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Quick Hits: Scoring Woes, Trade Deadline, Phantoms and More |
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Quick Hits: February 28, 2023
1) The Flyers will hold an 11 a.m. ET practice on Tuesday at the FTC in Voorhees in advance of hosting the New York Rangers at the Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday. On Monday, the team had various players missing from practice including Travis Konecny, Kevin Hayes, James van Riemsdyk and Wade Allison.
2) Per John Tortorella, it sounds like Konecny will miss "a while" with the upper-body injury he sustained in Calgary last Monday. There was no information on the exact nature of the injury, whether it is season-ending and whether it's something serious enough to require surgery. However, given the way that Konecny went directly up the tunnel rather than back to the bench and the paucity of information in the days that followed, it did not seem like the update -- whenever it finally came -- was going to be good news. In the combined nine games that Konecny has missed to date between a November hand injury and the current issue, the Flyers are 1-6-2 and have scored just 18 goals combined.
3) Not that it wasn't already obvious after the team went 2-7-1 in February with a 1.89 GPG and a 4.00 GAA, but Tortorella acknowledged after Monday's practice that the team will not make the playoffs and that his focus is player evaluation and continuing to try to establish a standard.
4) Before Saturday's 7-0 debacle in New Jersey, I tweeted the Flyers' individual stat breakdowns over the team's previous 32 games; covering the stretch after the stretch of just two wins in 15 games (including a 10-game winless streak) in November and the first week or so of January. It's now a 33-game sample.
I was specifically looking at it for Kevin Hayes' overall stats in the last 10 weeks but it's also interesting to look across the roster. Hayes has 48 points (17g, 31a, 48 points in 60 games played) but he's had a month-to-month offensive roller coaster beyond November: 10 points in eight October games (1g, 9a), 14 points in 15 November games (7g, 7a), six points in 13 games in December (1g, 5a), 15 points over 14 games in January (6g, 9a) and then just three in nine February games (2g, 1a). Overall, in the team's last 33 games, Hayes is fifth on the team in scoring with 20 points (8g, 12a).
Konecny far and away leads the team in scoring over the sample size even with him having endured a stretched with only one point (0g, 1a) in 10 games and having missed each of the last three games (during which time, the team has scored a combined four goals). Over the Flyers last 33 games, TK has dressed in 30 and posted 31 points (17g, 14a).
After TK, in order, are Scott Laughton (9g, 15a, 24 points), Morgan Frost (8g, 15a, 23 points), Owen Tippett (10g, 11a, 21 points), Hayes, Tony DeAngelo (6g, 14a, 20 points), James van Riemsdyk (7g, 11a, 18 points), Noah Cates (6g, 11a, 17 points), Rasmus Ristolainen (2g, 10a, 12 points), Cam York (1g, 11a, 12 points), Joel Farabee (4g, 7a, 11 points), and Ivan Provorov (3g, 7a, 10 points). Wade Allison, who missed five games due to injury, has nine points (5g, 4a) while dressing in 28 of the 33 games. Travis Sanheim has five points (1g, 4a) in the span.
Let's look at it a different way: Beyond Konecny's 1.03 point per game pace in the sample size, only two other players -- Laughton (0.73) and Frost (0.70) have averaged seven points per every games. Eight have produced at what would be a prorated 40-point-or-more pace if done over an entire season.
Mind you, this sample size includes what was the Flyers BEST offensive stretch as a team -- the club's 15-game stretch between Dec. 17 and Jan. 19, when the Flyers were tied with Tampa Bay for 7th in the NHL with a 3.60 GPG average. For the season as a whole, both before (2.41 GPG in 31 games) and ever since that stretch (2.62 GPG overall, 2.00 in February), it's been an offensive desert.
How hard have goals been to score for Philly minus the one-month surge from mid-Dec to mid-January? The Flyers otherwise scored at the exact same pace during the Mike Yeo (2.62 GPG) tenure last season, albeit with the services of Claude Giroux and Cam Atkinson for much of the time.
After the Flyers' 2-1 loss the Chicago on Jan. 19, Tortorella said, "This was a good lesson because we deluded ourselves for a few weeks into thinking we're a team that's going to score off the rush. We need to focus on how we defend and being hard. We are a team that needs to grind."
Tortorella made very similar comments after Monday's practice.
"I'm hoping that we understand, especially now, we're not getting in the playoffs. We need to concentrate on being who we are as hard as we can be and try to win games understanding we have to defend first," Tortorella said.
Referring to Konecny, Tortorella added, "Because we just lost — and he's going to be out for a while — our best offensive player that is involved in so many different things with this team to keep us going. He's out. That's where I have to take responsibility, in making sure that we are thinking clearly."
Do the Flyers need to defend better? Going forward, win or lose, they certainly need to do it better than they did in most of February -- Edmonton games aside -- and be more consistent than they've been in for the season as a whole.
However, you can't just neglect the offensive side of the game and basically just leave it at "Grind harder, boys!" You also can't chalk it all up to the checking getting tighter leaguewide after the All-Star break. The Flyers have a way to go to be an average team offensively or in terms of puck possession. They seemed to be making strides offensively for a month but have backslid again significantly.
They're still not consistent enough defensively, so further improvement is clearly still needed. Meanwhile, they are downright weak offensively. I don't think "defend better, grind more" mantra is going to work as a solution for generating more on the offensive side of the game.
I think the next steps have to be geared toward defend better and have the puck more (even if it doesn't bump the GPG up much). The Flyers were slowly but steadily improving in possession at one point this season but they're back to getting hemmed in way too often and also giving up way too many high-danger chances and the types of goals where the goalies don't have a fair chance at a making a save.
When that happens for too long, inevitably, it drags the goalies down right with it.
5) The Phantoms have off until Friday but then they will begin one of those dreaded 3-in-3 gauntlets that are not uncommon on weekends in the AHL but are prohibited in the NHL by the CBA. On Friday, Lehigh Valley is in Syracuse. On Saturday evening, the Phantoms host the Toronto Marlies. The team then faces a late Sunday afternoon (4 p.m. ET) home game against the Providence Bruins.
6) On Monday evening, Flyers forwards Morgan Frost and Owen Tippett visited the Police Athletic League location on Snyder Avenue for an event organized by PAL and Simon's Heart. They met with a group of kids to talk about hockey and importance of heart health for young athletes.
7) 1) My attitude on trades has always been this: "Worry about the team as currently constituted until trades actually happen." I keep an eye on trade rumors, especially around the deadline and the NHL Draft, but not as a main priority. This week is a little different than most years, though, because the Flyers have such a light game schedule.
It's no secret that James van Riemsdyk will be traded this week as a rental and the Flyers will retain up to half of the impending UFA's contract. If it's the difference between a third-round or a second-round pick but the Flyers would have to retain another team's contract with term ththe club would like to move (such as Minnesota's Jordan Greenway, who has two more seasons to go at a $3 million AAV), I'd rather have the third rounder with more offseason cap space than a second-rounder with more money tied up in a non-top 6 forward.
As for other Flyers getting moved, the Flyers will do Justin Braun a favor for being a solid pro and good soldier by accepting a late-round pick for him to be a depth defenseman for a playoff team. For Nick Seeler, the Flyers seem prepared to turn down offers and hang onto Seeler (who is on an inexpensive contract with another season to run) unless some team overpays. While plenty of teams would gladly take Seeler as their No. 6 or 7 defenseman, it is doubtful that a club would pay premium value.
The Flyers could probably get a mid-to-late pick for Patrick Brown come deadline day on Friday. Playoff teams often go for depth down the middle, decent faceoff guys and PKers on inexpensive and expiring contracts. Brown checks those boxes. I would think the Flyers could get a fifth-round pick for Brown.
In terms of bigger deals being made -- Hayes being a name that seems to be coming up in a lot of rumors this week -- I still am doubtful of it happening until after the season (if it happens at all in 2023). That goes, too, for players like Provorov or Sanheim.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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