Flyers

Playing with a Talent Bell Curve – Thoughts After a Dreadful Flyers Road Trip

By Anthony SanFilippo

Published: Jan 8th, 2020 · 12:35 PM EST

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Let’s go back in the time machine, shall we?

There was a time, in the not too distant past, when all the talk about the Flyers was that although they were mired in mediocrity, they had a boatload of talent in the system that would soon bear the juiciest of fruits.

Many pundits had the Flyers with a system that ranked in the top five in the NHL. Many had them ranked in the top two (along with Vancouver).

The Flyers were a team who, when these guys reached the NHL, they would once again return to prominence.

It started with the arrival of Shayne Gostisbehere. He was the first of what would be a series of additions to the lineup that would foster a new generation of Flyers dominance in the Eastern Conference. He burst on the scene greater than any Flyers home-grown defenseman ever. He was the poster child for the Flyers finally coming into the modern age of hockey. No longer were they going to rely on size, strength and physicality to bully their way to victory. No, the Flyers were going to get smaller and faster and more-skilled and younger – this was most important – the young talent was going to play and play early and give the team the energy injection it needed.

And they all started to arrive – Scott Laughton, a first round pick. Travis Konecny, a first round pick. Ivan Provorov, a first round pick. Travis Sanheim, a first round pick. Nolan Patrick, a first round pick. Joel Farabee, a first round pick. Morgan Frost, a first round pick. German Rubtsov, a first round pick.

And then there were the second rounders – Robert Hagg, Nicolas Aube-Kubel, and of course, the would-be savior, Carter Hart.

And even further down the organizational depth chart, the Flyers were being touted for finding a couple gems – like Oskar Lindblom in round five and the undrafted Phil Myers.

Add all of them to a lineup that featured stars like Claude Giroux and Jake Voracek and make a couple of trades/free agent signings for veterans to fill in the gaps, and it should all work.

It was the belief of the old regime with Ron Hextall as general manager and Dave Hakstol as head coach. The philosophy didn’t shift much once Chuck Fletcher took over as GM and brought in the coach with the most wins in the NHL to take two teams to the Stanley Cup Final without winning one – in Alain Vigneault.

His strategy was to add a few veterans to fill those aforementioned holes. Matt Niskanen and Justin Braun to settle down a young defense. Kevin Hayes to fill the center void up front. Tyler Pitlick to provide bottom six depth. And Brian Elliott to serve as a quality veteran backup/mentor for Hart.

This was finally going to be the breakthrough year. It was finally all going to come together after seven years of wallowing in the obscurity of either barely making the playoffs and being bounced in the first round, or coming up just short of the postseason in the regular season’s final week.

And for a while, it looked good. The Flyers bought into Vigneault’s system. They were in almost every game. They were winning a bunch too. They were very good on home ice, building the best home record in the NHL at one point. They briefly had a chance to sniff second place in a very tough Metropolitan Division. They talked about it being the closest locker room they had ever been a part of. It was starting to look like the pundits may have been right a few years back.

But there were signs. There were chinks in the armor. There were cracks starting to form in the facade. Sure, Patrick’s migraine disorder and Lindblom’s cancer diagnosis were completely unexpected, but there still should have been enough talent on the roster to make up for the difference.

After all, the Flyers at one time or another had 14 first round picks suit up for them this season.

But things have crashed and crashed hard since Christmas.

An optimist will tell you that it’s only six games. That yes, even though they went 1-4-1 in those six games, capped off with a 5-4 overtime loss to a Carolina Hurricanes team begging to be beaten Tuesday,  it can be fixed. That teams go through slumps all the time and play their way through them and come out just fine on the other side.

And that’s certainly true. The Flyers are finally coming home after a long trip and maybe the home cooking is all they need to turn it back around, and this opinion post won’t age well. That’s perfectly fine by me.

But what if that doesn’t happen? What if this absolute gauntlet of a schedule (Washington, Tampa, Boston, at St. Louis, Montreal, Los Angeles, home-and-home with Pittsburgh, Colorado) buries them? What if it puts them in the place we have grown way too accustomed to seeing them – chasing the final wild card spot from several points back?

The restless natives will be calling for change – and rightfully so. Not at the GM position, we had that a little over a year ago. Not at the coaching position – that happened just last summer. So what’s left?

The players.

But here’s the conundrum – what players?

The easy trope that is fancied about by a lot of the Flyers Twitterverse is to blow up the core. Way too much blame for the Flyers failings has been laid at the feet of Claude Giroux and Jake Voracek. And while it’s true that the two longest-serving Flyers haven’t won anything together, to put them on blast is misguided for sure.

Consider this:

On this abysmal six-game road trip, the trio of Giroux, Voracek, and Sean Couturier (who is also in the core) combined for five goals and 14 assists for 19 points and were a plus-nine.

The rest of the Flyers team, and we’re talking 17 players here, scored 11 goals, had 10 assists for 21 points and were a combined minus-51.

Now, plus/minus is a bad stat, I know that. But it’s a bad stat when looked at individually, because it doesn’t tell the whole story of a player’s shift. But when looked at collectively, it can be a little more telling.

In other words, with the exception of the Flyers top line (Voracek was moved off of it against Carolina to try to spread the wealth through the lineup), the Flyers were absolutely pummeled by the opposition.

And it’s not like they were playing the top teams in the NHL here. The three California teams are all on the outside of the playoff picture looking in, and that’s likely where they will all end up. Vegas is talented and is starting to play a lot better, so, that one was a challenge, but Carolina entered the game Tuesday just one point ahead of the Flyers in the standings.

And yet, the Flyers were sliced and diced to the tune of allowing 28 goals, only one of which was an empty-netter.

Their bottom three lines were consistently ineffective, with the bottom six often getting throttled. Their defense, which had been pretty solid up until Santa Claus arrived, went onto the side of milk cartons. It became especially dire against Carolina, the first game the Flyers played without Justin Braun, who is likely to be sidelined 3-4 weeks with a groin injury.

And boy, did they miss Braun.

The pairing of Sanheim and Myers was awful. Sanheim scored a the tying goal to force overtime on a nice play, but his offensive skills, which honestly aren’t on display enough, have never been questioned. But the duo was picked on repeatedly by the Hurricanes forwards.

Then in overtime, Sanheim lost his stick and never went and picked it up, which allowed for the ‘Canes to get the winning goal:

Dougie Hamilton’s shift in overtime was phenomenal. An All-Star caliber effort for his 14th goal of the season, the game-winning goal in a must-win divisional game. pic.twitter.com/l6sh56TXZ0

— Brett Finger (@brett_finger) January 8, 2020

You can see that Sanheim was going to go get the stick at the 20-second mark of that clip, but then decides not to. Hamilton scores at the 33-second mark. That’s 13 seconds Sanheim had to go get his stick. He has to go. He has to have that instinct.

The late, great former Flyers coach Roger Nielsen used to argue that getting a new stick from the bench when you broke one would take seven seconds and mathematically that would be better than standing out there without one as far as the odds of stopping a shot or a goal.

Sanheim’s stick wasn’t broken. Nor did he have to skate to the Flyers bench. He had 13 seconds – and didn’t move. That’s crazy.

Anyway, as bad as the defense has been, it’s not just defensemen. It’s team defense and the forwards are equally at fault here. Check out this goal from the Carolina game:

Doing some Gardining pic.twitter.com/8xjSRPz0yk

— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) January 8, 2020

Pause that at the eight-second mark. What do you see? That’s right, all five Flyers skaters on the same side of the ice. That is certainly not how AV and staff is coaching it.

So, yes, the team defense is in shambles lately.

But the goalies are not getting off the hook here.

In the last six games:

• Carter Hart: 0-3-0, 5.23 GAA, .830 SvPct
• Brian Elliott: 1-1-1, 3.83 GAA, .859 SvPct

Hart has lost seven straight games on the road in which he’s started. His last road win was that surprising overtime victory in Boston on Nov. 10.

Elliott has been better than Hart on the road, but still hasn’t been great.

There’s a lot crumbling at once here for the Flyers.

Which begs the question, (and yes, it took me nearly 1600 words to get to the crux of this argument), what if the Flyers’ young players aren’t as good as they were touted to be?

This isn’t to suggest that they aren’t NHL caliber, because that would be silly. These players are all NHL-quality players. That makes them among the 600-best players in the world, so to criticize their talent would be disingenuous.

But my question more pertains to the Flyers own self-evaluation over the past few years. I think that’s where there could be a problem.

Is it possible that they got caught up in their own hype? That the people who scout and analyze junior hockey or minor league hockey overvalued the Flyers prospects and the Flyers believed it?

Possible – at least for the old regime. But I don’t think that’s the case for Fletcher and crew. The fact that he publicly declared that there would be a rotation of sorts shuttling back and forth from Lehigh Valley this season, especially when it came to the bottom six forwards, indicates that they probably had a good idea in training camp that the depth wasn’t as good as the team would like.

But still, 14 former first rounders in the lineup at various times this season? Yeah, that number is inflated by Rubtsov, who only played three games, Chris Stewart, who barely plays, and Morgan Frost, who obviously wasn’t ready for the NHL, yet, but it is an indicator that maybe these players aren’t living up to expectations, and some of them may never do so.

Now, a lot of these players are still young. It’s hard to say a guy like Farabee isn’t meeting expectations when he’s a 19-year-old rookie, or that Myers isn’t meeting expectations when he doesn’t even have a full-year under his belt and he wasn’t even drafted.

But some of these guys are now into the second half of their third NHL season – or further. Is it possible that what we see is what we’re always going to get, or that the margin of progression remaining is so slim that it will be masked by the eventual regression when they get older?

Is it possible that Hart isn’t Carey Price, but maybe more like a John Gibson?

Travis Konecny is a deserving All-Star this season with 37 points in 40 games, but even his early-season pace has dipped slightly.

Yes, there are veterans who are head-scratch worthy. James van Riemsdyk didn’t have a point on the road trip, yet was the Flyers leading goal scorer at Christmas. Kevin Hayes had a long stretch of really good play, but that has been followed by a run here of inconsistency. As good as Matt Niskanen was all season, this road trip was one to forget for Niskanen, as he and Provorov were a combined minus-13 on the trip.

So, it’s not just the younger players. But we’ve reached a point where we can no longer just chalk up the struggles of the young guys to the fact that they are young. The Flyers need them to contribute – and soon. They are clinging to the final Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference right now, but the grip is tenuous.

The red hot Columbus Blue Jackets have tied the Flyers in points, although the Flyers have a game in-hand. Florida is only one point back. Buffalo lurks just five points out and the young and speedy New York Rangers are six points back with a game in hand.

There is no wiggle room for the Flyers and the toughest part of their schedule looms ahead. They need to play to their talent level to survive.

But is that talent level as good as we once thought? We’ll know better when we look at the standings in a couple weeks.