BY THE NUMBERS: COMPARING 2013-14 AND 2014-15 SEASONS
At the start of every hockey season, teams have one overriding objective: show improvement from the previous year. The 2014-15 Philadelphia Flyers, coming off a 94-point season (42-30-10) and a third-place finish in the Metropolitan Division last season, finished with 84 points (33-31-18) and missed the playoff cutoff by a 14-point margin.
No matter what other team numbers are sliced and diced, the record is the bottom line and it just wasn't good enough. Here is how various categories measured up to their previous season's benchmarks.
Home Record
2013-14: 24-14-3, 51 points
2014-15: 23-11-7, 53 points
The Flyers started to establish themselves as a formidable home team last season. They did the same in 2014-15, and even improved on it by two points. There were a few winnable games that turned into zero-point (mostly early in the season; home loss to Dallas was one of the few latter-season regulation home losses where the Flyers failed to at least get something out of a game that up for grabs) or one-point nights. However, that is going to happen to every team on occasion.
All in all, there is not much to quibble about with the Flyers' home record. In the second half, the main concern was some one-point night fellow non-playoff teams at a time when the Flyers still had a shot at a wildcard spot and needed every single point they could get.
Goals For/Against (all situations): Home
2013-14: 123 GF (3.00) / 105 GA (2.56)
2014-15: 118 GF (2.88) / 91 GA (2.34)
The Flyers scored five fewer goals at home this season but cut their goals against by 14. That's a worthwhile tradeoff, although there were certainly some low-scoring games at the Wells Fargo Center where an extra Flyers goal would have loomed large.
Power play: Home
2013-14: 24 PPG (24-for-159, 15.1%, 25th in NHL)
2014-15: 37 PPG (37-for-132, 28.0%, 1st in NHL)
It goes without saying that the Flyers power play success, especially on home ice, was the team's lifeblood along with its goaltending. Philly gets an A+ in this area, especially because the personnel was largely the same with the major exceptions of Mark Streit taking over Kimmo Timonen's first-unit spot at the left point and atop the umbrella and Brayden Schenn moving into the Scott Hartnell spot. Across the NHL, power play opportunities were down this season. Nevertheless, in 27 fewer opportunities, the Flyers scored 13 more goals.
Penalty Kill: Home
2013-14: 128-for-153 (83.7%, T-9th in NHL)
2014-15: 107-for-131 (81.7%, 21st in NHL)
The Flyers had a positive net special teams goal differential at home, so even though the home penalty killing numbers were down a bit, they still enjoyed an overall special teams edge at home this season. The home PK was far from stellar at times this season, but it wasn't the disaster area the road PK was, either.
Road Record
2013-14: 18-16-7, 43 points
2014-15: 10-20-11, 31 points
It is no secret that the Flyers atrocious road record, with a subtext of struggles (home or road) against non-playoff teams cost the team a playoff spot this season. You know it's a bad season when all the road wins can be rattled off in a single paragraph:
The Flyers had two wins apiece in Pittsburgh and Buffalo, an early season OT win in Dallas for the Flyers first victory of the season, 2-1 win in LA (courtesy of Steve Mason stealing a win) plus a three-game winning streak before Christmas (wins in Toronto, Winnipeg and Minnesota) to start an eight-game road trip that ended 3-4-1, and then a win in Washington in the game Mason had to leave midway through the game, and just before a Capitals' 5-on-3 power play, with the knee injury that required arthroscopic surgery. That's the entire list.
Over the course of the season, the Flyers had a multitude of winnable road games that ended up as one-point or zero-point nights. They even lost a pair of shootout games (against the Islanders and Blues) where Mason posted a 65-minute shutout. They couldn't win in 60, they couldn't protect leads, and they couldn't buy a shootout victory. There were also too many nights where the Flyers' simply didn't compete well enough.
There is no excuse for the Flyers' road record this season; none. It was the team's biggest failing, and the number one reason why leadership is being questioned.
Goals For/Against (all situations): Road
2013-14: 123 GF (3.00) / 122 GA (2.98)
2014-15: 94 GF (2.29) / 127 GA (3.10)
A lack of secondary goal scoring on the road was a huge reason for the team's atrocious road record along with an unacceptably high team GAA on the road (which was not much better in 2013-14). The Flyers ranked 23rd in the NHL in road scoring and 24th in road GAA. Needless to say, that's not a recipe for success.
Whenever Craig Berube has been asked whether line matchups and the last line change had anything to do with the Flyers frightening production drop-off on the road, he said no. The reason: the players other teams were focused on checking the tightest were Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek, yet those were two of the relatively few players who delivered about equally (in a generally positive way) on the road and at home.
On the offensive side, here is the breakdown of the home vs. road production of notable individual players:
Jakub Voracek
Home: 41 GP, 12 G, 30 A, 42 PTS, E
Road: 41 GP, 10 G, 29 A, 39 PTS, +1
Claude Giroux
Home: 41 GP, 12 G, 28 A, 40 PTS, -3
Road: 40 GP, 13 G, 20 A, 33 PTS, +0
Michael Raffl
Home: 32 GP, 10 G, 5 A, 15 PTS, +1
Road: 35 GP, 11 G, 2 A, 13 PTS, +5
Brayden Schenn
Home: 41 GP, 10 G, 17 A, 27 PTS, +2
Road: 41 GP, 8 G, 12 A, 20 PTS, -7
Sean Couturier
Home: 41 GP, 7 G, 10 A, 17 PTS, +9
Road: 41 GP, 8 G, 12 A, 20 PTS, -5
Mark Streit
Home: 40 GP, 5 G, 27 A, 32 PTS, +3
Road: 41 GP, 4 G, 16 A, 20 PTS, -11
Wayne Simmonds
Home: 36 GP, 20 G, 13 A, 33 PTS, +3
Road: 39 GP, 8 G, 9 A, 17 PTS, -8
Matt Read
Home: 41 GP, 4 G, 13 A, 17 PTS, +5
Road: 39 GP, 4 G, 9 A, 13 PTS, -9
Michael Del Zotto
Home: 34 GP, 9 G, 13 PTS, 22 PTS, +4
Road: 30 GP, 1 G, 9 A, 10 PTS, -9
Vincent Lecavalier
Home: 30 GP, 1 G, 10 A, 11 PTS, E
Road: 27 GP, 7 G, 2 A, 9 PTS, -7
R.J. Umberger
Home: 33 GP, 3 G, 3 A, 6 PTS, -6
Road: 34 GP, 6 G, 3 A, 9 PTS, -3
Chris VandeVelde
Home: 35 GP, 5 G, 4 A, 9 PTS, +3
Road: 37 GP, 4 G, 2 A, 6 PTS, -9
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare
Home: 41 GP, 5 G, 3 A, 8 PTS, +2
Road: 40 GP, 1 G, 3 A, 4 PTS, -5
Ryan White
Home: 19 GP, 4 G, 4 A, 8 PTS, +4
Road: 15 GP, 2 G, 2 A, 4 PTS, E
Scott Laughton
Home: 12 GP, 1 G, 2 A, 3 PTS, E
Road: 19 GP, 1 G, 2 A, 3 PTS, -1
Zac Rinaldo
Home: 28 GP, 1 G, 3 A, 4 PTS, -4, 15 Pen, 66 PIM
Road: 30 GP, 0 G, 2 A, 2 PTS, -5, 15 Pen, 36 PIM
Andrew MacDonald
Home: 26 GP, 0 G, 4 A, 4 PTS, -6
Road: 32 GP, 2 G, 6 A, 8 PTS, +1
Nicklas Grossmann
Home: 32 GP, 2 G, 6 A, 8 PTS, +12
Road: 36 GP, 3 G, 3 A, 6 PTS, -4
Nick Schultz
Home: 40 GP, 2 G, 7 A, 9 PTS, +9
Road: 40 GP, 0 G, 6 A, 6 PTS, -7
Defensively speaking, too many Flyers players had significant dropoffs both in their advanced (puck possession) and standard (even-strength plus-minus rating) splits. This cannot be explained simply as a product of matchups. As a team,the Flyers did not support the puck and skate as well they did on the road.
Steve Mason's road numbers actually were fairly solid despite his 2-12-6 record. He had a 2.56 GAA, .914 save percentage and the aforementioned two shutouts that ended in skills competition losses. While these numbers don't match up to his stellar home stats (16-6-5, 2.01 GAA, .937 SV%, one shutout), it is unfair and untrue to say goaltending was regularly a significant negative factor when Mason was in goal on the road. Lousy goal support plus too much time spent in the defensive zone equaled an untenable situation for any goaltender. Far more often than not, starting goaltending was the least of the Flyers concerns.
Power play: Road
2013-14: 34 PPG (34-for-135, 25.2%, 1st in NHL)
2014-15: 23 PPG (23-for-124, 18.6%, 12th in NHL)
The Flyers' road power play was not quite as effective as it was last season but it still ranked in the top half the league. Five-on-five play and especially penalty killing were much bigger concerns on the road.
Penalty Kill: Road
2013-14: 130-for-163 (85.9%, 2nd in NHL)
2014-15: 98-for-135 (72.6%, 29th in NHL)
How on earth did the Flyers fall that precipitously -- from the NHL's second most-efficient road PK to the second-worst PK -- in a single year? While the team no doubt missed Kimmo Timonen and Adam Hall (to a lesser extent), penalty killing is really not about the presence or absence of a certain player. Penalty killing is about being in synch and finding a rhythm and confidence level. The Flyers never recovered their mojo from a horrid stretch in November to December. Things got better for awhile and then reverted.
On the road especially, failed clears seemed to come back to haunt the PK on a regular basis. Lost faceoffs in the defensive zone too often resulted in the next faceoff being at center ice. The Flyers also seemed to get more unfavorable bounces off skates, bodies and the goal posts when on the PK on the road but "luck" is often ultimately self-made over the course of a season.
Any way you look at it, when a team that struggled to score on the road compounded the issue by yielding 37 power play goals and getting scored on 27.4 percent of the time, it's going to cost a team a lot of games. The issue did not get solved to a sufficient degree, either.
Record when scoring first
2013-14: 29-5-5 when scoring first, 13-25-5 when trailing first
2014-15: 24-4-6 when scoring first, 11-27-2 when trailing first
The Flyers scored the first goal less than half the time in each of the last two seasons, dropping from 39 of 82 games in 2013-14 to 34 of 82 games this season. Chasing the game is never ideal, but the Flyers did better at scoring first as the season went along.
Record when leading after 1st/ 2nd period
2013-14: 21-5-2 when leading after 1st period, 29-2-4 after 2nd
2014-15: 19-2-5 when leading after 1st period, 19-0-3 after 2nd
The Flyers let some third period leads (some of which are not represented in the above stats) slip away in a few crucial games this season -- none more damaging than the overtime loss in Boston on March 7th -- but on a percentage basis these are acceptable numbers. However, note the drop in taking leads into the third period: 35 times in 2013-14 (an amount the team set a goal of improving) down to 24 times this season. It was the rare night, especially on the road, where the Flyers played well enough on a sustained basis for the opening 40 minutes to take a lead into the third period and then put the opponent away.
Record when trailing after 1st/2nd period
2013-14: 8-18-3 when trailing after 1st period, 7-22-2 after 2nd
2014-15: 5-21-6 when trailing after 1st period, 3-24-7 after 2nd
Last season, the Flyers set a new franchise record for wins in games they trailed at some point in the third period (not entirely reflected above). It was unrealistic to expect quite the same success in that regard two straight seasons. However, in the bigger picture, this year's team was not as resilient when playing from behind as last year's squad.
This season, the Flyers set a new franchise record in a different category: games that went beyond regulation. Overall, they were 8-18 in such games. At home they were 3-1 in games that ended in overtime and 3-6 in shootouts. On the road, they were 2-6 in overtime finishes and 0-5 in shootouts.
In the skills competition the Flyers on average needed four attempts for every one goal in home shootouts (in other words, opposing goals stopped 75 percent) and got a 70 percent save percentage from the goals. On the road, opposing goalies denied 11 of 13 attempts (84.6 percent) and Flyers goalies stopped just four of 13 (30.8 percent).
The Flyers have never been a good shootout team, so they can pretty kiss the second point goodbye if they don't win in regulation or OT. Going forward, all of these numbers need to get better in a league where three-point games are far too commonplace.
Faceoff percentage
2013-14: 50.0% (16th)
2014-15: 51.1% (13th)
The Flyers have trended upward each of the last few years, in large part because Claude Giroux takes a lot of draws and seems to get better and better. Philly could use Sean Couturier and others to push up to at least the break-even point. This season, with the departure of Adam Hall, the club lost a good faceoff specialist. However, the far superior speed of Pierre-Edouard Bellemare made him more versatile overall.
********
HEXTALL PRESSER ON WEDNESDAY
Flyers general manager Ron Hextall will address the media with his season assessment and statements on off-season plans on Wednesday afternoon. Philadelphia Inquirer beat writer Sam Carchidi tweeted that Hextall will also make a definitive statement on the future of head coach Craig Berube.
Hextall was in attendance at the Phantoms-Hershey game in Allentown on Tuesday. Others on hand included team president Paul Holmgren, scouting director Chris Pryor, pro scout Al Hill, player development coach Kjell Samuelsson and assistant general manager Barry Hanrahan.
We will have a full rundown of the major points of Hextall's press conference after he is finished.
********
PHANTOMS EARN 4-1 WIN OVER HERSHEY
The Lehigh Valley Phantoms earned a hard-fought 5-1 victory over the arch-rival Hershey Bears at the PPL Center on Tuesday night. The Phantoms have three games remaining with the finale at home on Sunday.
Starting goaltender Rob Zepp gave the Phantoms a brilliant performance in goal, stopping 39 of 40 shots including a breakaway and several odd-man and close-range chances. The only puck tha that got past him was a point-blank goal by Jim O'Brien early in the first period.
Opposing Zepp in the Hershey net was Philipp Grubauer, who was his teammate on Team Germany at the 2014 World Championships. Grubauer also played reasonably well in stopping 22 of 25 shots but got tagged with the loss.
Scott Laughton had a goal (13th) an assist for the Phantoms. Lehigh Valley also got tallies from Petr Straka (14th, but his first non-shootout goal since Feb. 20th), Jason Akeson (23rd) and Danick Martel (empty net goal for his first AHL marker).
Laughton, who hammered home a one-timer for a power play goal on Friday night, scored another nice goal in the game. He moved to his right across the hash marks and then sniped a shot over Grubauer to tie the game at 1-1 just 51 seconds into the second period.
The rookie center also made several outstanding plays with and without the puck on his stick. He forechecked well, applied strong back pressure and skated effectively. In the third period, Laughton intercepted a Hershey turnover and triggered the sequence that led to the Phantoms' third goal.
After the game, Laughton said that it took him quite a while to recover his game after suffering a concussion on a hit by Washington defenseman Matt Niskanen during Laughton's callup to the Flyers. The rookie admitted that confidence may have had something to go with his struggle. Now he feels loose and confident again and is finishing the season in similar fashion to his torrid start in October.
This is also the first time that Laughton has had to face the grind of a full-season pro schedule. Laughton said he's learned a lot this season about the pacing and physical demands of the game at the pro level and will apply that knowledge to his individualized off-season training program.
Straka's goal came about because of a remarkable rush by Kevin Goumas, who swung around behind the net and patiently waited out the defense before making a perfect pass to Straka as he went to the net. Akeson's goal was a snipe high to Grubauer's glove side from the left circle.
The diminutive Martel, playing in his second AHL game, showed off his blazing speed several times throughout the game. He had a couple of good scoring chances denied by Grubauer but there was no denying him on the empty net goal that sealed the game with 55 seconds left. The 5-foot-8 waterbug flew by everyone, and kept going as he was getting tripped to bury the puck in the vacated net.
Lehigh Valley played the final 20 minutes of the game with just four defensemen (Mark Alt, Robert Hägg, Oliver Lauridsen and Jesper Pettersson). The team lost Steven Delisle in the first period after he was left woozy and had to be helped off the ice following a collision with teammate Zack Stortini. In the second period, Brandon Manning tried to tough it out by skating sporadic shifts after a collision near the Phantoms net. He was unable to return for the third period.
Zepp said after the game that he made a slight adjustment in the third period with the team down to four defensemen: he froze a few pucks that he might have normally kept in play. Whenever there was a breakdown in front of his, Zepp erased it. Meanwhile, the remaining four defensemen all stepped up their play with the team protecting a lead in the third period.
Hägg's night got off to shaky start but he got better and better at both ends of the ice as the game went along. He also generated four shots on goal, including a nifty rush that saw him stickhandle around a couple of Bears players and then take the puck directly at the net.
The three-star selection for the game: #1 Zepp, #2 Laughton, #3 Goumas.
********
PROSPECT PLAYOFF UPDATES
* QMJHL: The Rimouski Oceanic took a two games to one lead in their second-round series with the Gatineau Olympiques with a 5-2 win on Tuesday night. Flyers 2013 first-round pick Samuel Morin did not have a point but was plus-one with two credited hits and one shot on goal. In the first period, Morin was tagged with tripping (resulting in a power play goal for Gatineau to take an early lead) and delay of game minors.
* QMJHL: The Val-d'Or Foreurs fell into a three games to zero hole in their second-round series with the Baie-Comeau Drakkar as they lost 6-3 on Tuesday night. Flyers 2014 second-round pick Nicolas Aube-Kubel had a goal and an assist in a losing cause, as well as four shots on goal and a pair of credited hits.
* WHL: The Kelowna Rockets downed the Victoria Royals 4-2 on Tuesday night to seize a three games to zero lead in their second-round series. Flyers 2013 third-round pick Tyrell Goulbourne did not get on the scoresheet and was minus-one. Kelowna will look to close out the series on the road on Wednesday.
* WHL: The Calgary Hitmen, featuring Flyers 2014 first-round pick Travis Sanheim and sixth-rounder Radel Fazleev, lead their series with the Medicine Hat Tigers, two games to one. The series resumes on Wednesday night in Medicine Hat.
********
FANTASY HOCKEY CAMP WITH THE FLYERS ALUMNI
The Flyers Alumni will host a fantasy hockey camp from August 21-24 in Atlantic City, open to anyone age 21 and older. Instructors and Alumni participants will include Bernie Parent, Brian Propp, Ian Laperriere, Todd Fedoruk, Andre "Moose" Dupont, Dave "the Hammer" Schultz, Joe Watson and Bob "the Hound" Kelly.
The registration deadline is June 1. Participation costs $3,000 apiece but it is free to
register a spot online. Over on the Flyers' Alumni website, there is
more information on camp-related activities and on-ice schedules.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
Join the Discussion:
»