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Don’t look now, but the Flyers won a road game.

Against a good team – the defending Stanley Cup Champion St. Louis Blues, who have the best record in the NHL, despite the 4-3 overtime loss to the Flyers.

Oh, and that’s three wins in four games against arguably the four best teams in the NHL in the span of a week with wins over Washington, Boston, and St. Louis and a 1-0 loss to Tampa Bay.

So, yes, the Flyers are proving that although they still are on the bottom-most rung of the playoff ladder and could lose their grip on it as early as tonight, they can play with the big boys.

The win over Washington was nice, but the Caps weren’t on their game, that’s for sure. The win over Boston was rooted in determination, but in reality, it was an ugly game, played like the Wild West without any semblance of structure and order and the Flyers were aided by some bad goaltending by the Bruins’ Jaroslav Halak and a fortunate miscue when Brad Marchand over-skated the puck at center ice in the shootout.

But the game in St. Louis was different. Different because after a sluggish start, the Flyers awoke and played with the defending champs all 200 feet. The final two periods and overtime were sensational hockey. Just a lot of speed, and grind, and desire both ways.

In short, it was playoff caliber, and not just the first round variety:

https://twitter.com/BarstoolJordie/status/1217650780884414464

Brian Elliott was slated to start the game anyway, but with Carter Hart sidelined for 2-3 weeks with an abdominal injury (call me negative, but those never seem to heal right for goalies in-season), the Flyers needed Elliott to have a good game, and did he ever.

Elliott made 30 saves and was a stalwart on the penalty kill, which mostly shut down the best power play in the NHL over the last month (the Blues were clicking at 38 percent since mid-December) and held them to just 1-for-6 and included killing off a lengthy 5-on-3 situation.

On many nights, the difference for the Flyers is special teams. They’ve been a mostly solid and reliable 5-on-5 team for most of the season and a lot of games swing one way or the other based on special teams and goaltending.

Against the Blues, the Flyers got both. Travis Konecny scored on the power play while the PK was frustrating the Blues with their aggressive style of play. actually, the lone power play goal for St. Louis came off a play by Phil Myers where he was too aggressive defensively. A simpler play there, and this game likely never reaches overtime:

We’ll dive more into the play of Myers and Travis Sanheim as a pair later, but let’s really look at an underlying positive here – and that is the Flyers aren’t really a bad road team – they are just a victim of a bad schedule – and it’s at no fault of the players or coaches, but rather the people who own the organization.

Lack of foresight

The Flyers are 10-13-2 on the road this season. It’s not a dreadful number, but one they would like to be better. Especially since they are 15-3-4 at home, and all of their counting statistics as far as goals for, goals against, and specialty teams production are so lopsided when you compare home games and away games.

We have all fallen victim to this – to trying to figure out why a team can play so well in one building but so poorly in others.

I broke it down as a coaching thing – where the Flyers probably have a little less talent than most teams, but with good coaching, can take advantage of the margins in a game with matchups when the coach has the last change. Alain Vigneault even addressed that a little bit following the Flyers win over Boston on Monday.

But the reality is, even that explanation, while better than most, probably isn’t completely accurate.

And that’s because we’ve been looking at the Flyers’ road performance in a bit of a vacuum.

How, you may ask, is looking at a span of 25 games and taking them in their entirety looking at things in a vacuum?

Because it’s just that – the entirety of it. If you break it down further, you’ll find the Flyers are a much better road team than advertised:

  • Four of the Flyers road wins have come against Toronto, Boston, Carolina and St. Louis – all teams currently in Eastern Conference playoff spots.
  • The Flyers are 8-2-0 in road games that are played in trips that are less than three games, meaning they are 2-11-2 in games on lengthier trips (three games or more).

That second note is the one that stands out. Think about it for a second; when the Flyers don’t have to pack for thousands of miles of travel, they have an .800 winning percentage on the road.

And boy, have they had to pack the bigger suitcases a lot that this season.

There was a six-night trip to Western Canada in October. There was a six day swing through Denver, Minneapolis and Winnipeg in mid-December and the annual West Coast trip (this year tied into the Disney on Ice week at Wells Fargo Center, that was a massive 12-day sojourn through six cities.

Add in a season opening trip to the Czech Republic and, well, it’s no wonder the Flyers have gotten a bit road weary at times to start the season.

Let’s look at the breakdown of things in those 10 games not associated with being from home for several days at a time.

The Flyers have outscored the opposition 34-27 (+7) as opposed to the longer trips where they have been torched 69-35 (-34).

The power play hasn’t been much different in those road games (5 for 31, 16.1 percent in the shorter trips, 7 for 43, 16.3 percent in the longer ones) but then again, the power play doesn’t require the energy expense that killing penalties does, and here’s where the difference lies:

The penalty kill on shorter trips has killed off 29-of-34 shorthanded situations (85.3 percent) but on the longer trips has been flat out awful (30-of-42, or 71.4 percent).

When you break it down, the Flyers are +1 on special teams goals on shorter road trips (five PPG scored, plus one SHG scored, minus five PPG against) and are minus-8 on longer road trips (seven PPG scored minus 12 PPG against plus 3 SHG against.)

That special teams disparity is in line with Chuck Fletcher saying at his mid-season state of the team press conference the other day that the team is competitive at 5-on-5 on the road. He’s right. The difference really has been the penalty kill.

And the penalty kill suffers because no matter how hard these guys play, sometimes the legs just aren’t there when you are constantly bouncing from one city to the next on one plane after another.

So, why the carping? Teams have road trips every year, right? This isn’t anything new.

Except, it is.

Yes, there are trips, but not this long – and not this many days away from home. A 12-day road trip is extremely long – especially after asking a team to play in Europe and two other week-long trips already in the season.

Not to mention, giving the Flyers a week-long trip at the beginning of the season fresh off that trip to Europe was brutal.

And although the Flyers have taken to the road after Christmas forever because the Wells Fargo Center, and before it the Spectrum, doesn’t want to give up Disney on Ice at the holidays because it’s such a great money maker, in the past they’ve found ways to avoid a 12-day trip.

Last season it was a seven-day trip with four games, all in the Southeast (Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale, Carolina and Nashville).

  • In 2017-18 it was only two games in three days to Tampa and Ft. Lauderdale again
  • In 2016-17 it was only three games in six days (St. Louis, San Jose, Anaheim)
  • In 2015-16 it was eight days, but only three games, all in California

So, why was it six games in 12 days this time around?

It’s easy to just assume the NHL screwed the Flyers, but Fletcher made a point in the press conference to say that he didn’t want to throw the league under the bus and that maybe the Flyers organization needed to do a better job and give the league more options for home dates at the Wells Fargo Center.

One of the things that was notably different this year was that the last game before Christmas was at home (Dec. 23 vs. the New York Rangers). In each of the previous seasons listed above, the Flyers actually played a road game before the Christmas break too. Getting a road game in before three days off (the 24th-26th) helped mitigate the length of a post-Christmas road trip.

But, that wasn’t the case this season, which likely contributed to the longer road trip.

Additionally, Fletcher talked about an internal meeting where home availability was decided and dropped this bomb:

“We have to find out what we need to do from the League – are we not giving them the right dates? What do they need from us to create a better schedule and create some situations that are a little less onerous on our players…. There’s probably things we need to do better in terms of date submission. It’s probably a little more difficult because we share the building with the 76ers, although other teams do too. We actually have a draft for dates – I sat in it this year. It was fascinating. We sit in a room and they get first pick for October and we get second and then we go through and pick the dates. So, there’s some strategy involved with how we set our schedule up internally, so I’m not throwing the league under the bus here because we may be doing things that are not helping our own schedule. We’ll sit down and have a really proactive conversation to see what (the League) suggests we do to help alleviate some of the back-to-backs – maybe we need to pick different nights. Maybe we need to take on more dates early in the season. We’re in that process and going to figure out what to do. We have a lot of smart people in the back of the house here who have done research into our schedule and we know the areas we have to correct.”

There is so much there that is unbelievable to me.

First of all, Comcast-Spectacor, who owns the building, owns the Flyers. The 76ers are just a tenant. The Flyers should be a priority. Always have been. That’s not to say the Sixers should be screwed over, but, the Flyers should get the first run of dates. Their season starts sooner. There is no load management in hockey. Players need the schedule to help determine their rest and recovery time. But it seems like when a smaller number of available dates was sent to the NHL so the 76ers and other tenants could choose more dates than usual, the league had its hands tied and was forced to send the Flyers on these lengthier trips and playing more games on back-to-back nights.

I remember last season, every Flyers Saturday home game except for two was an afternoon game because it was what fans wanted. This season, that didn’t happen. I assume this has something to do with who is running the show these days and likely the change in the process of schedule-making has a lot to do with that too.

Having an internal draft and forcing the team you own to create a strategy on the dates that they should select for home games against other potential tenants of the building is incredibly absurd and counter-productive. It shows a complete lack of common sense. You are putting your own team behind the eight ball in an effort to make more hay elsewhere with events in your building.

This is a level of institutional incompetence of the highest order – and yes, we’re looking at you Dave Scott and Valerie Camillo. You can not let this happen once – and yet it has. It really, really can’t happen again.

All that said, the Flyers schedule the rest of the way is not as challenging travel-wise. There is one more three-game trip in February (New York Islanders, Florida, Tampa) and only two more games outside the Eastern time zone in March (Dallas and Nashville – on back-to-back nights, of course).

But, imagine where the Flyers would be in the standings if they just had a little help internally last winter/Spring when the next season’s schedule was being put together?

Jake’s game winner

Jake Voracek has turned into the guy Flyers Twitter wants their team to get rid of post haste. Every time the Flyers lose, or struggle, the whole “blow of the core” narrative starts rearing it’s ugly head.

And yet, Voracek has been one of the Flyers best players for a while now. At least a month. Probably even longer as sometimes good play doesn’t get noticed right away.

He was sensational against Boston. He was even better against St. Louis. Playing Voracek with Sean Couturier is a really good combination. Adding Michael Raffl on the other wing, while not the most ideal scoring option (although Raffl scored a goal against the Blues) creates a really good, well-balanced line that plays all 200 feet.

And yes, even Voracek, who has been a much better defensive player this season than in previous years. He doesn’t get credit for it, but he’s really been good in his own end. And the work that’s gone into being a better defensive player is translating on the offensive end and he’s starting to pile up the points.

He now has three goals and 12 assists for 15 points in his last 14 games.

And his game-winner in overtime was a toe-drag and a half:

I asked Fletcher about the veteran players at his press conference. He identified Couturier and Voracek playing well and hinted he would like a little more out of van Riemsdyk and maybe even Claude Giroux (although he defended Giroux by saying they are using him more than they had wanted to for defensive purposes (draws, and on the PK) because of the Nolan Patrick situation and being bereft of right-handed centermen.

But, if Giroux can find some more consistent form, with the way Voracek is playing, the Flyers could be dangerous.

The defense

Really quickly here, I’ve like what I’ve seen in the small sample size of Mark Friedman’s playing time. He doesn’t do anything special, but he keeps things simple. He has no panic in his game. He is smart, solid and disciplined. He makes a decent first pass and he doesn’t put himself at risk by gambling.

There’s a lot more time needed for a full assessment, but I’ll be curious to see if he keeps getting an opportunity once Justin Braun and Shayne Gostisbehere return from injury.

As I mentioned near the beginning of the story, Myers and Sanheim are a problem as a pair right now. Maybe in 2023 they’ll be great together, but if the Flyers are going to make a playoff push, they need to separate them post haste.

I understand it’s mostly out of necessity that they’ve been paired together, but even with the possibility of Braun playing Saturday, I’d almost rather you split up all three pairs to try and get more balance against Montreal tonight rather than pair them together again.

I already showed you Myers wipe out, now watch the second St. Louis goal where Sanheim loses his man, Ryan O’Reilly, who goes to the net and gets a couple of whacks at a puck that should be defended, but isn’t:

And then on the tying goal, Sanheim gets beat to a spot by Alexander Steen (the eventual goal scorer) while Myers completely abandons the front of the net. Myers needs better awareness (and knows it as soon as the goal is scored based on his reaction) and Sanheim needs to deny the man coming off the wall. This is a double defensive breakdown:

Yeah. Split them up ASAP.

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