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Meltzer's Musings 12/12/11

December 12, 2011, 9:39 AM ET [ Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Today in Voorhees, the Philadelphia Flyers will prepare for tomorrow night's game in Washington against the Capitals. Philadelphia will look to extend its December winning streak to six straight games.

Nevertheless, it's a safe bet that the lion's share of the attention will be on the status of Claude Giroux (and, to a lesser extent, Ilya Bryzgalov).

The unofficial word on Giroux is that, while sore from the collision with teammate Wayne Simmonds in Saturday night's game in Tampa Bay, he has not presented with the typical symptoms of a concussion (headaches, confusion, etc). There appears to be cause for cautious optimism. However, since the player has not yet practiced or engaged in a work out, it is still too early to say he and the team dodged the concussion bullet.

More will be known later today and in the days to come. I'll update the blog as necessary.

There's good reason why concussions have become hockey's most dreaded injury. The risk is always there to varying degrees, and the diagnosis and recovery remains an inexact science. The Flyers and Giroux are in a no-win situation for the next few days, even if he is feeling fine today.

If the player practices and/or plays this week, some people are going to say the club is taking a foolish gamble. If he sits out for precautionary reasons, theories will abound that the club is hiding information. If worst fears are realized and the team's best player turns out to have a concussion (or sustains one in the near future), there will be all sorts of doom and gloom in the forecast.

Regardless of what is learned today about Giroux, there will be a lot of fingers crossed around Broad St. and throughout the Delaware Valley for days to come.

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On Saturday night, when I was watching the broadcast of the Dallas Stars-LA Kings game, I was intrigued by a statistical breakdown presented on the Stars telecast of Dallas' record and penalty killing percentage in games in which the team has spent X-number of times per game on the penalty kill.

They used three minors per game (i.e., an average of one per period) as the benchmark the team preferably needs to stay within, with four as a moderate number, five minors (the equivalent of half a period) on the high end of moderate and six or more as excessive.

When the season reaches the halfway point, I plan to compile a similar full-season breakdown for the Flyers. The team's excessive volume of penalties was an ongoing area of concern for about the first six weeks of the season. More recently, the team has been whistled for fewer penalties that leave them shorthanded.

This is due in part to the team playing with a little more discipline on the whole, and partially due to the natural tendency of referees to call games very tightly early in the season and then back off a bit as the year progresses.

For the month of December, the Flyers have taken three minors once (Anaheim game), four minors three times (Phoenix, Buffalo and Tampa) and five minors once (Pittsburgh).

While the penalty killing success rate so far this month -- 15 for 20, 75 percent with at least one opposition PPG yielded in four of five games-- is not where the club wants it to be -- the team has been able to overcome it of late.

First of all, the Flyers are scoring a lot of goals so far this month, both at five-on-five and on the power play. Secondly, the Flyers haven't been giving up a lot of five-on-five goals so far this month. Last but not least, there has only been one game (Buffalo) where Philly yielded multiple PPGs in the same game.

The more important number this month has been the average 4 kills per game. That has kept games manageable even if the PK itself hasn't been overwhelmingly successful from an overall percentage basis.

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