Quick Hits: July 3, 2019
1) This past season, the Flyers ranked 18th in the NHL with 241 goals (an average 2.94 per game). That was clearly a disappointing result. However, the team was not as far off the pack as it may seem. The difference between 13th (Vegas and Montreal tied at 3.00 goals per game) and the Flyers at 18th was a mere five goals over 82 games. The gap between 10th (Colorado, 3.15) and 18th was 17 goals as a team, which was largely accountable to the Avalanche power play clicking at 22 percent and the Flyers having an especially down year (17.1 percent) on the man advantage.
Finishing in the middle of the pack offensively needn't be a fatal blow to a team's playoff hopes. The Stanley Cup winning Blues were 15th (244 goals, 2.98), Carolina's run the Eastern Conference Final was preceded by ranking 16th offensively (243 goals, 2.96) during the regular season.
What is fatal to a team is ranking too low in team goals against average. Each and every one of the teams ranked 21st to 31st this past season -- the Flyers were 29th (280 goals against, 3.44) -- failed to qualify for the playoffs in 2018-19. Conversely, the New York Islanders went from dead last in GAA in 2017-18 but 7th ranked offensively to top-ranked in GAA in 2018-19 but (following the departure of John Taveras) down to 22nd ranked offensively. The Islanders missed the playoffs by a mile in 2017-18 while the Barry Trotz coached version this past season not only qualified for the playoffs but swept Pittsburgh in the first round.
Such results are not uncommon historically. Thus, heading into next season, it is more important for the Flyers to substantially improve their team GAA -- the keys include a combination of stable goaltending from Carter Hart and Brian Elliott, team-wide buy-in to what Alain Vigneault and his assistants will preach in terms of systems and team defense, some added stability provided by recent veteran acquisitions Matt Niskanen and Justin Braun to the personnel mix, and a continuation of the penalty killing improvements the team showed post-Thanksgiving last season -- than to take a huge jump offensively.
2) From an offensive standpoint, how important are 20-goal scorers to a team? Recently, I had a social media debate with someone who posited that 20-goals scorers are "a dime a dozen in the NHL." He pointed out that 122 players in the league scored at least 20 goals in 2018-19. It sounds like a lot until you realize that, in a league with 31 teams, that averages out to less than four (3.94) per team.
This past season, the Flyers had five 20+ goal scorers, led by Sean Couturier's 33 tallies. The bigger issue was the drop-off below them, both in terms of getting less from the blue line corps than the year before (Ivan Provorov dropped from 17 to 7, Shayne Gostisbehere from 13 to 9, and no one reached double digits) and in terms of not getting the expected increases from Nolan Patrick (13 in both his rookie and second season). Come next season, getting Oskar Lindblom from 17 to 20+, a bit of a bounceback from the blueline with Travis Sanheim being a breakout candidate, an increase from Patrick and a season from Kevin Hayes that gets him the 20-goal neighborhood, should be enough to provide more depth of scoring.
Again, though, it will be more important for the Flyers to substantially cut their team GAA with a modest goal-scoring increase than it is to see a big offensive jump but only a modest GAA improvement. The former would probably get them in the playoffs. The latter would mean another season on the margins of the playoff bubble.
3) On Tuesday, the Phantoms announced two additional players signed to AHL contracts for the 2019-20 season. Small forward Gerry Fitzgerald, a Bemidji State graduate who spent the last two seasons with the Iowa Wild, is yet another new addition who is already familiar to Brent Flahr and Chuck Fletcher. Additionally,the team signed West Chester native defenseman Eric Knodel, an ECHL/AHL swingman, to provide depth to the Phantoms while primarily playing for the Reading Royals. The 6-foot-6, 225-pound Knodel dressed in six AHL games for Rochester last season and 70 in the ECHL (17 goals, 53 points) for Cincinnati.