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Meltzer's Musings: 7/10/11 |
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Most of the people who question the Flyers' offseason moves this summer focus on how the club will make up for the combined 101 regular season goals (out of 259 for the entire team) that Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, Ville Leino, Kiris Versteeg and Nikolay Zherdev scored for Philadelphia this past season. Even in a best-case scenario, the team is likely to score fewer goals in 2011-12 than last season.
The addition of Ilya Bryzgalov in goal may help to trim the number of opposition goals (223 last season) but the club is still going to figure which forward line will typically draw the defensive assignment against the opposition's top line. The penalty killing personnel will have to be shuffled around at the start of the season. The club will also need to hope Chris Pronger is healthy and effective this year, as well as the rest of the top five on the blueline.
It is the defensive question marks -- which also include the ongoing lack of a big center who is strong on faceoffs -- that worry me more than the offensive drop-off. In terms of putting the puck into the net, I think the Flyers will be OK.
First of all, I think that Jaromir Jagr still has enough left in the tank to, at bare minimum, replace Leino's 19 goals and 53 points. Figure that he's likely to start the season with Claude Giroux and James van Riemsdyk as his linemates. It's not hard to envision Giroux and Jagr -- two extremely creative talents -- establishing good chemistry with one another.
I think it's fair to expect a healthy Giroux to bump up his goal total from 25 to 30 and for Jagr to score 22 goals with about 40 assists. It's a little harder to comfortably predict what JVR will do, because he is still likely to hit some slumps as well as to dominate in certain games. Let's say he increases his regular-season goal output from 21 to 25.
Under this conservative estimate, the club would make a 31 goal dent toward replacing the 101 goals scored by the departing forwards.
Moving to Danny Briere's line, there is a pretty good chance that Briere will experience a little bit of a drop-off from his career best 34-goal season last year. Let's say that he plays 75 games and scores 30 goals. Scott Hartnell pretty much scores 22-25 goals every year, so let's say that he scores the same 24 that he did last season. Jakub Voracek will need to step up his game from his third to fourth NHL season.
Let's say that Voracek produces at a slightly higher pace than his best NHL season to date (16-34-50 in 2009-10) and pots 21 goals and 37 assists for 58 points. He'd be up 5 goals from his career season to date, Briere would be down 4 and Hartnell would stay the same. That would put the Flyers at 32 goals toward replacing the 101 departing goals.
Line 3 is clearly the biggest X factor for the Flyers this offseason. A realistic goal for Brayden Schenn is to produce an NHL rookie season similar to Mike Richards' rookie output of 11 goals and 34 points. Let's say Schenn scores 12 goals and 34 points. If Wayne Simmonds can take the next step in his development and become a 20-goal scorer in his fourth NHL season.
The occupant of the third spot on the line remains unknown at this point. Matt Read could push for the spot, but let's say for now that it's Andreas Nodl's job. Nodl has yet to tap into his offensive potential at the pro level, but let's say he tallies one more time than last year's 11-goal showing.
With one more goal from Nodl, a dozen from Schenn and a 20 from Simmonds, the Flyers would then have 65 goals toward replacing the lost offense. In other words, they would be down by 36 goals.
Figure new arrival Maxime Talbot plays in different spots in the lineup and chips in 9 goals (he's hit double-digits three times his career but scored 8 last year). That would be one more than Darroll Powe scored last year. So the team's goal deficit is down to 35 in this scenario.
Blair Betts and Jody Shelley scratched out a combined 7 goals last year. Let's say that Betts gets 4 and some combination of Shelley, Tom Sestito, Ben Holmstrom, Zac Rinaldo and/or other callup players can combine for another 3 tallies. The goal deficit is still 35.
Let's move to scoring from the defense. Last year, the Flyers got just 22 goals from the defense, led by 8 from Andrej Meszaros. Limited to just 50 games, Pronger scored only 4 goals. Braydon Coburn and Matt Carle combined for a mere three goals, while Kimmo Timonen scored 6 and the now departed Sean O'Donnell scrounged up one.
Even in a conservative estimate, the combined output should increase in 2011-12. Let's say that Meszaros goes from 8 to 9, Pronger goes from 4 to 6, Coburn and Carle combine for 6 and Timonen drops from 6 to 5. That modest bump would still put the Flyers up by 5 goals from last year, and cut the Flyers' overall goal deficit to 30 goals.
If the Flyers were to be down by 30 goals from last year, they would score 229 as a team. They would need Bryzgalov and the team defense to significantly reduce the number of goals the opposition scores. The magic number would be about 25 goals (cutting the number of goals against from 223 to 198).
A season in which the Flyers score 229 and allow 198 would almost definitely be sufficient to get the club into the playoffs, even if it is as about a number 6 or 7 seed. From there, anything can happen. Honestly, though, I think there is more work to be done to get the defensive part of the equation where it needs to be than the offensive side.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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