Joel Farabee was supposed to go down to the minors for heavy minutes and a bigger role but the Flyers needed him before he could even play two games for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.(Photo: Matt Slocum, AP)

PHILADELPHIA The plan was for Joel Farabee to go down to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms and play. Get big minutes, touch the puck more and have an impact.

Turns out he was only in one game, last Friday, since he was sent down at the NHLs Feb. 24 trade deadline. He would have played last Saturday against Charlotte, but the Flyers called him up because Sean Couturier was sick. Turned out to be a false alarm and Couturier played.

I thought I was playing and saw Coots before the game and he looked pretty good, Farabee said. Id rather have him in the lineup than me. It was good. I watched the game, got a workout in and came back for a full week of practice. Here I am.

Thursday in a 5-2 win over the Carolina Hurricanes, Farabee found himself in the lineup. For real, this time.

Its going to be that way for a while, too, because left winger James van Riemsdyk has a broken right index finger and is expected to miss about a month. The playoffs begin April 8, so Farabee knows hes in this for the long haul and the intensity has been high for a while now.

I can tell from the first period that game was a playoff game, the rookie said after the win. Im expecting the rest of the games to be like that. Were playing pretty well. Coming off a back-to-back, I thought we had better legs than they did.

Farabee is, for now, on a line with Kevin Hayes and Travis Konecny. He had three shots on net Thursday and hit a post (which officially counts as a missed shot).

It was a good showing after coach Alain Vigneault shifted Scott Laughton, who was playing great with Hayes and Konecny, down a rung on the depth chart. Turns out that worked just fine because Laughton had a pair of assists and Farabee, who turned 20 last week, was productive.

I just feel that Joels got that top-six upside and if you want a player to have success, you have to put him in the right role and I think he has that potential, Vigneault said before the game. In some occasions this year he has played in the top six and bottom six, but just sometimes as a coach you go with your feeling and thats my feeling.

Whatever AV wants is what I gotta do, Farabee added. As a player I think I can play a lot of different roles and I think that helps me out.

In 50 NHL games this season, Farabee has seven goals and 20 points. Before Thursday, his last game with the Flyers was Feb. 22 against the Winnipeg Jets.

None of the first 50 have been easy, but he knows its about to get tougher and hes coming off a fairly inactive week where he was mostly practicing.

Coming from college where we practice all week and play on the weekend, it was kind of similar there. I felt like getting a full week of practice was really good, just being on the ice and getting puck touches and stuff like that, he said. As far as the game, I know the system pretty well so it wasnt too big a chance. Plus Ive played with TK and Haysey before so I felt pretty good coming right back in.

As the team has matured from previous iterations of the roster trying to gear up for playoffs, Farabee has matured also.

Hes a pretty heady player to begin with, but there were times earlier in the season where hed get robbed of key chances and it clearly affected his play. When he hit the post behind Alex Nedeljkovic there was none of that.

Obviously you want to have personal success but its at that point in the season where you gotta put that by. Its team first now, Farabee said. You want to keep getting chances, but if youre getting chances that means youre doing something right. I think just keep it going, keep playing hard and the goals are gonna come.

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Dave Isaac joined the Courier-Post in April 2012 after covering the Flyers for three seasons elsewhere. Contact him on Twitter @davegisaac or by email at disaac@gannett.com.

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Joel Farabee in the spotlight with playoffs approaching for Flyers - Cherry Hill Courier Post