WEDNESDAY ROUNDUP: FLYERS AT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
Yesterday's Results
* He had a couple good saves and a couple of head-scratching moments, but the bottom line for
Ilya Bryzgalov was that he was the winning goaltender in Russia's 5-3 win over Team USA yesterday. Bryzgalov stopped 19 of 22 shots. Two of the three goals he allowed were funky ones to give up.
Team USA's first goal, which tied the score at 1-1 early in the first period, started out well enough for Bryzgalov. He used his blocker to make the initial save, as the puck popped in the air. In the ensuing scramble around the net, Bryzgalov dropped his stick and could not locate the puck. Paul Stastny came up first with the disc and put the puck over the goal line just before Bryzgalov's desperate sweep with his hand brought it back into the crease.
Stastny's second goal of the period gave Team USA a 2-1 lead. Bryzgalov had little chance on a screened shot from the left circle that beat him him to the glove side.
With the score tied 2-2 about seven minutes into the second period, Bryzgalov was made to look bad on a rising Matt Hunwick slapshot that deflected off the stick of a Russian player. The goalie could not see the puck and he ducked a bit, protectively putting up his hands to block it if were in the vicinity of his face mask. The puck flew over his right shoulder and into the net just under the crossbar.
The game was a seesaw affair for two periods, entering the third period tied at 3-3. The Russians went on to score a pair of unanswered goals to win the game. A power play goal by Alexander Radulov in the final five minutes provided an insurance marker for the Russians, who limited the Americans to just six shots in the closing stanza.
After the game, much of the focus seemed to be on how Russia overcame a shaky goaltending performance by Bryzgalov. In my opinion, Team USA goalie Ben Bishop was the shakier of the two netminders. It was more of an "average" game for Bryzgalov, with a couple of odd -- but not outright soft -- goals getting by him.
Russia is now 3-0 in the tournament. They have a day off today before facing France tomorrow. Team USA (2-1-0) is back in action today against Finland. Phantoms goaltender
Cal Heeter is the Americans' third-string goaltender.
* Team Canada had problems with slow starts in its first two games of the tournament but came out and pretty much dominated Norway for the entirety of yesterday's 7-1 blowout. The Canadians blasted out of the gates with four goals in the opening period to pretty much make the rest of the game a formality before the teams even headed to the lockerroom.
Flyers captain
Claude Giroux contributed a goal and an assist to the slaughter, while linemate Steven Stamkos exploded for a four-point night (one goal, three assists). Taylor Hall had a pair of goals, while Andrew Ladd and Matt Duchene contributed one goal apiece.
Eric Staal's line with Flyers forwards
Wayne Simmonds (12:17 TOI, 1 shot) and
Matt Read (13:05 TOI, 3 shots) did not figure in any of Canada's scoring. The trio, along with Flyers defenseman
Luke Schenn (18:32 TOI) and Brian Campbell was out for Norway's lone goal of the match.
* Team Denmark rallied back from deficits of 1-0 and 2-1 to defeat Slovenia in overtime by a 3-2 count. The win was the first for the Danes after narrow losses to Canada and Norway.
Oliver Lauridsen had a bit of a rough first half of the game but turned things around as the match progressed. The hulking Flyers defenseman finished with 20:22 of ice time, several blocks, a couple of turnovers and an even (+1, -1) plus-minus for the day.
Wednesday's Games (EDT)
* 9:15 AM: Team Germany takes on arch-rival Austria. Phantoms forward
Marcel Noebels has played sparingly on Germany's fourth line in two of the team's three games, and was a healthy scratch in the other game. A stream of the game is
available here.
* 1:15 PM: Today's USA-Finland game will be televised on NBC Sports Network at 1 p.m. EDT. Opening faceoff is scheduled for 1:15.
* 2:15 PM: Flyers defenseman
Erik Gustafsson leads Team Sweden in ice time through Tre Kronor's first three games of the tournament. Today, the Swedes take on their Scandinavian neighbors, Team Norway. Former Flyers forward Patrick Thoresen, who has become a top scorer in Europe since leaving the NHL, is Norway's feature forward. Norway's blueline features ex-Flyers back Ole-Kristian Tollefsen, who will return to the lineup from a one-game suspension. A stream will be
available here.
*********
On Akeson, Murray and Player Development
One of the most gratifying sights of an otherwise dreadful 2012-13 season came on the final day of the NHL regular season. Flyers forward
Jason Akeson made his NHL debut in Ottawa in front of friends and family. The observers included Akeson's mother, whom the player often calls his biggest inspiration for the way she courageously battled -- and beat -- cancer. Not only that, Akeson started the finale on a line with Giroux and Jakub Voracek. To top it off, he scored a goal on his second shift and first shot at hockey's highest level.
No matter what else happens in his professional hockey career, Akeson will always have that magical game in Ottawa and his first NHL recall to remember. The opportunity to play was a well-deserved reward for a season of hard work and devotion that tested Akeson's mettle through adversity.
Last season, a rookie Akeson led the Adirondack Phantoms in scoring. Even so, few in the organization or around the NHL considered the undrafted player (signed by the Flyers as a free agent after a big 2010-11 season as an OHL overager) to be a bonafide prospect. No one doubted his ice vision or hands. But he was lacking in three key areas.
Strike one: He is undersized at a generously listed 5-foot-10.
Strike two: Unlike most of the smaller players who make it to the NHL, Akeson is an average-at-best skater.
Potential strike three: He was viewed as too one-dimensional; a good AHL-level playmaker who would not score enough at the NHL level to hold down a scoring line spot and not nearly strong enough defensively to play a bottom-six role on a checking line.
At the end of the Phantoms' training camp this year, coach Terry Murray made a bold decision to cut Akeson from the team's opening-game roster. The player was dispatched to the ECHL's Trenton Titans with recommendations to continue working on his two-way play and skating mechanics. Murray was more concerned about that than Akeson's offensive stats.
It would have been easy for Akeson to hang his head and mope about the demotion. Instead, he did his best to buckle down and work on his game. Using his mother's life-and-death struggle with cancer as inspiration to realize that his own adversity was minor in comparison, Akeson put in the type of work the organization was looking to see. His ECHL stats (two goals, 10 points, minus-five in 14 games) were nothing special, but he did enough to earn a return to the Phantoms.
Akeson took nothing for granted upon his return to Glens Falls. He showed more willingness to shoot the puck as well as distributing it, continued the laborious process of trying to improve upon his weaknesses and finished the AHL campaign with 20 goals, 53 points and a minus-six in 64 games.
As a reward for his diligence, Akeson was called up to the NHL after the completion of his AHL season. Flyers coach Peter Laviolette dressed him for the final game, and Akeson had a memorable debut.
Moving ahead to next season, Akeson is a longshot to earn a spot with the big team. He is still not considered a high-end NHL prospect because he'll never be a speedster and still won't be confused for a Selke Trophy candidate. However, there's a difference between speed and quickness, and Akeson has definitely improved his quickness. He has progressed to the point that he is now in the mix to become a callup player in the event of an injury on one of the Flyers' scoring lines. From there, it would be up to him to make the most of that chance, and make himself "impossible to scratch" through productive play.
Akeson made believers of some skeptics who felt he lacked what it takes to ever skate a shift in the NHL, much less for an NHL star player like Giroux to take a shine to him or a hard-nosed coach like Laviolette to put him on the top line in his NHL debut (even in a game that was meaningless to the team's season apart from representing a chance to finish above .500).
The odds are still against Akeson becoming an NHL regular in Philadelphia or elsewhere. Even so, he's already shown that he's got the moxie to beat the odds as well as definite NHL-caliber puck skills. It will be interesting to see how much further he can progress in his third professional season.
Terry Murray received a lot of external criticism from Flyers and Phantoms fans this season for his handling of Akeson and other players. Adirondack's record was worse this season than the prior year under the well-liked Joe Paterson.
At his end-of-season press conference, Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren said that while no one was satisfied with the Phantoms' record this season, he was very pleased with the job that Murray did (with limited talent to work with after the end of the NHL lockout). Holmgren was quick to praise the job done by Murray in preparing unheralded players (such as Tye McGinn, Akeson and Oliver Lauridsen) to be better pros capable of helping out at the NHL level as well as the AHL.
Truth be told, I liked Paterson, too. I did not think he deserved to be fired after the Phantoms missed the playoffs a year ago. Apparently, it was the feeling of the organization's decision makers that he was not structured enough in his coaching approach to develop players according to the way the Flyers wanted it.
I'm not sure that was legitimate. After all, the 2011-12 Flyers did have numerous rookies who contributed at the NHL level, including a trio of players (Erik Gustafsson and Marc-Andre Bourdon on defense, Eric Wellwood up front) who spent considerable time on the Phantoms. There was also a pair of forwards (Brayden Schenn and Matt Read) who at least briefly played under Paterson. While I don't think the development of Schenn or Read into NHL players had anything to do with their short stints in the AHL, the point remains that lack of sufficient AHL structure did not seem to be holding back Flyers' prospects.
At any rate, Murray has long been known within hockey circles as one of the best "teaching coaches" in the business. His approach is one of tough love and very rigid structure that emphasizes defensive responsibility and attention to detail above all else. Players who don't do what Murray wants either don't play at all or get limited opportunities outside practice to get out of his doghouse. He's not a yeller, at least not very often. He communicates loudly through ice time.
Murray's primary goal for the Phantoms this season was to get his charges to focus on specific areas of their games that needed improvement to take the next step toward becoming NHL candidates. Lineup decisions and role assignments he made that may have seemed puzzling to fans or aggravated his players had a specific purpose behind them that was not always compatible with winning games on a roster lacking much depth or high-end talent.
At the end of the season, Murray
explained his mindset to Phantoms beat writer Michael Cignoli of the Saratogian.
“You have a philosophy as a team or as an organization,” Phantoms coach Terry Murray said after Sunday afternoon’s victory over the Devils at Times Union Center. “Are you a development team? Are you a team that wants to go out, add a bunch of veteran players so that you’re going to be one of the better teams in the league and try to win the Calder Cup at the end of the day? And you’d like to have, ideally, your young players step up and play well and give you the Calder Cup at the end of the day. I look at us as a team that’s a development group. We’re feeding the parent club. That’s what’s most important. That’s our priority. We’re aware that the fans are coming and paying their dollars and we have private owners that want to get extended runs into the playoffs so that they can recoup a little bit of their investments too. We’re trying to accomplish both, and it’s not always easy. But when you have a feeling of a pretty solid foundation coming out of this (season) with a young group of guys, I’m hoping there’s many better days ahead for this group."
Putting aside the Phantoms' dismal record this year and ongoing problems with costly turnovers that ended up in their net, one can see where Murray put his beliefs to work and the generally positive outcomes it had on a significant percentage of his players (even if they didn't like or understand what he was doing). Apart from Akeson, one can look and see that:
* Tye McGinn became a little more well-rounded in his already-gritty game and played effectively for the majority of his time in the NHL. He is a candidate for a spot with the big club next season, and could potentially be a full-time NHLer by the end of next season.
* Oliver Lauridsen went from AHL third-pairing defenseman to a player who did not look out of place in the NHL in a late-season callup to the Flyers.
* After dealing with yet another injury setback (hairline fracture in his leg) and AHL demotion after the NHL lockout ended, Erik Gustafsson now looks like he's gotten all he's going to get out of the AHL. He is ready to sink or swim in the NHL next season, when he also loses his waiver exemption to be sent to the AHL.
* Rookie free agent Matt Konan started out the year injured, served as the Phantoms' sixth or seventh defenseman after a brief stint in the ECHL, and quietly but steadily improved over the course of the season. He even got into a pair of end-of-season games with the injury-riddled Flyers and acquitted himself nicely in limited ice time.
* Rookie goaltender Cal Heeter had a decent first season in the AHL, and looks poised to become the Phantoms' starter next season. He showed potential to eventually challenge for an NHL backup job.
* Brandon Manning hung in during a very rough second AHL season and finished the season on an up note. He also got his second cup of coffee in the NHL. Next year will be a critical one in the player's development. Manning, like Lauridsen, is very much a self-motivated player but former NHL defensemen on the Phantoms coaching staff such as head coach Murray and assistant coach Kjell Samuelsson understand the areas where young defensemen in particular need work. Manning showed subtle improvements during his struggles and I would argue that he finished the year as a better player than he started it, because he cut back on some of his low-percentage plays.
* The Flyers want Nick Cousins to put in considerable work on his defensive play in the likely event that his OHL scoring (actually, playmaking) prowess does not translate in an NHL scoring-line future. That was way Murray pretty much confined Cousins to fourth-line duty and defense-first responsibilities during his brief late-season stint with the Phantoms. It will be up to Cousins to continue making that transition to being more of a two-way player. Paul Holmgren himself, along with Ian Laperriere and Murray, have made it crystal clear what Cousins will have to do -- and that it's probably going to take time in the AHL for him to make that transition that Cousins will have to work through successfully to make it to the NHL. Murray got the ball rolling on that process, although some criticized him for "misusing" the player.
* Rookie Marcel Noebels chafed a bit at his start-of-season demotion to the ECHL but dominated at that level and went on to have a decent rookie year for the Phantoms. His main areas of work this season were in better using his size to get into traffic areas, and continuing to develop a two-way game. He reminds me a bit of Ruslan Fedotenko at the same age, although Fedotenko was a little better skater.
The one player that I thought would thrive under Murray this season but who went backward (even prior to his gruesome late-season injury) was Eric Wellwood. I thought his combination of speed and defensive awareness would make him a Murray favorite. However, Murray's plan for Wellwood's improvement was one geared more toward seeing the player become more assertive -- both in terms of using his speed to attack the net and in winning more battles on the boards.
When the coach didn't see what he wanted, Wellwood spent a stint as a healthy scratch. He never really advanced much this year, as his confidence dropped and he moved down on the organizational depth chart from a player who started every game of the Flyers Stanley Cup Playoff run last summer to one who was bypassed for callups after an early post-lockout NHL stint.
Among the Flyers' players who played in the AHL during the lockout, I felt that Zac Rinaldo made the most productive use of his time to work on his game while with the Phantoms. Brayden Schenn and Sean Couturier seemed a bit bored at times, dominating when they felt like it and seeming half-hearted and distracted by the lockout at other times. Ditto Wellwood. They were apparently called out for it a bit early on by Murray, especially Schenn and Wellwood, and there was a jump in Schenn's play in particular after a spotty start.
All in all, veteran coach Murray did what the organization brought him in to do. When I look back at the work he did with several young players on the mid-1990s Flyers and during the early portion of his stint in Los Angeles, he helped many players become better NHLers by the time he was gone. I think his year in Adirondack could prove to have been a similar boon to many of the young players he coached -- and it will have been a bigger accomplishment because the ones who seem to have benefited the most were not the guys who were going to make it to the NHL without considerable coaching and hard work on their own part.
********
Kindle users: Please sign up for Flyers Buzz. For more information
click here.
Click below to follow me on Twitter:
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
Join the Discussion:
»