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Meltzer's Musings: JVR and Goal-Scoring Wingers |
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MELTZER'S MUSINGS: JVR AND GOAL-SCORING WINGERS
In yesterday's blog, I discussed at length why a team's regular season goals against average has been a much better indicator in recent years of the club's likelihood of reaching the playoffs than where the team ranks in goals per game. That's why, in a salary cap world (most especially in a long-range flat cap projection), having a player with good goal-scoring ability but limited value in most other aspects of the game is a mighty expensive luxury.
I am not of the belief that the Flyers focusing their 2020 off-season first and foremost on adding a goal-scoring specialist winger (caveat: the operative word is "specialist") is necessarily the way to go.
I think the No. 1 priority should be the third-line center spot. If that comes from within (Nolan Patrick or Morgan Frost), that would be tremendous. Yes, Scott Laughton is an option, but he's seemed most effective at left wing in the middle six, followed closely by fourth-line center and, finally, with third-line center being the least preferable option for his ideal usage.
Whether you like it or not, the Flyers took their shot at adding a goal-scoring winger when former general manager Ron Hextall brought back James van Riemsdyk in 2018 on a five-year contract with a $7 million cap hit. JVR was coming off a career-high 37 goals (in a five-on-five third line plus PP1 role) in his final season in Toronto. JVR's contract still has an additional three seasons to run. The other part of that equation is Chuck Fletcher's long-term commitment made to Travis Konecny in the six-year deal he signed the young winger to last September. Between JVR and Konecny, that's $12.5 million of the Flyers cap dollars tied into wingers whose No. 1 value comes from their ability to score goals.
Plain and simple: Unless the Flyers trade JVR this offseason and find either a more consistent or at least a comparable but less cap-costly replacement -- either which way, that will be rather tough to do -- I don't see bringing in a goal-scoring winger from the outside as a likely scenario in the immediate future.
JVR can be a frustrating player at times, because the whole doesn't always add up the sum of the parts.
He's an undeniably talented player -- highly skilled, big and strong. Strictly from a goal-total perspective, you can take 25-to-30 goals from him to the bank most seasons. He's worked hard to improve his two-way game. He will never be a Selke Trophy type but most of the time noawadays, he's not a liability (no one is infallible). Actually, except for one very costly point-man coverage lapse in the first period of Game 7 of the Islanders' series, the defensive part of his game in the postseason was fine. He's an unselfish, team-oriented player who never rocks the boat. On top of it all, off the ice, he's an impossible guy to dislike: down-to-earth, easy going, and
friendly. Critics would say a little too much of that carries over to the ice, and that he doesn't play with jam consistently enough.
There are some who say, at least by the eye test, JVR too often seems to leave them wanting more. He goes through lengthy stretches where he seems uninvolved in the play, not using his size to his advantage with enough consistency, not physical enough, and prone to lengthy stretches where he's not generating enough shots on goal or finishing enough of his open looks. By the eye test, he goes through stretches where his puck touches are too few and too brief for someone who is very hard to take off the puck when his mind is set to it. The underlying numbers suggest otherwise, and were actually pretty strong this year, but he's often not an eye-test dynamo because it seems like he's not expending a lot of energy and not winning battles it looks like he should win -- and does, when his mind is really set to it.
Truthfully, looking solely at the collection of natural gifts he has, JVR appears to be a player who should have been scoring 30 goals in his 25-goal season, 35 to 40 goals in his best seasons. He's also a much, much better passer than he's given credit for -- JVR sometimes will make the most gorgeous of saucer passes or thread the puck through tiny spaces, and observers would love to see him do it more often because he's capable of making it look easy (it most assuredly is is NOT easy).
JVR isn't a speed demon by any means. When he was a young player in his first Flyers tenure, he was surprisingly mobile and agile for a player with a large frame. He's lost a half-step by his early 30s. But despite what some say, he still gets just fine from Point A to Point B.
The best NHL game I ever saw JVR play was Game 2 of the 2011 Eastern Conference Semifinals against Boston. On that night, shift after shift, he brought an A+ game that looked like a game from Eric Lindros at his Hart Trophy-winning best. JVR was virtually impossible to stop that night, and even brought along some physicality to go with the skill. No one can play to that level every night, but the long-time hope was that JVR could at least approach that realm periodically. Truthfully, I've never seen him do it again over an entire-game basis; great shifts and goal-scoring streaks, yes. But not the complete package where you couldn't take your eyes off him all game and you KNEW he was going to create scoring chances -- both for himself and for linemates -- on a very high volume of his shifts.
What JVR has done, though, over most of his career is to collect his 25 to 30 goals a season (or the prorated equivalent in seasons where he's played significantly less than 82 games). In 2018-19, he missed 16 games due to an early season injury, but scored 27 goals with a career-high 16.2 percent shooting percentage. JVR also posted 48 points. As with much of the Flyers team, the first season of JVR's second Flyers stint was NOT a good defensive season for him. Philly's team D, forwards and defensemen alike, was an utter mess and the pre-Carter Hart recall goaltending was atrocious, too. Strictly from an offensive standpoint, though, JVR's 0.727 points per game was fine.
Yes, he was streaky. That is basically par for the course all but the most elite of goal-scorers (and even they have ebbs and flows). The main thing with JVR's first season back with the Flyers was that he was unable for most of the first quarter of the season, had trouble finding chemistry on a line with Nolan Patrick (which had been the initial hope) and then, even once he settled in and started scoring regularly, was hardly blameless in the team's collective down year defensively.
This past season was a strange one for JVR. He bought in to what the new coaching staff preached and buckled down defensively -- again, everyone has hiccups -- to where off-puck play wasn't really a concern on most nights. Thing is: at a $7M cap hit, being OK defensively doesn't fully make up for being a generally third-line, PP2 player who doesn't kill penalties and is producing sporadically even when faced with somewhat less demanding matchups.
Offensively, Vigneault's plan going into the season appeared to be one where JVR was the key to having three lines that boasted a scoring threat. It also promised the flexibility to move him up when he was going especially well or the team was playing from behind and needed a goal. That plan never truly came together although the Flyers as a team improved to 7th in goals per game.
JVR never really found a sustained groove or regular linemates this season. He dressed in 66 of the 69 regular season games (the same number of games he played in 2018-19) but his goals dropped to 19 and his points dipped to 40. He did have a few hot streaks. In the eight game span between Dec. 7 and Dec. 23, van Riemsdyk posted six goals and 11 points. Later, in the five-game stretch between Feb. 8 and 15, he compiled four goals and eight points.
JVR, whose wife gave birth to their first child, built a new home, and served on the NHL/NHLPA return-to-play committee, had his plate full during the NHL's leaguwide pause for the Covid-19 pandemic. Whether that had anything to do with him having a so-so training camp in Voorhees once Phase 3 rolled around, which then spilled over into being out-of-sorts in his offensive game in the Bubble and ultimately being a healthy scratch in four of the team's 16 playoff games -- a huge indication that Alain Vigneault was not happy with JVR's play -- is hard to say. In and of itself, those things cannot be used as an excuse for subpar play.
With the Flyers trailing the Islanders, three games to one, Vigneault specifically named Claude Giroux and JVR as two players who needed to "put on their big boy pants" and step up with the season on the line. Both Giroux (on a deflection) and van Riemsdyk (on an odd-man rush where JVR didn't put the puck where he wanted to but it leaked in past Semyon Varlamov) scored goals.
The goal in Game 5, and a dominant early OT shift from him, seemed to restore a measure of confidence. He scored again in Game 6 on a goal that looked like a vintage John LeClair tally; pull up, wind up and blast home a shot from above the dot. Not many goals are scored like that nowadays and it's not the typical way that van Riemsdyk scores -- most of his goals are scored near the net -- but it was another little reminder that there a lot of different weapons in JVR's natural arsenal that he infrequently calls upon in game conditions. Unfortunately, Game 7 was a debacle for the entire Flyers team, and JVR was a key culprit in the Scott Mayfield goal that gave the Islanders a 1-0 lead and completely turned the early tide of the game.
At age 31, JVR is not going to radically change as a player. He'll never be a consistently dominant or physically aggressive power forward and he'll generally stay in his comfort zone when it comes to shot selection (although he'll periodically pull out a surprise, and score with it). He'll still be a little too unselfish and try to pass when he's got a shooting lane. He'll generally be acceptable defensively, relative to being a player whose primary expectation is to score goals.
What you see is what you get: hot streaks, lengthy spells where he fails the eye test for many watchers but with generally favorable analytics if you look beneath the surface of him not being a crusher or a dangler.
Is that enough to justify a $7 million cap hit for a 31-year-old winger? If he scores in the 25 goals and a reasonably productive playoff run in 2020-21, my answer would be that it's reasonable ROI for next season. But if he has a year where he never really settles in with linemates, is at 20 goals or less and it's justifiable to scratch him even once (let alone four times) in the playoffs, it's hard to say that's reasonable value.
Is there a viable alternative out there this offseason, though, from both a hockey and cap management perspective? I am skeptical. I'm hoping 2020-21 brings something closer to JVR's 2018-19 offensive year and something closer to his off-puck play for the bulk of 2019-20. I don't think that's too much to ask. He's not too old to have a year like that.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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