Quick Hits: February 27, 2023
1) The Flyers are finished with their February schedule. They have practices in Voorhees today and tomorrow before hosting the New York Rangers at the Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday. The NHL trade deadline in on Friday.
February was a disastrous month for the Flyers. Apart from the team's 2-7-1 record, the club scored a meager 17 goals (1.89 GPG) while allowing 36 (4.00 GAA). Both ends of special teams were horrid: 11.8 percent on the power play and 66.7 percent on the penalty kill. The Flyers yielded three opposing shorthanded empty net goals during the month including two in a 5-2 loss to the Canucks.
The now-injured Travis Konecny (three goals and five points in seven games) opened the month still-mired in a 13-game goal drought before regaining his equilibrium and confidence. Beyond Konecny, Flyers player had more than five points (Scott Laughton, 1g and 4a), three goals (Owen Tippett, 3g and 1a) or four assists (Laughton) in the nine-game slate.
Tippett, Morgan Frost (1g, 3a), Noah Cates (1g, 3a) and Tony DeAngelo (1g, 3a, minus-10) had four-point months. Kevin Hayes (2g, 1a), Nicolas Deslauriers (2g, 1a), Patrick Brown (1g, 2a) and Ivan Provorov (1g, 2a) had three points apiece over the nine games.
I am still not sure which was worse: playing rotten first and second periods and going down to a 5-2 defeat at the hands of a Montreal Canadiens team missing 13 players from their lineup or playing a solid first period and then getting utterly shredded for the latter 40 minutes by a very good New Jersey Devils club in a hideous 7-0 slaughter the next night.
Flyers head coach John Tortorella took an understated and supportive public approach to addressing what happened against the Canadiens and Devils. I suspect it was because there's only so many times a coach can go to the whip before it loses impact. Tortorella tore into his team during and after ugly back-to-back losses to Seattle and scratched Travis Sanheim in Calgary. Meanwhile, after the Flyers had very few truly non-competitive losses until the All-Star break -- maybe four all season up to that point -- they've since had four in February alone plus two other games where Philly got utterly rag-dolled in the first period but recovered sufficiently to make it a competitive game.
2) On today's "Mondays with Meltzer" edition of Flyers Daily, Jason Myrtetus and I discuss these topics and more. Other topics include trade deadline talk and an edition of "Flyers: Truth or Fiction?" in a 40-minute episode: Click here.
3) Both Samuel Ersson (22 saves on 25 shots) and Elliot Desnoyers (1a, four shots on goal) were in the starting lineup for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms (26-21-6) on Sunday as the team skated to a 4-3 comeback road win over the Bridgeport Islanders on Sunday.
After a scoreless first period, the Phantoms trailed 3-0 late in the second period. Former Phantoms/Flyers player Cole Bardreau, William Dufour (PPG) and Ruslan Iskhakov (penalty shot goal) scored for Bridgeport. A shorthanded goal by Adam Brooks (6th of the season) narrowed the gap to 3-1 at 17:08 of the second period.
In the third period, the Phantoms put a three-goal blitz (and a 16-shot barrage) on Bridgeport to win the game. Defenseman Adam Ginning (3rd) cut the deficit to 3-2 at 3:08. recently red-hot veteran power forward Garrett Wilson (10th) tied the game at 9:48 and veteran center Artem Anisimov (14th) netted the game-winner at 15:33.
4) The Flyers have traded former 2017 second-round pick Isaac Ratcliffe to the Nashville Predators in a future considerations deal. Ratcliffe has had a bumpy developmental road at the professional level dating back to his 2019-20 rookie season. He appeared to be getting on the right track in the second half of last season including a 10-game NHL stint with the Flyers in which he held his own and even spent one game on the top line. Down the stretch of the 2001-22 AHL season, Ratcliffe was arguably the Phantoms' most productive forward (five goals and five assists in the final 13 games) in a failed desperation push for a playoff spot.
Unfortunately, Ratcliffe got off on the wrong foot at training camp this September. He was one of the first cuts in camp and cleared waivers. From there, he never seemed to recover. Nothing was coming instinctively, and his confidence was at one of the lowest ebbs of his career. Ratclifee was a healthy scratch for the entire month of February. Thereafter, he yo-yoed in and out of the lineup.
My own feeling on Ratcliffe was that there was never a well-defined developmental direction for him. Was he supposed to be a checker/penalty killer? That's how Scott Gordon started to deploy Ratcliffe less than halfway into his AHL rookie year. Was he supposed to transition to more of a netfront PP forward and down-low presence? Be a bottom-six banger on an NHL fourth-line track? The goalposts seemed to keep moving. A series of injuries, most notably a collapsed lung, in Ratcliffe's second pro season didn't help, either.
Ultimately, though, a player is responsible for his own play. Ratcliffe never really figured out his own niche. As a pro, he wasn't going to approach being a 65-goal scorer (50 regular season goals plus 15 more goals in the playoffs in Guelph's Cinderella story of an OHL championship season in 2018-19) but there was still the tools to turn the raw materials into being an effective pro in one role or another. It has not happened, unfortunately.
Ratcliffe needed a change of scenery and the Flyers needed to turn the page, too. I wish him all the best in the Predators' organization. You won't meet a nicer, more down-to-earth athlete than "Ratty".
5) Desnoyers was recalled again to the Flyers today. He will be in the lineup on Wednesday against the Rangers. I suspect he will be back with Owen Tippett and Joel Farabee as his linemates, as Tortorella moved Desnoyers up and Frost (who had a brutal second period) down in the third period of Saturday's game in Newark.
6) The Flyers Alumni's Friday Night Fights event is this Friday. Featured speakers are Dave Schultz, Dave Brown, Stu Grimson, Matthew Barnaby, Todd Fedoruk and, in a segment devoted to the 25th anniversary of the Philadelphia Phantoms' 1997-98 Calder Cup championship, Frank "the Animal" Bialowas. The Phantoms segment will also feature a special appearance by current Flyers' assistant coach Rocky Thompson, who was a member of the St. John Flames in 1997-98 and fought Bialowas three times during the Calder Cup Final.