, but of course I couldn’t do this without my teammates,” Gostisbehere said. “Just to do it with an organization like Philadelphia, it’s unbelievable. It’s a team with a lot of history and again I can’t thank my teammates and coaches and support staff enough.”

Sometimes milestone plays can come on ugly bounces or deflections. This helper was part of a very pretty sequence.

“It went D to D and I was actually looking for G in the slot,” Gostisbehere said. “Their guy blocked it and it went back to G actually. I just shot down the wall and G made a great pass Jake. He was wide open, finished it.”

Penalty kill on point

In the second period the tide turned from a shot-attempt perspective. The Flyers were up 10 early in the middle period and Chicago found life. Connor Murphy scored a goal to get the Blackhawks on the board and then the team had a power play. Then another one.

Radko Gudas called for tripping and Ivan Provorov put the puck over the glass for a delay-of-game call. It was a two-man advantage for 1:44 and the Flyers’ top two penalty-killing defensemen were in the sin bin.

“It’s big to be able to get that at that time of the game and in that situation,” Hakstol said. “Ells did a good job, made some saves there for us. PK battled for us. Big part of the game.”

Robert Hagg led the charge with a blocked shot off his left arm. He stayed on the ice for all but four seconds of the penalty kill. On the night, the Blackhawks had two shots on 5:52 of man advantage time.

“It was huge,” goalie Brian Elliott said. “They could have tied it up there at the end of the period and we would have been tied going in (to the third) and killing that off was big for our guys. We did a great job. They didn’t really get much on it.”

Elliott closed the door

Things didn’t exactly go the Flyers’ way in the third period, although the slate was kept clean in that frame. That’s thanks to Elliott, who had one of his best efforts of the season.

When a goalie is on he’s tracking the puck well and that was a key for Elliott against the Blackhawks, a team he was very used to playing against from his St. Louis Blues days. There was plenty of traffic for Elliott to fend through and he did it well.

“I felt good out there,” said Elliott, who made 38 saves. “I thought we did a good job defensively to allow me to lock in on the puck. We took away lanes, took away passes and that’s what you have to do against a team like that.”

Part of his success, he said, was familiarity. It was his 20th game against Chicago, more than he’s played against any other team.

“You definitely pick up on stuff and you know tendencies and things like that, but they could be saying the same thing about me,” he said. “If they were on the winning end, you’d be asking them those questions.”

Foot off the gas

Elliott had to save the Flyers’ bacon quite a bit in the second half of the game. Once the Flyers enjoyed a three-goal lead they got a little complacent, or at the very least a little sloppy with the puck.

“We did a good job coming up,” Couturier said, “but as the game went on we got a little fancy and tried to force things at the blue lines and they came right back at us. But we find a way to win and that’s what, at the end of the day, is important.”

“Our goaltender made good saves, now there’s some learning processes there as well because after it went 3-0 we got a little too fancy,” Hakstol said. “We gave the puck away a little too easily, and they got going on the other side. So there’s always areas that you always want to take the positives, make sure we build on those and be real positive, it was a great win for our team, but also address the things we have to do a little bit better, that starts with our veterans and that follows through with everybody on the bench.”

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

FLYERS 3, BLACKHAWKS 1

Up next: vs. Minnesota Wild

When: 7 p.m., Saturday

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