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Showing Some Hart: Thoughts after Flyers 3, Jets 1

Anthony SanFilippo

By Anthony SanFilippo

Published:

Photo Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

The Flyers won again. That’s two straight. And by the time they play their next game next Wednesday (this is officially the All-Star Break) they’ll be able to say they haven’t lost a game in more than two weeks.

(Hey, I’m looking for positives. There’s 88 more days in this season. Cut me some slack). 

Here are some more “positives,” if you will, following the Flyers’ 3-1 win over the Winnipeg Jets Tuesday:

  • It was the Flyers’ first regulation victory since Dec. 14 (6-1 vs. NJ).
  • It was the first time the Flyers won back-to-back games since Dec. 18-29 (vs. OTT and @ SEA).
  • The Flyers continue to be streaky (more bad than good) in the sense that they have not played three consecutive games where they alternated win-loss-win, or loss-win-loss where at least one point wasn’t earned in a loss since Nov. 13-18. (L @ DAL, W vs. CAL, SOL vs. TB).
  • Carter Hart

Let’s talk about the goalie for a minute. If there’s one bright spot to this otherwise forgetful season, it’s been Hart.

Look him up in the rankings, and nothing stands out. From afar, he’s a pedestrian goalie:

  • He has nine wins, which is tied for 30th in the NHL
  • Including overtime and shootouts, he has 19 losses, which is third-most in the NHL
  • His goals against average of 2.80 ranks 20th in the NHL among 32 goalies who have made at least 19 starts.
  • His save percentage of .915 ranks 12th in the league among those same 32 goalies.

But when you take those numbers and consider he plays for such a bad team, and then you also compare them to where he was a season ago when in a very similar number of games played (he had a 3.67 GAA and an .877 save percentage), and it’s hard not to consider him as one of the bounce-back players of the year.

He is single-handedly keeping the Flyers in games or actually winning games for them on his own – much like Tuesday.

Hart has started 28 games for the Flyers and in 23 of them held the opponents to three goals or fewer. That’s keeping his team in it every night. He’s held them to two or fewer 11 times, one or fewer six times and has one shutout.

Against Winnipeg, he gave up a goal on the first shot of the game – a laser from Kyle Connor off a boo-boo by Travis Konecny – and then proceeded to stone the Jets for their next 32 shots on goal.

“He was awesome,” said Flyers interim coach MIke Yeo. “I think one of the things we touched on after the game that we’ve really been trying to stress and work and build on, when the other team scores first, staying with your game, staying in the game, and giving yourself an opportunity to climb back into it. That doesn’t happen without Carter, tonight especially.

“Couple key moments, they got 2-0 at one point, the penalty kill we gave up a pretty good look, huge look, back door and he was outstanding. When he’s playing like that, when he’s competing like that, or any goalie is for that matter, it really builds confidence for your group and gives you the chance to settle down and get back on the attack.”

If nothing else, when you have a bad season in sports, there are positions where you know that if you have a really talented player, you can recover more quickly. Quarterback. Point guard. Staff ace. And, yes, goaltender.

The Flyers upcoming ‘aggressive re-tool” has a better chance of succeeding with Hart playing the way he is right now.

It might be in obscurity as the numbers don’t tell the full story, and nobody is really paying attention to the Flyers, not even their own fans:

Yeah, the numbers keep dwindling, which isn’t good for the Flyers – or the league (I’ll have more on that this week).

That being said, word around the campfire is the message is getting through to the organization and that we might start seeing some things change with the team as they try to repair their currently broken relationship with its fanbase.

Giving out free parking, free concessions and moving all the people who had upper level seats down into the lower bowl during the snow day game against Los Angeles last Saturday were all great gestures on behalf of the team for their fans.

We’ll talk about this a little bit more on this week’s episode of Snow the Goalie.

What’s up with TK?

Travis Konecny is having another disappointing season.

It’s not as bad as the counting stats would indicate – Konecny has eight goals and 17 assists for 25 points in 43 games played – as he’s actually had games where he didn’t produce where’s he’s been a good player, but then he’s had games where he has produced and not played well – at least until he scores, and then he’s engaged.

Like Tuesday.

The inconsistency has to be infuriating for fans and it’s starting to wear thin on the Flyers as well.

Considering Konecny scored 24 goals in 81 games in his sophomore season of 2017-18 and followed that up with another 24 goals in 82 games in 2018-19 and then broke out to score… 24 goals in 2019-20 (although this time it was in just 66 games because of the pandemic) as he set a career high with 61 points and was named to his first NHL All-Star team.

Since then, and since getting a big raise, Konecny has just 19 goals and 59 points over the last two seasons in a total of 93 games.

It’s a huge drop off in production.

And when he is struggling to score, he can’t have on-ice efforts like this one on the power play, where he basically had a “screw it” attitude toward keeping the puck in the zone while the Flyers were on the power play:

But then Konecny takes advantage of a turnover created by teammate Scott Laughton (who had a hell of a game) and scores a goal with a nice snipe, and you are torn between anger and excitement:

We didn’t even notice that TK was responsible for the Jets’ lone goal, but he called himself out for it after the game. Upon further review, by his reaction, he felt right away he did something wrong. It’s likely that he felt he left a sniper like Connor too much space to get off that shot, and/or he didn’t make a better effort to get in the way of it, and found himself flailing to tip a pass before flailing back to try and get in the way.

So, it’s one of those games that Jake Voracek used to talk about all the time when he used to say “You can score two goals and play like shit, and everybody wants to talk about how great you are and then you can not be on the scoresheet, play a great game, and everyone wants to ask what’s wrong with you that you didn’t score.”

Konecny is always a straight shooter. He’ll tell you when he’s not playing well. He’ll always take responsibility for his play, and that earns him a lot of cache both with fans and coaches. And he even talked about how against the Jets he wasn’t going well until he scored and then a light seemed to come on for him.

“That was big for our line there,” Konecny said. “For me I gave up that first one, that was my mistake. So it felt good to go back and get the team back in it.”

“First off I don’t think that was (an) individual (effort). If you watched it, (Laughton) made such a good play – reloading and doing the things we are being asked to do. It creates offense and I ended up being the guy getting the shot. Sometimes that’s how it works. It shouldn’t always be like that, that the energy is brought from a goal or a big play. You have to work on your overall consistency in having that, but it definitely helps put a little hop in your step.”

The rest of this season is going to be so critical for Konecny as the Flyers try to evaluate if their re-tool should continue to include him next season or to see if he has value in a trade over the summer. He’s going to have to find that consistency again to ensure that he continues to get an opportunity to be a top end player here, and not be shipped off somewhere else.

Real quick on Laughton

There are few players who bring it every night like Laughton. Obviously he’s a versatile player who can move up and down your lineup, but on a good team is a prototypical third-liner who can provide secondary offense, strong work in his own end of the ice, and be a relentless forechecker while also contributing on special teams, specifically here on the penalty kill, where despite the Flyers being so below average as a squad, he’s been a strong contributor season after season.

He was just having one of those Laughton-esque games against Winnipeg. On Konecny’s goal above, he made the play happen by forcing the turnover.

And then, when it mattered most, Laughton made the perfect play:

He even talked about it afterwards, about how he was purposely shooting for a spot where either he beats the goalie over his pad for a goal, or it hits the pad and is in a great rebound position for James van Riemsdyk to score the game-winner.

“Laughts is a warrior,” Yeo said. “He’s a battler. We put him in every position. One of the things that I like about Laughts is he’s selfless, you see him blocking that shot at the end of the game, the game’s probably out of reach at that point but he’s still laying down to block that shot.

“There’s been lots of opportunities, lots of guys that have been getting looks on the power play, and we need him in so many other areas and he doesn’t flinch. He just goes out and plays for the team night after night. Obviously (that’s) a big part of why he’s got a letter on his jersey right now.”

Roster moves

I tweeted this out during the game last night:

And then, this morning, the Flyers posted this:

Yeo said after the game that Derick Brassard is really close to returning to the lineup for the Flyers and that Patrick Brown isn’t far behind.

I would expect that once the teams reconvene next week that if both guys are good to go for the game against Detroit on Feb. 9, that only Frost and York will be brought back up.

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Anthony SanFilippo
Anthony SanFilippo

Anthony SanFilippo writes about the Phillies and Flyers for Crossing Broad and hosts a pair of related podcasts (Crossed Up and Snow the Goalie). A part of the Philadelphia sports media for a quarter century, Anthony also dabbles in acting, directing, teaching, and strategic marketing, which is why he has no time to do anything, but does it anyway. Follow him on Twitter @AntSanPhilly.

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