The "smartest" player on the Flyers

In terms of hockey IQ, Claude Giroux is staking his claim as the smartest, or the most innate playmaker on the team. While Leino is a crafty forward, and Timonen likely knows what an attacker will do before the attacker does, Giroux is making some special plays. Not just in some kind of stickhandling wizardry, but often in creating without having to do some fancy dipsy-do.

Two recent plays bear this out;

-Last night against the Hurricanes, with the game admittedly well in hand and the Canes coming apart, Giroux received a gift of a dreadful outlet pass, and broke in 2-on-1. The defender seemed to forget how to play hockey for a moment, and Giroux walked in, then passed over to Richards for an easy goal.

It all seems relatively simply, but the real beauty is the timing. He didn't rush into space and barrel in on the keeper, nor did he decide to pass early on in the play. He calmy took the space the defenders gave him, waiting for the goalie to commit, and timed his pass perfectly on the off-beat where the goalie is stepping towards and has no ability to change directions to the other attacker. It's like wrong-footing a goalie in soccer--seems simple or even lucky, but there's a delicate timing to it, and the best scorers do it to goalies over and over.

-Another more flashy example;

Again, the real play isn't the blind spin-around pass, it's the awareness to make a pass without having to look. Giroux goes after the puck knowing all the penalty-killers are committed to one side of the ice, and that he has a teammate looking pretty lonely, all alone on the other side. Once he wins the puck, it's basically a matter of anticipating where your teammate should be. Sometimes those passes won't work, but at the tail end of a PP, it's a worth risk worth taking.

Of course it doesn't hurt that both those plays were finished by that player that maybe has the second best hockey IQ on the team, Mike Richards.

Youthful quickness can make any player appear hockey "smarter", but these are some impressive, subtle plays, that are signs of a confident player who will likely produce offense for a long time.