THE GREAT COUTURIER DEBATE
During Philadelphia Flyers general manager Ron Hextall's end-of-season press conference on Wednesday afternoon, he was asked to assess the progress of fourth-year pro Sean Couturier. In particular, Couturier's heavy usage in defensive zone starts against opposing teams' best offensive players was brought up repeatedly as it was during head coach Craig Berube's press conference on Monday.
Hextall cautioned that fans and media -- and the Flyers organization itself -- needs to "be really, really careful" about giving in to impatience when a still-young player (Couturier turned 22 in December) takes baby steps or some seeming lateral steps in his production and the growth of his role in offensive zone situations.
Said Hextall, "We don’t want him to be a shutdown player, either. We want him to be both. We want him to be a 200-foot player. That’s how you win championships, win playoff series, you make the playoffs… with 200-foot players. Sean Couturier is a good two-way player. Sean Couturier is also 22 years old. ...He’s a young guy, [but] he’s been around for a while, so you tend to want to expect and push and everything else, and that’s part of our job. But really be careful, because sometimes patience is needed."
Over the course of the season, many of Craig Berube's most interesting and expansive comments were often the ones he made during his small-group pregame media availability on game nights or after practice in Voorhees. There was nothing that Berube said on Monday about Couturier or other topics that were brand-new statements to those of us who are around the team every day (beat writers) or at least semi-regularly in the practice and pregame setting. The only difference was that he said it for the TV cameras.
Berube, who pointed out that he tried to give Couturier more offensive-zone starts in the latter portion of the season, has repeatedly reiterated three main themes about the player: 1) He is used a lot in the shutdown role because he's the team's best (and, in some ways, only viable) option for that role, 2) He believes that Couturier has the ability level to be as effective offensively as he defensively but the player overthinks the game at times, and 3) playing out of the defensive zone need not preclude a player from getting scoring opportunities if he is alert, aggressive and opportunistic.
In my March 30th blog about Couturier, I noted that the organization sees perennial Selke Trophy candidate Patrice Bergeron as the type of player they think Couturier can and will become. Nowadays, the Selke Trophy really isn't an award for the best "defensive" forward, it's one for the best 200-foot forward who scores at a healthy clip and also takes on heavy defensive responsibilities.
To the point that the Flyers had little other alternatives but to assign heavy defensive burdens to Couturier, Berube reiterated the theme on Monday. Specifically, apart from Claude Giroux taking his own a share of the load -- but not too much, because he's the team's primary offensive catalyst -- who else could be expected to go head-to-head against a top NHL line?
Should Michael Raffl (when playing center) or Pierre-Edouard Bellemare have been tasked to take the toughest defensive assignments? Ryan White? It's not a job for Brayden Schenn (if moved back to center) and most certainly not a role for Vincent Lecavalier. At some point in the future, 2012 first-round pick Scott Laughton may grow into a similar role as Couturier's. This year, he was clearly not ready for it as 20-year-old in his rookie season.
As such, by sheer process of elimination, Couturier received heavy-duty use in the defensive zone against a very difficult caliber of opposition. Hextall pointed out in his press conference that it's not like Couturier had a disastrous season in 2014-15 (15 goals, 37 points after a 13 goal, 39-point campaign in 2013-14). It was a lateral step and not a backward one.
Some have pointed out that Couturier's most frequent linemates, Matt Read and R.J. Umberger, had terrible offensive seasons (while also battling injuries) and that served to hurt Couturier's offensive totals. Read had previously been a bankable 20-plus goal scorer but really scuffled this season, while Umberger followed up a subpar, injury-affected final season in Columbus with further decline and more injury issues in his first year back with the Flyers.
Without question, Couturier would have collected at least a half-dozen more apples in his point totals if Read and/or Umberger had better seasons. At some point, though, Couturier needs to start burying more of his own chances when he does get offensive opportunities.
Back in the early 2000s, when scoring leaguewide was hitting its pre-lockout nadir, the Flyers got back-to-back 20-goal seasons out of third-line center Michal Handzus. A former Selke Trophy first runner-up with St. Louis, Handzus had seasons of 23 and 20 goals when he came to Philadelphia. In his second season in Philly, Handzus finished eighth in the Selke balloting (including two second-place votes and five votes for third-place) while producing 58 points.
It wasn't like Handzus had elite-caliber offensive linemates. At five-on-five, he mostly played with Donald Brashear and Radovan Somik on his wings. On the power play, he primarily got second-unit time.
It wasn't like Handzus was blessed with being a better skater than Couturier, enabling him to get the puck from a defensemen and speed up the ice. While Couturier is an average-at-best skater in a straight line, Handzus was downright slow even in his prime. He scored his goals through guile and deceptively good hands.
While some folks believe Couturier has bad hands -- mostly because he has struggled in shootouts and has gone through dry spells where he can't finish even with a half-gaping net staring at him --it is really more a matter of consistency and self-confidence. There have been times at practice over the years where Couturier has shown very quick hands in close quarters around the net (in games, he has to actually get himself there first) and even top-shelfing prowess from the circle or high slot (which, in game situations, has often ended up either getting shot right into the goalie or, just as often, sailing wide of the net).
Moving forward, regardless of who coaches the Flyers next season, Couturier is going to have to start converting more scoring chances if he is realistically going to break out from the "defensive shutdown center" into the "200-foot center" description the player himself said on Monday is his ambition. For all the talk about his defensive chores hampering his offensive growth, Couturier easily had enough scoring opportunities this season to score several more goals.
It is not too big of a leap or an unrealistic expectation for Couturier to jump from 15 to 20 goals and from 37 to 50-plus points next season. Likewise, Brayden Schenn is eminently capable of bettering his 20-goal output of 2013-14 and his 47-point production on 2014-15 by five goals and 10-plus points.
The key may actually be to play Couturier and Schenn as a tandem; they had their most productive offensive stretches of the 2014-15 season during early-season and late-season stints as linemates. On Monday, I asked Berube if he saw promise in that possibility based on what the two did in November (before Michael Raffl's injury brought about Schenn moving to the Giroux line) and the final seven games of the season (after Wayne Simmonds' season-ending injury). It also helped that a finally healthy Read closed out the season looking more like the player he'd been in previous seasons than the slowed-down, hesitant and ineffective player he was for most of the year.
Berube said he wouldn't "mind it" to have a Couturier-Schenn tandem as an option based on the very small sample size of games the two spent together this season. Regardless of whether Berube or someone else is behind the bench on opening night of the 2015-16 season, unlocking they key to greater production from Couturier as well as Schenn is going to be one of the most important factors in finding offensive support beyond what the top line and first power play unit produce.
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IIHF WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: SCHENN AND COUTURIER ADDED TO TEAM CANADA
Hockey Canada announced on Thursday that Flyers forwards Brayden Schenn and Sean Couturier will join Claude Giroux on the Canadian roster for the 2015 IIHF World Championships in the Czech Republic. This will be the first WC tournament for Couturier and the second one apiece for Giroux (who played previously in 2013) and Schenn (2014).
With the participation of Schenn and Couturier along with Giroux, the number of Flyers players confirmed to play at the World Championships grew to six. As soon as the Flyers were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, Jakub Voracek announced he would accepted an invitation to play for the Czech team with the tourney in his home country. Additionally, Michael Raffl will play for Austria and Swiss national team fixture Mark Streit will assume his customary leadership role for Team Switzerland.
Flyers goaltender Steve Mason also received a roster invitation from Hockey Canada general manager Jim Nill (Dallas Stars) but turned it out at the behest of Ron Hextall. The Flyer would like for Mason to rest his right knee, which gave him trouble at times this season and underwent arthroscopic surgery in February.
Team France regular Pierre-Edouard Bellemare had to scuttle plans to play for his national team at the 2015 Worlds. The player has to undergo shoulder surgery that has a recovery timetable of eight-to-10 weeks.
The organizational total of participating players could grow to seven or eight next week. Decisions on whether Phantoms goaltender Rob Zepp will play for Germany and defenseman Oliver Lauridsen will represent Denmark await the conclusion of the AHL season. The Phantoms wrap up on Sunday.
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PHANTOMS AND PROSPECT UDATES
* AHL: The Lehigh Valley Phantoms (33-32-7-1) are on the road on Friday night to take on the Norfolk Admirals (26-38-6-4). Game time is 7:30 p.m. EDT.
* QMJHL: Flyers 2013 first-round pick Samuel Morin and the Rimouski Oceanic will look to close out their second round series with the Gatineau Olympiques on Friday night. Game time is 7:00 p.m. EDT. Rimouski leads the series, three games to one.
* QMJHL: Flyers 2014 second-round pick Nicolas Aube-Kubel and the Val-d'Or Foreurs will look to stave off playoff elimination for a second time when they take on the Baie-Comeau Drakkar on Friday night. Game time is 7:30 p.m. EDT. Val-d'Or recovered from a 3-0 deficit in Game Four to win in double-OT but still trails the series, three games to one.
* WHL: Flyers 2014 first-round pick Travis Sanheim, 2014 sixth-rounder Radel Fazleev and the rest of the Calgary Hitmen hope to end their second round series with the Medicine Hat Tigers on Friday night. Game time is 8:00 p.m. EDT. Calgary leads the series, three games to one.
* WHL: Flyers 2013 third-round pick Tyrell Gouldbourne and the Kelowna Rockets will take their second crack at ending their series with the Victoria Royals on Friday night. Game time is 10:00 p.m. EDT. Kelowna leads the series, three games to one.
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FLYERS ALUMNI UPDATES FROM
* 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.
* The 11th annual installment of the Goals for Giving benefit game to raise funds for NHS Human Services was a smashing success. The April 12 game at the Flyers Skate Zone in northeast Philadelphia raised over $118,000 on behalf of the organization. Over the previous 10 years, the NHS Human Services Foundation Goals for Giving Hockey Benefit raised $386,000 to support the programs and services of NHS Human Services. NHS provides nutritious foods to the needy and teaches life skills and food preparation to people with disabilities.The organization also supports autism-sensitive schooling as well as housing programs for the needy. It is still possible to donate to the 2015 Goals for Giving drive to help the Alumni and NHS reach their $125,000 fundraising target goal. For more information on helping the cause, click here.