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Quick Hits: Draft Combine, Soft Goals, Swedish Forwards

May 31, 2017, 11:04 AM ET [195 Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
QUICK HITS: MAY 31, 2017

1) One of the most interesting parts of the NHL Combine is the player interview portion. Different teams have different methods of conducting them. Some organizations deliberately try to see how draft prospects react under pressure, trying to make the young men nervous or defensive by asking confrontational or offbeat questions, invading their physical space "comfort zone", or testing their attention span with a series of seemingly irrelevant queries before suddenly shifting tone.

From what I understand, the Flyers are not among the organizations that conduct interviews that way. The sessions tend to be cordial but to the point and mostly geared toward getting a little more well-rounded picture of the young man on top of the background checks and in-game scouting that's already been done.

On the Flyers' official site's Draft Central page, there is a series of articles in which players recall their Combine physical tests and interviews. In the current segment, Anthony Stolarz recalls that his interview session with the Flyers was among the briefest of the 23 or 24 he had among the (then) 30 organizations in the NHL. Jordan Weal relayed a story about how he got chirped by one organization's representative because he scratched his palm as he sat down.

Flyers general manager Ron Hextall, who typically prefaces his invariably measured response to questions related to scouting or development by saying "you have to be really careful about" placing too much stock in any small-sample assessment, recently sat down with broadcaster Tim Saunders to discuss the Combine and Draft. Hextall said that sees the interview portion mostly as a layer of reinforcement on the homework that's already been done.

Just because a team does not interview a certain player or speaks only very briefly team does not necessarily indicate a lack of interest. The Flyers were one of the few teams that did not interview Sean Couturier at the 2011 Combine but selected him with the eighth pick of the first round after they subsequently obtained the pick from the Blue Jackets on the day of the Jeff Carter trade to Columbus and Mike Richards trade to LA. Likewise, the next year, the Flyers spoke only very briefly to Stolarz before taking him with the second-round pick obtained from Columbus after they honored unhappy backup goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky's trade request.




2) In Game One of the Stanley Cup Final, Nashville Predators goaltender Pekka Rinne had the misfortune of seeing four pucks go in the net on just 11 official shots on goal (the Pittsburgh Penguins later scored an empty net goal on their 12 shot). That naturally led to Rinne shouldering much of the blame for the Predators' loss and his performance being deemed the "worst" full-game performance in playoff history.

In reality, though, any goalie would have been hard pressed to come away with anything but an unsightly save percentage in Game One.

Evgeni Malkin's goal was a 5-on-3 power play goal that, while shot from a distance, came through a partial screen. Rinne was starting to peer around the screen as Malkin released the puck. It was a makeable save because the goalie picked up on the puck in time to see it released and to at least knock it down even if he couldn't pick it cleanly, but it was not a routine save. The shot was fired through a Mattias Ekholm shot block attempt and a stick wave by Jake Guentzel in front before going off Rinne's glove and into the net a split second later. Every goalie gives up one or two of these over the course of any given month. This one happened to be a Stanley Cup Final game.

 photo Snip of goal 1.jpg

Before the first period ended, the Penguins led 3-0. First, they added a back-door goal by Conor Sheary on which there was an intelligent pinch in from the point by Pittsburgh defenseman Brian Dumoulin and all five Predators skaters -- including Viktor Arvidsson, who watched the eventual scorer skate directly past him to station himself wide open near the right post -- got overloaded on the opposite side or aimlessly drifted over the midde (Arvidsson) to cover no one or close off the passing lane. The goalie had no chance at a save once the puck got over to Sheary. This was just poorly defended by the Predators.

Then the Pens scored a Nick Bonino goal that was pure bad luck for Rinne and the Predators. With only teammate Ekholm in the vicinity, Rinne easily sticked aside a one-handed Bonino sweep of the puck toward the net. Unfortunately, the puck hit Ekholm on the right knee and deflected into the open side of the net before Rinne could possibly react.

In the second and third periods, Rinne went a whopping 37 minutes -- including the entire second period -- without seeing a single shot. Any goalie will attest to the fact that going long stretches without facing any shots often makes it tougher when the next save opportunity eventually comes around than when there's a few routine saves interspersed, and perhaps even a moderate difficulty save or two. In this instance, the elapsed game time between shots was jaw-dropping.

Finally, after the Predators pulled off a three-goal comeback to tie the game, Rinne finally saw a shot with 3:37 left in the third period. Guentzel fired a shot from the right circle that beat the butterflying Rinne high to the short side. The shot came from above the faceoff dot -- an area where the goalie is typically expected to make a save -- but it was also an exceptionally fast release and, moreover, perfectly placed in the top corner. When a goalie drops into the butterfly, he is taking away every down low but basically conceding the top cormer if the shooter can fire it over the goalie's shoulder and hit the mark. While perhaps Rinne could have timed it better -- he had the angle itself covered low but Guentzel already had a shooting spot zoned -- the shooter himself deserves credit. Far more often than not, identical-looking plays end with the shot either hitting the goalie in the chest, going right into the goalie's glove, striking the crossbar or sailing harmlessly over the net and tattooing the end glass.

Certainly, the Predators really could have used a save by Rinne on either the Malkin or Guentzel shot but neither was an egregious goal. It was just one of those nights that every goalie has from time to time where his stat line looks atrocious but his own play was strictly average.

By the way, for those interested in the topic of expectations for saves and the changing nature of what is and isn't considered a "soft" goal -- or at least a non-routine but still stoppable one -- there have been two excellent features on the topic this season.

USA Today ran a good article on league-wide rise in short-side goals. While the focus is primarily on shooters adjusting to goalies who use the reverse-VH method of post coverage, it also talks about how there is often a higher-percentage opportunity to the short-side, especially upstairs, than to the long side because of the distance the shot has to travel when coming down the wing.

In the meantime, former Rangers goalie Steve Valiquette did an outstanding breakdown with both video and graphics to explain what is an actual "soft" goal, what gets confused for a soft goal that is actually a fairly tough save. Basically, it boils down to sightlines, distance and opportunity to cover the angle. Not every shot from the circle that goes in is soft in Valiquette's view (like many, he uses the dots as a sort of line of demarcation). Most net plays, such as wrap-arounds and stuff-ins, he categorizes as soft. Interestingly, his feature does not talk about how short-siders have become more widespread leaguewide, which is why the USA Today article is good supplementary reading.

Valiquette hit the nail on the head when he said, "One of the toughest but truest lessons you have to learn as a goaltender is that you get judged by the goals you allow and not the saves that you make."

3) Roster oddity: On February 12, 2007, Peter Forsberg played his 100th and final regular season game as a Flyer, scoring a goal and assist (his 114th and 115th points as a Flyer) in a 6-1 home win over the Detroit Red Wings. Three evenings later, he was traded to the Nashville Predators.

Believe it or not, the Flyers have not any Swedish forwards on their NHL roster at any point in the 10 years since then. Whenever the just-signed Oskar Lindblom makes his NHL debut -- or if the team were to add a Swedish forward this offseason who gets in a regular season game ahead of Lindblom -- that roster oddity will come to an end. Sweden is both historically and currently the third most-common home country of NHL players.

The Flyers, of course, have had some defensemen (most notably Nicklas Grossmann but also the likes of Andreas Lilja, Erik Gustafsson and, most recently Robert Hägg's NHL debut) in that time period. Goalie Johan Backlund made a Flyers cameo. They've had veteran forwards they signed from Swedish hockey leagues who made their NHL debuts as Flyers -- Finnish forward Mika Pyörälä, Austrian Michael Raffl and Frenchman Pierre-Edouard Bellemare. Norwegian forward Patrick Thoresen and Danish defenseman Oliver Lauridsen played in Sweden during their developmental years. The organization has also had a couple Swedish forwards appear on the Phantoms, such as Mario Kempe at the end of the 2008-09 season.
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