MELTZER'S MUSINGS: NOVEMBER 14, 2016
1) The Flyers announced yesterday that goaltender Michal Neuvirth will miss the next four to six weeks with a lower-body injury. Tim Panaccio reports the injury to be to the player's left knee. Flyers general manager Ron Hextall will address the media on Monday morning.
Philly will almost certainly recall third-year pro Anthony Stolarz from the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms. An AHL All-Star Game participant last season on the strength of an excellent first two months of the season (he was inconsistent thereafter), Stolarz has posted a 6-2-0 record, 2.39 GAA, 92.7% save percentage and one shutout for the Phantoms thus far this season.
Stolarz has had injury-related callups in each of the last two seasons, including a lengthy recall during the stretch drive of last season when the oft-injured Neuvirth went down, but has yet to play a minute in a regular season game. That will likely change this time around. Given that it is still relatively early in the season and that Neuvirth will miss significant time, chances are strong that Stolarz gets tabbed to play at some point.
The Flyers have a three-in-four gauntlet upcoming next week in Sunrise, Tampa and then on Black Friday against the New York Rangers. Getting one of those games -- most likely one of the back-to-back nights on the Florida road trip -- would be a good test for Stolarz.
2) Is Stolarz NHL-ready? He seems capable of handling some playing time, yes. This is not a situation like the one that the Flyers unwisely threw Jean-Marc Pelletier during the 1998-99 season. Pelletier was having a fine rookie year with the Phantoms, got called up when the team was struggling both defensively and in a goaltending slump and given a start in front of an impatient home crowd. He proceeded to get his ears pinned in an ugly 5-0 loss to the Ottawa Senators and was promptly returned to the Phantoms.
Pelletier had seemed like a fast-rising prospect at the time but then fizzled out. Whether his confidence got shaken -- although he presented as extremely self-confident to the point of almost being cocky, all young players, especially goalies, are vulnerable to bouts of shaken confidence-- is hard to say. Whatever it was, he never got back up to the Flyers again.
Stolarz has more experience under his belt now, both as an AHL starter and NHL backup, than Pelletier or a teenage Maxime Ouellet did when they made their NHL debuts. He's already shown he can handle some adversity mentally and his game, which was extremely raw even two seasons ago, is more polished now. At times last season, he reverted to overcommitting and getting himself out of position but he's evolving into a more patient goaltender who makes better reads.
However, anyone who thinks Stolarz "can't be worse" than the goaltending the Flyers have received overall early this season or, more loftily, is a strong option as a regular NHL number one goalie at this point is mistaken. Goaltending and team defense are symbiotic, and the Flyers have too often set their goalies up to fail this season while the goalies have also not done their part consistently enough in making all the routine saves and the period tough one in key situations.
The Toronto game on Friday was a classic case where a team sets up its own goaltender to fail. The Maple Leafs shot totals were low but the type of chances the Flyers yielded in the first (breakaway, a Flyers defenseman screeing his own goalie on a 5-on-3 shorthanded situation) and especially the third period made life miserable on Steve Mason. On the flip side, Mason did not come up with momentum saves -- two breakaway goals, two through screens, a needed secondary or tertiary stop -- and, finally, let in a soft goal.
If the Flyers put an NHL rookie Stolarz into a similar situation -- or really, most any goalie, if done with too great of frequency -- that goalie is going to have a bad GAA and ugly save percentage. Actually, most goalies would much rather have a night like the one Mason had against Detroit, where there are some tough chances mixed in, but there's also a pretty high volume of routine, trackable shots. A 35-save night can sometimes be more favorable to the goalie, and a save percentage booster, than those 18-to-24 shot nights where there's a half dozen killer breakdowns and odd-man rushes coming his way after long stretches of inactivity.
For most of his Flyers career leading into this season, Mason has consistently been pretty good. There were a few clunkers, and some high-profile ones at that, but his overall body of work was above average. It sure wasn't consistently stellar team D in front of him that built a .920 save percentage for his Flyers career coming into this season. He earned that the hard way.
Mason has been good in two of his last three outings and had a little mini-run of strong play (the starts against Carolina and Montreal plus his relief work in the comeback win over Buffalo) in October. However, that first good stretch gave way to several outings where he was mediocre and the recent outing in Toronto was also desultory. With him so far, it's been more about inconsistency than him being "lousy" game-in and game-out. Conversely, Neuvirth has had maybe two outings this season where he looked to be dialed in. The others were either uneven performances -- even in wins -- or were below-average.
In the big picture, keep these two things in mind: 1) It is not even the one-quarter mark of the season yet. No GM that's worth a damn would panic based on such a small portion of a season, especially when the team has still managed to find ways to be in position to win games late. Things are not THAT far off, although the consistency both defensively and in goal has to get better, and 2) the larger body of work of both goaltenders has shown that both are significantly better than they've played. Now that Mason figures to get the bulk of playing time, especially during a portion of the season where he typically plays well, things will most likely stabilize so long as everyone pulls their weight.
3) The Lehigh Valley Phantoms remain undefeated in the month of November. On Sunday, they raised their winning streak to six straight games with a 3-1 win over the Hersey Bears. Rookie netminder Alex Lyon played his strongest game to date even apart from stopping 35 of 36 shots, as he had to come up big to get the team over the hump as they clung to a lead in the third period. Chris Conner, Reese Willcox and Will O'Neill (power play) scored for Lehigh Valley.
4) Later today, Eric Lindros and the family of the late Pat Quinn will be on hand for the formal Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Yesterday, Lindros centered a line with John LeClair and Mikael Renberg in the Hockey Hall of Fame Classic at the Air Canada Centre. The Legion of Doom Line will reunite one more time on January 14 for the Flyers' 50th Anniversary Alumni Game at the Wells Fargo Center.