MELTZER'S MUSINGS: NOVEMBER 30, 2017
1) During the 2016 calendar year -- the games spanning Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 or, essentially, the second half of the 2015-16 season and first half of 2016-17 -- the Flyers played 84 games (the equivalent of one regular season plus two games). During that span, the team posted 103 points (46-27-11). That was the
seventh-best total in the NHL over that span and fourth-best in the Eastern Conference.
However, for the 2017 calendar year to date -- Jan. 1 to Nov. 29, during which the Flyers have played 69 games -- the club is
25th in the NHL with a 27-29-13 record for 67 points. Excluding the first-year expansion Vegas Golden Knights, only the Florida Panthers, Buffalo Sabres, Arizona Coyotes, Vancouver Canucks and Colorado Avalanche have fewer points.
Dave Hakstol has been the Flyers head coach for this entire span. The question is this: If you are going to primarily blame him for what happened post-Christmas break last season and what's gone on this season (apart from the decision to move Sean Couturier to the top line and Claude Giroux to its left wing), do you think he deserves any credit for what happened prior to that?
The reality of the Flyers team, which has made some personnel changes of note in that time span but which essentially has the same core group in place with a few notable young additions (Ivan Provorov being first and foremost), is that they are somewhere in the middle of the two.
The club was not as good as its 103-point 2016 calendar year would suggest nor as bad as the record would suggest in the second half last season and this campaign to date.
More than anything else, from my perspective at least, it shows just how much parity there is the NHL. There's such a slim margin between being a club that got a bit lucky in rattling off a 10-game winning streak last November into December and the one that is currently winless (0-4-5) in their last nine games.
For those reasons, I fundamentally agree with Ron Hextall's assessment of the general state of the team. However, I disagree with the notion that the club has played pretty well over the current nine-game stretch for the reasons I spelled out in yesterday's blog.
There were elements of good play but at least one period in most every game the team would have liked to have had back. There were too many things that snowballed when adversity hit: too many cardinal sins committed with and without the puck, too many games where no one would score if the top line didn't do it, too many games where winning the third period would have meant standings points that went unclaimed. In both of Michal Neuvirth's last two starts, there were makeable saves that were not made.
Add it all up, and it's just not good enough to deserve to win. It's only enough to do exactly what the team did in reality; scrounge up five out of 18 possible points and lament how another four to six points were within reach but got away.
As far as Dave Hakstol goes, when you look at the total body of work of two-plus seasons, the team overachieved for a time and has been underachieving for a nearly equal time. I think it would unfair not to at least give him the rest of this season to try to move the needle back in positive direction. If that does not happen, there'd be a more legitimate basis to discuss alternatives for the future.
I'd also hasten to add one other caveat. If December goes basically the same as November, it would be hard for me to foresee a realistic shot at a turnaround. However, I suspect that one week of decent results to start the month -- a win at home against Boston on Saturday afternoon, followed by four of six points from the western Canada trip next week -- would brighten the outlook considerably and lift a lot of weight off the club's shoulders.
2) Hockey is a bottom-line business. As such, if the Flyers penalty killing percentage once again sits in the bottom third of the NHL, it is probably going to either cost Ian Laperriere his job as as assistant coach or at least a shuffling of his duties with a different PK coach.
One thing that I don't think many fans understand is that Laperriere isn't just the PK coach. He's also a "liaison assistant" in whom many of players can confide; equally trusted by the players, by Dave Hakstol and by management. He tells things like they are but keeps things pointed in a positive direction. He's also the "rehab/ healthy scratch" skating overseer; a dungeon-master of sorts but one players don't mind because they like him so much.
It is not that Lappy is the only assistant coach around who has those qualities, but they aren't all that easy to find. That's especially true because he's still reasonably close enough to his own playing days that most of the players know he was someone who walked the walk when he played and they respect him for it.
As for the PKing part of it, again, it's a results-oriented business. The Flyers have had a tendency over Lappy's tenure to sail along perfectly fine for a few weeks at a time and then, when they hit some adversity, to go into equally long nosedives.
The just-completed month is, unfortunately, a prime example. The team started out the month 20-for-24 (83.3 percent), which included a fluky own goal on a blocked pass-out that pinballed into the net. They were on a 14-for-15 roll, including some successful 5-on-3s, 4-on-3s and a three-minute 5-on-4. heading into the Calgary game.
Disaster struck in the form of three PPGAs in the second period of the Calgary game. The third one -- a 5-on-3 that turned into a 5-on-3 after Taylor Leier took a puck off the cup and was writhing on the ice as the puck went right back to the Flames and play continued -- was a bit of a fluke, but three PPGA in a game much less a period is a brutal day nonetheless.
Even so, the team should have able to climb back on the horse the next game. Instead, the PK has been a detriment in most every game since then. The Flyers are 66.7 percent on the PK over the last six games, finding all sorts of ways to stub their toe in the process -- too many failed clearing opportunities one common cause but by no means exclusive. Every once in awhile, there'd be order restored on a solid kill but the very next kill would fail and produce a goal for the opposition.
By its very nature, there are always ebbs and flows to even the very best penalty kills and power plays. The Flyers' ebbs, however, have lasted for too long before the ship is righted. There has too often been cycles in which the team's season percentage climbs back up to near respectability and then there's another down cycle rather than just an isolated tough night or two.
In the big picture, though, it really an X-and-O issue? I would say no. There are at least six-to-eight PK schematics around the NHL that are very close to Philly's, and they are all over the map in terms of their league rankings. So it's not systems and not the know-how of the coach.
In terms of adjustments or attempted ones, the Flyers have also periodically through the years made some tweaks to be a bit more puck pressure oriented vs. a little more take away the slot to netfront oriented when they've tilted a little too far one way or the other.
For example, the Flyers actually made a pretty big change toward more aggressive puck pursuit in the Washington playoff series of 2016 after getting torn apart in Games 1-3 with a more of a containment and shot-block oriented box and then didn't give up another one the rest of the series (although Michal Neuvirth's stellar play after replacing Steve Mason also had a lot to do with it).
They've also periodically moved personnel on/off the PK each year; most recently giving Claude Giroux his first substantial PK time since the 2015-16 season. So it's not like there are never adjustments made and they just keep doing the same things with the same players.
Penalty killing is very much about working in tandem as a unit. Much like a power play, there's a rhythm involved. It's all about being in synch, fast and clear communication about where there's danger (I don't think this current Flyers group of players is especially strong on the on-ice communications side) and, most of all, execution of a host of small details.
A PK coach can only do so much in terms of systems that prevent zone entries and setups, produce zone-clearing (or, even better, countering) opportunities or shot-blocking viability. The rest is up to the guys on the ice to execute. If the clearing opportunities are turned over, if there's no box outs by the D, and if the goalies don't do their part (tracking pucks through moderate some traffic, avoid preventable rebounds, stop shots they can see or from tight angles), it's tough for any coach to magically pull up the team's numbers.
However, at some point, there's going to be a change made if the Flyers stay sub-80 percent. Again, that's just the nature of the beast that the lack of bottom-line results will eventually bring about a change in coaches. Here's a year-by-year look with Lappy as PK coach:
2013-14: 84.8 percent (7th overall)
2014-15: 77.1 percent (27th)
2015-16: 80.5 percent (20th)
2016-17: 79.8 percent (21st)
2017-18: 75.3 percent (29th)
I have a feeling that if the Flyers again had PKers the caliber of Kimmo Timonen or Lapperiere himself during his playing days they'd be at least a middle-of-the-pack team. Again, though, it's a bottom-line business and this is season five. There needs to be a distinct upward movement over the rest of this season or the PK coach role is a very likely area of staff change even if Lappy were to stay on staff in other capacities.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
Join the Discussion:
»