Monthly Post Recap

In the month of September, I wrote the following pieces over at Broad Street Buzz about the Flyers.

• Steve Mason Can't Get No Respect
• AHL the Best Place for Ghost...For Now
• Flyers Bounce-Back Players and What to Expect
• Figuring Out the Schenn Brothers Future in Philadelphia
• 3 Gagne Playoff Highlights to Remembers as he Retires
• The Top 20 Flyers Nicknames and Slogans

Also, I'm still doing a Flyers flipboard magazine of news links.  It's here.

Is This the New Normal?

Flyers wrapped up a 4 game road trip, 1-1-2.  It is an improvement from the terrible stretch of play discussed in my last post, as they were competitive in every game.  Is this the best we can ask of this team?  To be merely be competitive?

Sequentially, the Flyers played a pretty good game in SJ but came away empty handed due to a shocking last minute goal against.  They followed that up with a fun game against Anaheim, including a clutch last second goal and the seemingly inevitable shootout loss.  The Flyers finally got a win versus LA, where they've had a lot of success the last few years, by having a good first 30 minutes, then hanging on for dear life the last 30.  The trip then ended with a bit of a thud, getting outplayed most of the game by Columbus (one of the worst teams in the East).

It's nice to see Schenn producing, and guys like Umberger are showing modest improvement, but the team feels like a mess.  There's some musical chairs happening on defense, and Lecavalier has been stuck in the press box.  It's an untenable state of affairs, and there's little reason to be expect a significant turnaround.

The Flyers are swimming with the bottom-dwellers in the standings.  If you break down their performance, they deserve to be there.

5v5: 22nd
Shot differential: 22nd
PP: 4th
PK: 29th
Save Percentage: 18th

Right now the Flyers are mediocre team with a crippling penalty kill.

I am also hearing some fans say they aren't surprised by this.  I will say that I AM, to some extent.  The bottom line is the Flyers were one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference from November 1 onwards last season (3rd overall I think, only behind Boston and Pittsburgh).  Now I certainly wouldn't have predicted them 3rd this year, especially without Timonen, but I thought they had a very good chance at a bottom half playoff spot.

That playoff spot is rapidly slipping away, leading many fans to talk of tanking to get highly anticipated prospects McDavid or Eichel.  Personally, I am not a fan of this plan, and there's not much reason to do so.  Here are the lottery odds this year.

It is true that finishing dead last would guarantee the Flyers a top 2 pick and one of McDavid or Eichel.  Beyond that, each slot on that chart only increases your chance at the #1 pick by a very small amount.  I think the bottom line is that the Flyers are a significantly better team than Edmonton, Buffalo and Carolina, and the Flyers lottery odds will be in the middle of the pack for non-playoff teams; i.e. not good.

Instead of chasing lottery balls, the Flyers can transition into making moves that won't pay off for another season or two.  Even then the Flyers don't have any obvious playoff rental material, but they can start shipping out defensemen as the defense will have to be entirely rebuilt anyway.

As sad as it is to say, it may be time for Flyers fans to switch into player development watching mode.  Giroux and Voracek are undoubtedly top notch players, but that's not enough.  Personally, I'll probably be spending much of this season focusing on the development of Schenn, Couturier and Laughton.

Flyers Searching for the Bottom

Any way you look at it, it's awful.  The Flyers are 1-7-1 in their last 9.  Only laughing stocks Buffalo, Carolina, and Edmonton, and injury-ravaged Columbus have worse records.  The penalty kill is dead last.  They have been dominated in their last 2 road division games against the Rangers and Islanders.  The Flyers are in the bottom handful of teams in shot differential, 5v5 Corsi percentage, and team save percentage.  The bottom line, is they are getting whipped.

Everyone knows the defense is not talented enough, but the problems have become much bigger.  For one thing, their team defensive coverage is terrible.  It seems opponents find countless passing seams to exploit and are quicker to every loose puck, and that's when someone is not completely unmarked in the slot.  One could look at the Detroit loss and conclude maybe the rebounds and bounces simply didn't go in favor of the Flyers, but when it happens every night, it's not luck.

Second, the offense is completely reliant on the Giroux line.  Giroux is generally doing his thing, Schenn is contributing right now, and Voracek continues to be spectacular.  Every other line has disappeared.  Lecavalier can't find a role.  Umberger has been total deadweight.  Couturier handles the puck like a hot potato and immediately looks to get rid of it.  Simmonds has faded after his promising start.  Then end result is that Giroux and Voracek have been on the ice for every single Flyers goal in the last 4 games.

Bad team defense and completely one dimensional scoring is a recipe for a last place team.  The Flyers had a similarly bad start last year amongst the coaching change, but as I've already written, there's no excuse for such a start this year.  Furthermore, there is no clear path for the Flyers to crawl out of this mess.  I expect things to naturally rebound a little, but given the depth of the problems, hope for a playoff spot appears increasingly distant.

A Week Without Points

Things were looking up for the Flyers, with 3 consecutive wins in strong performances.  After an extended break, the Flyers lost all that momentum and came away empty handed against the Blue Jackets and Canadiens over the weekend.

Those two teams represented the opposite ends of the spectrum, as the Canadiens are first overall, and the Blue Jackets last.  The result was the same against both however.  I thought the performance against the Blue Jackets performance was sloppy, while the Canadiens game mainly got away from the Flyers despite some battling.

The real takeaway from both games is that the Flyers yielded 3 PP goals against in each.  You won't win many games giving up 3 PP goals, regardless of who you're playing.  The Flyers' penalty kill is now ranked 29th, and they've been shorthanded more often recently. 

It's too early in the season to be scoreboard watching and checking the standings.  The Flyers really should just be concerned about getting the point they can by themselves, but these penalty killing problems must be addressed ASAP or they will continue to drop points.


Notes
-Brayden Schenn's stock is rising recently.  He's on a 5 game point streak, scoring 7 points in those games.  When he was moved to the Read-Couturier line, that line looked much more perky offensively, and when he slid in with Giroux and Voracek against Montreal he scored twice.  He now has 13 points in 16 games overall.

-The Umberger-Lecavalier line has looked pretty hopeless.  Clearly the Flyers worst line IMO.  Umberger has remained invisible, and while Lecavalier has been getting PP time, he hasn't been very effective.  Against Montreal, he was extremely trigger happy and attempted 12 shots, but only one of those even found its way to Price.

Still Waiting

So a new blog post from me has finally come.  A first victory for the Flyers this season, has not.

Flyers fans, ever the patient bunch, are likely tempted to jump off a bridge right now.  The start of 0-2-2 is very worrying, but I won't declare them an awful team just yet.

My main fallback on this point is that, as I ran the numbers last year, between November and March 26 the Flyers were the 5th best team in the NHL.  This team is basically the same squad, minus Timonen and Hartnell.

The Flyers took a lot of flack in the offseason as they appeared to do nothing but make themselves weaker.  They traded Hartnell, and Timonen went down with a devastating injury.  In addition, Steve Mason is still not well respected around the league as an above-average starting goalie.

Four games into the season, the critics were right.  With #HartnellDown the team has no quality LW, Mason looked shaky, and the defense was inept.  Last year a slow start was forgivable due to Giroux's injury and the coaching change.  This was why I was willing to look at the standings from November 1 on and wipe away October.  The Flyers do not deserve that leniency this year.

An alternative view of things is that the Flyers can only win if Giroux is playing at an MVP level and the power play is pouring in goals.  Last year, the Flyers had the worst 5v5 goal differential of all playoff teams.  This year the power play is looking solid, although they still haven't really found a replacement for Hartnell's high slot role on the number one unit.  That is a long term worry, but the big thing is the 5v5 play has gone from average to awful.  They'll never be a juggernaut there with this roster, but they have to get back to average, and that fact may hinge upon Giroux finding superlative form.


Miscellaneous Notes:
-Simmonds is currently playing at a level that I never saw him reaching.  5 goals in 4 games, and showing an offensive poise I didn't expect.  He's always been a streaky scorer, but I daresay this is more than a hot streak with a few consecutive bang-in goals.

-The Schenn brothers have been very disappointing.  Luke Schenn is staring at a league worst -6 rating, and Brayden has not made an offensive impression.  Personally, I think Luke's +/- reflects a lot of goals that I wouldn't blame him for, and that Luke could be a serviceable player with the right partner in the right role.  As for Brayden, I am running out of patience for him to emerge as an impact offensive player.  That he lasted less than 2 games on the wing with Giroux and Voracek is his failure.

-Bellemare has looked pretty good to me.  He skates smoothly and thinks fast, which will get him far.  Like Raffl, he needs a few dozen games on the 4th line to fully adapt to the NHL.

-Lecavalier has also looked impressive to me.  I also thought he looked pretty good at the beginning of last season and showed some chemistry with B. Schenn before injuries really ruined his season.  It's bad timing for him to get injured now, although taking a shot off the foot shouldn't create the same kind of lingering injury that the bad back did to him last year.

Offseason Do's and Don'ts: Lecavalier

With the draft upcoming, teams are making their offseason trade plans.  For the Flyers, the most likely piece to trade is Lecavalier.  After only one year here, many in Flyerdom are sour on him.

He arrived here last year as a 33-year old free agent to play under Peter Laviolette, amid some hope of reviving the second line.  He did get 20 goals last year, so it's not a disaster, but time on the 4th line in the playoffs leads the presumption he has no future on the Hextall/Berube Flyers.

I thought he showed some chemistry with Schenn early in the season, but his season was derailed by back ailments and he never found his place under Berube's system.  He also seems ill-suited to play wing at this point of his career, and Hextall's youth focus presumably means the second line center spot is reserved for Schenn.

So what are the trade options?  They are probably more limited than most think.  He is owed $16.5m over the next 4 years, at a cap hit of $4.5m/season.  He is seen as a player on the decline around the league, and a team trading for him probably will require the Flyers to eat some of his salary in any trade.  Lecavalier also must approve of any trade.

It has been easy for everyone to speculate that Nashville is a fit for Lecavalier.  Laviolette is the new coach there, and they are definitely lacking offensive centermen.  I haven't actually heard anything from the Nashville end, and my worry is that Nashville will only give up something like a mid-round pick and still expect the Flyers to pick up salary.  Do the Flyers want to be rid of Lecavalier so much that they'll eat salary and accept only a token return?

The other day it was reported Lecavalier would allow a trade to Florida, but again I haven't heard of actual interest from Florida.  I think it's safe to presume a Lecavalier trade will not return Florida's #1 pick in the draft, which they are shopping...

Lastly, the Flyers could give Lecavalier another year here.  Let him play second line center and see if he can fit in.  The bonus of this plan is, Lecavalier's contract pays him reduced amounts the remaining years following one more season.  $4.5, $3, and $3 million to be exact.  At that point, the Flyers could trade him to a small market team that is not up against the cap, and not have to eat any salary or cap hit from Lecavalier (said team wouldn't care about the $4.5m cap hit, and will appreciate his lower actual salary due on a smaller real budget).

All in all my takeaway is, shop him, but you don't NEED to dump him this offseason.  If the Flyers really wanted to add salary this offseason they'd need to create cap space, but I don't think Hextall is in the big acquisition mode, nor should he be.

A Familiar Story

Another season, a familiar pattern of events.  The Flyers lost 3-1 in their opener to the Leafs, and themes of last season begin immediately this year.

First, I'll start with the positives.  Those were good debuts from Lecavalier and Streit.  I can see Streit getting a lot of points this season, and Lecavalier created a lot of chances and the only goal.  Also, Mason looked pretty good, and could not be faulted on any goal (though I do wonder if he could've done better directing the rebounds on the initial shot before the Leafs put in the rebounds for their 1st and 3rd goals).  Overall, lots of pressure from the Flyers the first 30 minutes.

Now the bad, and unfortunately none of this is new.  For all the pressure the Flyers were sustaining, only one goal.  Now Bernier played an excellent game for the Leafs, no doubt about that, but the Flyers also didn't really break down the defense.  They just had better legs at the start against a team that played an emotional game last night.  Of course, the Flyers have never been able to sustain that type of control for 60 minutes.  Once that push faded, the Flyers chances and puck possession really dried up.  And once ahead in the 3rd, the Leafs completely smothered the Flyers with vastly superior puck support and control.  The result at the end of the day was the Flyers being outscored 2-0 at 5-on-5 (the Flyers were 25th in the league in this category last year), and the Flyers came away with 0 points in a game that was tied after 2 periods (they were also awful in this category last year).

It's just one game, and the Leafs could be one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference, but it is discouraging to see last season's problems immediately rear their head.

It Begins

I guess it's time to get off my ass and write something here, being that the season starts tonight.  Woohoo!

I'm still firmly in wait and see mode, but I will say that I see this year's Flyers team as a borderline playoff team.  I'd put the chances of them making the playoffs at a little below 50%.  This partly has to do with a horrific preseason, but moreso because I'm reading it together with last season.  Hardcore Mostly Flyers readers will recall this post of mine, and my opinions really haven't changed since this time.

I am very worried about the Flyers ability to score at 5-on-5.  The Flyers just don't attack with efficiency and purpose.  Whether it's coaching, motivation, or talent, the Flyers often look apathetic and aimless.

There are tangible reasons I can say to myself why it should be better this year.  Lecavalier has 61 even strength points over the last 2 years, while Briere only 42 during that time.  Hartnell is in the best shape of his life after being injured and unprepared last season.  Brayden Schenn (who shall hereafter be referred to as "Bo", mainly because I want to have the brothers Bo and Luke on the Flyers roster) and Cooter are a year older.

The defense, however, did not get much of a makeover, and is curiously still bloated with 8 defensemen on the roster.  I've been waiting for a trade on that count for months.  Something's got to give there.  Streit is a PP specialist, but he's been on the second PP unit thus far because the old first unit was so effective last year, and he may not get much more than 3rd pair even strength minutes.  This is a not a sea change for a defense that appeared ill-equipped last season.

While the goalie tandem of Mason and Emery should provide the most uncertainty (in an entertaining fashion, for better or worse), the million dollar question is Laviolette's leash.  Can he survive a slow start?  I won't beat a dead horse with my opinion on the matter, but I think Laviolette has more to prove than the players  That's never a good thing.

Okay, now I have all my fretting out of the way.  Let a fun season begin!

Do the Flyers Regret Signing Streit?

The question of the day is, with Lecavalier in the fold, do the Flyers regret their early move to add Streit?

The Flyers have said they did not expect Lecavalier to be bought out, and signing him was a move of opportunity.  Surely when the Flyers made the move to acquire Streit they had an offseason plan laid out that did not include freely picking up a prominent center for $4.5m.  However, had the Flyers known they could add Lecavalier, I suspect they would not have added Streit.

Clearly, the Flyers are trying to move a defensemen now due to lack of cap space.  Coburn could fetch a decent return, but I'm not too keen on the idea of subtracting a top-4 defensemen.  Meszaros, coming off a poor injury-riddled season and a UFA to-be, has little to nil trade value.  It feels like the Flyers are scrambling a bit, basically because they are.

I believe that, with Lecavalier, the Flyers are more willing to move Schenn or Couturier.  Those two had a disappointing season last year as the Flyers second line struggled, but the Flyers had no choice but to rely on those guys on the 2nd and 3rd line and hope for improvement from them.  Therefore, the option of trading them was particularly unappealing for the Flyers.  Now the second line has received a substantial shot in the arm, so while that doesn't degrade the trade value of Schenn or Cooter, they are not as critical to the upcoming season.

Accounting for Lecavalier before making any moves on defense, the Flyers could've made a move for a younger, better all-around defensemen than Streit.  Something like Schenn+Mesz+Read/picks for Yandle?  Or even something better for Pietrangelo?  In such a case, there would be no more talk of trading Coburn, and a second pair of Yandle/Coburn looks much more formidable than a potential pair of Streit/Grossmann.

Of course the Flyers could still make such a trade, but they are awfully tight to the cap to be paying Streit $5.25m to get 3rd pair minutes.

Jumping out in front of the market for an early move is a go-to play for Holmgren (Hartnell/Timonen, Bryzgalov, even re-signing Leighton), but by not letting events unfold and fully capitalizing on opportunities as they come, the Flyers make a different kind of risk.

Never a Dull Moment

I've said it before, but being a Flyers fan is just fun sometimes.  Whenever anyone of note becomes available, the Flyers are sniffing around.  Maybe always chasing the big move, the short term fix, has hampered the Flyers ability to win a cup.

Regardless of whether this is true, the Flyers are consistently one of the best teams in the NHL, and made deep cup runs in 95, 97, 2000, 2004 and 2010.  On top of that, there's always something to talk about, and rarely a forgettable season.

Tonight's signing of Lecavalier is a show-stopper and continues the tradition.

Now first, it's important to realize Lecavalier's days as a superstar are behind him.  Since his days as the #1 pick in 98, when then-TB owner naively labelled him the Michael Jordan of hockey, there's always been a superstar aura around him.  Truthfully, he only performed at that level for a brief period of time, and TB signed him up to contract with a cap hit of $7.7m/season under that spell.  Now 33, he hasn't hit 30 goals in 5 seasons.

With all the wonderful weirdness of this offseason and the compliance buyouts, the Flyers can look at him purely as a second line center.  While adding a big name forward seemed low on the priority list for the Flyers, a big issue with last season's team that no one talks about was terrible secondary scoring (meanwhile, the goaltending that everyone talks about was actually fine).  The team put a heavy burden on Couturier and Schenn to develop quickly into scoring roles, and it didn't happen last season.  This move does NOT mean they are giving up on either of them, but it does relieve that burden.  Additionally, the Flyers wanted to get bigger up front, and Lecavalier is 6'4".

Lecavalier's contract is reported to be at $4.5x5.  This is decent cap hit.  It's not without risks, going to his 38th birthday for a player who will decline over the life of deal, but consider the comparables of contending teams' second line centers.  Boston is paying Krejci $5.25m for his 33 points last year.  LA is paying Carter $5.27m for his 33 points.  Pittsburgh is paying Crosby and Malkin each ~$9m.  Lecavalier's 32 points at $4.25m looks pretty good.

Nor does this signing put the Flyers in an onerous cap position.  With some simple moves, the Flyers current cap picture looks like this:

The Flyers could easily sign a platoon goalie and put that lineup out there.

More likely some more tweaking will be done to this lineup and a defensemen will go.  The Flyers could either move Meszaros in what will basically be a salary dump, or they could try for a significant return for Coburn (and even now have the freedom throw in Schenn or Couturier now that Lecavalier is on board and Laughton is coming up).

Presuming the simpler transaction of dumping Meszaros, and running with some rumors about potential signings, the Flyers opening day lineup could very well look like this:

That lineup is clearly better than last year's team, and quite honestly better than I thought the Flyers could put together this offseason while being comfortably under the cap (although the defense is still underwhelming).  Either way, next season would be a lot of fun.