Oh No, The Flyers Suck Again!
4-1.
3-1.
4-1.
No, those aren’t the Patriots’ Super Bowl odds– those are the scores of the last three Flyers games, all losses.
The Flyers have played 11 games in total and have scored just one goal six times.
They haven’t won since October 24th– a shootout victory over the Rangers.
They’ve won only two games in regulation and scored a combined four goals in those two wins.
They’re missing an entire second line, among other problems.
The Flyers lost 4-1 to the Canucks last night. Ben Rothenberg, writing for Broad Street Hockey:
A problem the Flyers have: they don’t score. Like, at all. They take lots of shots, but they don’t put any of them behind the goalie. This is a problem and it’s sorta embarrassing. Going into this game, they averaged one goal on every 17 shots, which doesn’t sound immediately horrific until Jackson did the math and noted that it would take them an average of FIFTY-ONE shots just to score three goals. That’s so bad, you guys.
As Ben would go on to point out, nerds will tell you that shooting percentages, like BABIP (batting average on balls put in play) in baseball, will eventually regress to the mean, which is about 9% in The Shield. The Flyers? 5.79%, good for 29th in the league.
But not all shots are created equal. The Flyers have difficulty sustaining pressure and generating quality scoring chances. Take last night, for example. Here are their shots on goal– S is shot. M is miss. B is block:
Now, compare that to the Canucks:
Notice the Flyers generated only five shots on goal from the high-percentage area in front of the net, with many of their shots coming from the point position, above the circles. The Canucks? Well, let’s look a little closer:
12 in the slot, including three goals.
The Flyers’ only goal came from Claude Giroux, appropriately the big ol’ G here:
Hands like butter #PHIvsVAN pic.twitter.com/HAbLGozlRv
— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) November 3, 2015
That’s it. The lone goal.
You could argue that the Flyers have defensive problems (they do) and inconsistent goalies (they do), but a huge problem is their complete lack of scoring depth and inability to generate quality scoring chances. They need more talent.
Images from war-on-ice.com
