Simmonds, Giroux, Voracek have many unfulfilled goals
PHILADELPHIA » They have been bouncing around the Flyers’ forward lines and hockey fantasies since 2012, making money and winning prizes, gaining popularity and hinting at excellence. They have been AllStars and more. At times, they have dazzled. They have been popular at the souvenir stands. And the three of them, and that would be Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek and Wayne Simmonds, have combined to win one playoff series in the seven seasons they have been grinning for the same team photo.
The Flyers lost Sunday, 5-1, to the Penguins, surrendering the home-ice advantage in their Eastern Conference quarterfinal. There were the normal reasons, including sloppy penalties, slow goaltending and the reality that Pittsburgh has the better team. But the lack of scoring from the three veteran franchisefaces was becoming more difficult than ever to ignore.
In three playoff games this season, Giroux has no goals. And Voracek has no goals. And Simmonds has no goals. The Flyers are not built to win that way, not games, not playoff series, and not silvery trophies.
The popular area-wide hobby of Giroux-ripping cooled this season when the captain bagged 102 points and a strong MVP candidacy. Though he hasn’t scored a goal in the first three games, he had an assist in Game 2 and, early Sunday, he was helping to dictate the flow that helped the Flyers to an 11-4 first-period edge in shots on goal. And he has had splendid postseasons. He scored 10 goals in the 23-game charge to the Stanley Cup Finals, before the arrivals of Simmonds and Voracek. And in 2012, he was good for eight postseason goals. Since then, he has played 16 playoff games and has scored two goals.
After the Flyers, who have been outscored 12-1 in their two series losses to Pittsburgh, fell Sunday, Giroux was asked specifically if more goalscoring is required from their best players. The resulting verbal gymnastics were of Olympic quality.
“Yeah,” he said. “There is a lot of hockey left to be played here. We have no doubt we are going to come out strong.”
So there was that. And, shift for shift, Giroux and Voracek were not inept Sunday. Voracek played with jump, speeding from one end of the rink to the other, creating a disturbance if not any goals.
Then, there was Simmonds, the Flyers’ 2017 Bobby Clarke Award winner as team MVP, a player long believed to be a shift away from NHL superstardom. The stat sheet revealed that he played 12:38, including 2:21 on the power play. But the 19,955 witnesses would have had a difficult time swearing that they’d spotted him anywhere near the scene.
Simmonds is 29 and will be an unrestricted free agent after next season. Whispers are the Flyers will try to move him for anything before that, and for two good reasons: It’s proper business … and he is no longer the player he was in the seasons up to and including his 2017 All-Star season.
Simmonds was slowed by complicated dental issues this season, needing to have a spray of teeth pulled, requiring root canal surgery and generally playing through discomfort. For that, his scoring dipped from 31 goals in 2017 to 24. He has been lumped with Travis Konecny and Valtteri Filppula on a third line that hasn’t done much to highlight any of them, and which was about as active in the Wells Fargo Center over the weekend as Joel Embiid.
The Flyers cannot win unless Konecny is making a difference. And they can’t win if Simmonds isn’t charging into the slot and being a pest. The game particularly sloppy, the Flyers were often caught shorthanded, limiting Simmonds’ potential. But either he rallies or, well, it soon will be clean-out-day in Voorhees.
“Well, Simmer has been playing pretty good hockey,” Dave Hakstol countered. “I liked their first 20 minutes; I liked Fil’s line, that line. And now you get into the number of powerplays, penalties back and forth. With Simmer being part of that second unit and not killing penalties, along with everybody else, you’ve got certain players out there on the kill expending all their energy and other guys sitting on the bench not being able to carry the momentum that they had in the first period.
“And, almost to a man, we had a lot of guys who played really well in the first period. And I would include him in that. You know what? He’s one of our leaders. He’s a guy that we’re going to look to. And he has to be a guy that helps us real quickly get over the disappointment of tonight and come back and play a complete game in game number four.”
The series is three games old, not seven. And things can change. The best players can sometimes rally and begin to score in bunches. But how is it that Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin both scored goals Sunday, and have combined for six goals in three games? Why don’t they have to wait to warm up?
“He just thrives on it,” Pens coach Mike Sullivan said of Crosby. “And that’s why he is the elite player that he is.”
The Flyers, who have been playing poor hockey and the recovering from it all season, have time to do their thing again. If they win at home Wednesday, it’s a threegame series, the Pens are startled, all of that usual noise. But they are not going to recover if Giroux, Simmonds and Voracek don’t score goals, the way elite players are supposed to score goals.
It’s been a while since 2012. A long while. Too long.