TRAINING CAMP UPDATES: OCTOBER 1, 2015
Philadelphia Flyers head coach Dave Hakstol originally planned to hold on-ice practice on Thursday but changed his mind after he had a night to think about how the team lacked energy for the majority of Wednesday night's 4-2 preseason loss to the New Jersey Devils. Sean Couturier (upper-body injury) and Michael Raffl (upper-body injury) went through an intensive 45-minute skating session but everyone else stayed off the ice.
The team will leave for Newark later on Thursday and hold a morning skate at the Prudential Center prior to Friday night's preseason finale against the Devils. Both Hakstol and Flyers general manager Ron Hextall said that the decision on the final remaining roster cut would wait until after the last preseason game. Opening night rosters must be submitted to the NHL on Tuesday by 5 p.m. ET.
On Wednesday, the Flyers put veteran forwards Chis Porter and Colin McDonald on waivers for purposes of assigning them to the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms. McDonald cleared on Thursday but Porter did not. The Minnesota Wild claimed the former University of North Dakota and St. Louis Blues left winger.
"You don't expect it, but it happens," said Hextall. "It's the rules. Good for Chris."
Hextall did not deny the Flyers continue to actively explore trade possibilities that could clear much-needed cap space -- the team is so tight to the cap ceiling at present that making a single call up in case of short-term injury will depend on the NHL salary of which player is recalled and the configuration of the rest of the roster. However, he continued to stress that he will only make a trade that makes sense for both teams and is not simply a giveaway for cap space.
After their respective skates, Couturier and Raffl were both upbeat. While Raffl said he was not going to play in Newark on Friday, he was very confident that he'd be 100 percent ready to go on opening night of the regular season. Couturier said he would skate on Friday morning and make a decision about playing in the game. Hextall pumped the brakes on that notion, saying that the team will be cautious about giving players a little extra time to fully heal but would not completely rule it out.
Backup goaltender Michal Neuvirth (lower-body injury, day-to-day) will make the trip with the team to Newark and skate in the morning. He will back up Steve Mason in the game but Mason will play the entire game in net.
Hakstol was asked if he thought it would be wiser to simply rest Mason for the opener in Tampa, which presumably would mean having Jason LaBarbera start in Newark since Neuvirth was removed from Wednesday's game for precautionary reasons and missed practice the previous day.
"No, I have no plan to rest [Mason]," said Hakstol. "He had the night off last night. Mase came off a real good start on Monday night. Our plan is to get ready for next week. So there's no plan to rest him."
Hakstol said that while the preseason finale will be treated as an opening night dry run to some degree, the team would go into it with particular goals in mind that could differ a bit from how regular season games will be approached.
"I think the natural thing the last game or even two games is you look at the lineup and try to predict what’s coming," said Hakstol. "I really don’t foresee that for us tomorrow necessarily. It’s a dry run in the fact that we want to play well for 60 minutes and we want to do things the right way. It won’t necessarily be the carbon copy of predicting the opening-day roster, I don’t think."
Nevertheless, Hakstol feels that traveling to Newark a day ahead of the game, rather than skating in Voorhees on Friday and then busing to the Prudential Center, is important in terms of instilling an approach similar to the regular season.
“It’s a regular game day. It’s a regular road routine. The rest of the preseason we’ve gone day-of and gotten there for game time. Absolutely, it’s a part of building for the regular season," said Hakstol.
The Flyers will hold a practice on Saturday in Voorhees and then a complete off-day on Sunday. Thereafter, there will be intensive daily preparation geared toward getting ready to play the defending Eastern Conference champion Tampa Bay Lightning on the road next Thursday.
Hakstol discussed what his goals are for the next week and where he thinks the team needs to get better in order to have a strong start to the regular season.
"I don't know if there's one thing. The biggest thing is that we're still trying to bring our total game together. I don't know that we've seen a complete game yet. We need to continue to bring all of the pieces of the puzzle together. I'd like to see us have a little more single-minded starts in the first period, right from the first shift rather than taking three or four or five shifts. I could go through a laundry list of things but it comes down to bringing all of the different parts together," said Hakstol.
In terms of five-on-five play, the coach said that the team needs to sustain a more consistent level of execution. One of the few positive takeaways from Wednesday's game, according to Hakstol, was the way the team executed at even strength during the majority of the first period. Thereafter, there was a clear drop-off.
"We saw a sustained push yesterday in the last 15 minutes of the first period. We need to build on that to be good 5-on-5. You have to have four lines playing the right way to continue momentum. I thought we did that on a consistent basis even if it was only for that block of time. Now we need to build on that and work towards that to be a consistently be a threat to score at 5-on-5," said Hakstol.
One area the coach is pleased with thus far is that he feels the team is moving in the right direction on the penalty kill. He has said that he wants his players to be aggressive and have a "challenge" mentality on the PK without taking low-percentage risks. There is still work to be done, according to Hakstol, but he's seeing progress.
“I like what we’ve done on the PK. Some of the mistakes we’ve made in a couple cases have been from making almost over-aggressive reads, and I think that’s OK. That’s a good place to start. If we need to pull back, we can pull back. But I’ve seen a lot of good there," said Hakstol.
"We’ve been pretty good up ice; we’ve been able to disrupt up ice. I think on zone entry, we’ve defended pretty well. Overall, I look at the number of scrums we’ve been able to create when pucks are on the walls, when rebounds are bouncing. I think we’ve had an aggressive penalty there. We have a ways to go, but a pretty good base so far on the PK.…