It's officially over

As expected, the Bruins series ended promptly this year.  It was a comprehensive thrashing.    There's really not much else to say about it, other than that it shouldn't be all that surprising given the way they looked at the end the season in general; disorganized defensively, tentative, physically unassertive.

I wanted to believe the Flyers would shape up and return to midseason form after some inspired play against Buffalo, but that proved to be a temporary flash against an inferior opponent.

Quick season review:
What went right?
-Giroux emerged as the best player on the team.

-JVR took a big step forward, and should be a key player next year.

-The Meszaros transaction worked out great, being the team's best defense from start to finish this year.  He is signed for 3 more years at $4m per and looks to be the heir apparent to leading the defense as Pronger's and Timonen's ice time declines due to age.

-Bobrovsky showed a lot of promise, with his best hockey coming in November.  That said, I strongly believe his NHL game is not a finished product, and there's no way I'd enter next season with him as the undisputed number 1.

-Nodl's first half.

-The defense was much stronger 1-6, at least when the roster was healthy.

What went wrong?
-Pronger had a mediocre regular season, had injury problems, and essentially missed the end of the season and playoffs.  Honestly I didn't care too much about his regular season because he's a playoff player, but that didn't really work out this year, did it.

-Timonen had his worst season as a Flyer, particularly in the playoffs.  Along with Pronger, questions have to be asked how much their skills will diminish in the next season or two and if they are breaking down.  Timonen is 36 years old and said it himself that he only has so many season in his "stumpy legs."  Maybe he was just playing injured in the playoffs...we'll have to see.

-Richards had an uninspiring regular season, and a particularly disappointing playoffs.  I still say he was injured/out-of-shape.  I hope for his sake it was injured and not the latter.  There's also a lot of chatter about his lack of leadership, but I know nothing about what is really happening in "the room", so I can't speak to that.

-The Versteeg trade is looking like a real dud.  He played a little better in the playoffs, but never contributing in any significant way.  He will have to do better next year to earn the $3m cap hit, or the Flyers should start looking to remedy the mistake of acquiring him in the first place.

-Nodl's second half, the return of Andreas No-Goal.

-Goaltending was not good enough.  It was rendered irrelevant in the Boston series, but the Flyers eeked by a much inferior Buffalo team after what was, taken collectively, probably the worst goaltending performance in a playoff series I've ever seen.

-The power play was really bad, somewhat inexplicably so.

-The Hartnell-Briere-Leino line lost its mojo in the second half of the season.  For last year's playoffs and the first half this year, they were pretty easily the Flyers best 5v5 line, manufacturing scoring chances and pinning in the other team.  Just as an example, Leino's 6 points in 11 playoff games this year is a far cry from his 21 in 19 games last year.

-100 straight games without a shutout.  It's hard to pin down the exact reasons for this, but I say roughly 2/3rds goaltending and 1/3 poor defensive zone coverage and lapses.  Much of a shutout is solid defense combined with a flawless performance by a goalie.



There is really no clear path forward for the Flyers.  That's not to say they're all of a sudden a bad team, I just mean that management could go in several completely different directions.  The only move I think they HAVE to make is a meaningful solution in goal.  What they should do with the skaters however (and if they should shake up the lineup) is very subjective, but almost nothing is off the table.