In search for goals, Fletcher faces a cap on options
PHILADELPHIA >> As Alain Vigneault knows all too well, hockey coaching can be a very challenging equation. Foremost on the daily list of responsibilities for coaching a truly contending team would be to make effective math out of so much of the locker room molehill.
No matter what their payroll numbers might argue, the Flyers have not been able to put together enough positive variables to equate to a positive trend in the standings.
As a result, you have so many games as the 1-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning Saturday.
As a result, you have a power play that was zero for 11 chances over the four games prior to Monday night’s daunting home challenge against the Boston Bruins.
As a result, you have a team captain and historically leading scorer in Claude Giroux who is falling behind the curve with two goals in 11 games. Or scoring soulmate Jake Voracek, who has played well while going the last nine games without a goal heading into Monday. They’re hardly alone: Last year’s expensive free agent sniper hire, James van Riemsdyk, also without a goal in nine straight games, after scoring six in the previous five games.
Other examples are easily found, as the Flyers as a group had fallen to 10th of the Eastern Conference’s 16 teams in goal scoring with 140, an average of just over three goals per game.
The production problem had worsened over the last few weeks, with the Flyers scoring but 19 goals in eight games, a stretch where they went 2-5-1.
“We’re giving up a lot of early first-period goals and we’re kind of chasing the game after that,” Sean Couturier said. “But since we’ve been back at home we’ve been good. Two tough opponents, we had a good win against Washington and lost a tight one at home against Tampa.”
All the while, general manager Chuck Fletcher has kept a low profile, at least publicly. It’s unlikely he’s been making many rounds on executive trading lines, either, since the Flyers seem to be dealing from a glaring weakness: They are only $579,444 under the NHL payroll max, which makes them No. 1 in the closest to the current cap race in the league. Go Team!
“At the end of the day you know that’s one area,” Vigneault said Monday in listing some of his concerns, “but in the big picture I look at our last game, and I really liked our compete level. I look at the defensive part of our game and we didn’t give a highly skilled team (the Lightning) a lot of chances. But we need a couple of guys to come up big and get some points for us.
“Whether it’s JVR or Jake, or it’s Kevin Hayes or (Giroux) ... that’s an area we’re looking to improve. We need our big boys to come up big for us.”
Of course they do. And in a stunning turnaround Monday night, it was the boys big and little that came through for a 6-5 shootout win over the Bruins. On playoff teams, when the scoring line “big boys” aren’t producing, there’s often a push from third- or fourth-line players to contribute on the scoreboard. It has to happen more than occasionally like this.
The Flyers have proven all season they are thin on the lower lines. There are reasons, of course, that go beyond dollars. The biggest one is named Nolan Patrick, the 2017 No. 2 overall draftee who hasn’t seen action since early in training camp thanks to migraine headaches and related symptoms.
While Patrick has been sporadically skating on his own, he seems no closer to being symptom-free enough to practice, much less play. Fletcher, in his semi-annual update session scheduled for Tuesday, might shed some light on Patrick’s woes. And he might not.
For his part, Vigneault referred questions about Patrick’s status to the team’s very competent and hard-working public relations boss, who as far as I know hasn’t been taking medical courses at night.
With cancer patient Oskar Lindblom and Patrick done for the season and quite possibly done for the season, respectively, the Flyers’ offense has taken a hit from which it doesn’t have the depth to recover. At least not without a few timely contributions from the lower-line guys, which Monday night included the likes of latest Phantoms promotee Connor “Bunny” Bunnaman (for a second stint), rookie Joel Farabee (one goal in 28 games plus three healthy scratches) and Nicolas Aube-Kubel.
That lineup of Flyers fill-ins did not include the likes of Morgan Frost, Andy Andreoff, Carsen Twarynski, David Kase, German Rubtsov and Misha Vorobyev, all of whom have had auditions this season that only landed them back in the Lehigh Valley.
So as for that lack of scoring depth ...
“It’s something we have been looking at,” Vigneault admitted. “It’s evident by the number of people that we’ve tried in the bottom six (spots).”
Bunnaman, who made the team out of training camp and played all of four games before being shipped out, is the latest in a string of Phantoms trying to fill the center spot on the fourth line, open only because Scott Laughton has to move up to take Nolan Patrick’s place in the lineup. For (re-)starters, The Bunny Man fared well, skillfully letting a pinballed puck bounce off him and into the net in the second period for a stunning fourth Flyers goal.
For a team so goal-challenged coming into the game, they’d gratefully take it.
“I’m still kind of nicked up a little bit, but I’m basically all the way back now,” said Bunnaman, who missed more than a month of Phantoms action with a high ankle sprain. “I’ll throw some tape on it and I’ll be good out there.”
Whatever works, because the options for Fletcher are few and far between.
The Flyers haven’t had a ton of injuries this season but they’ve had enough key ones to cause a real depth problem that has hurt both them and the Phantoms. Injuries happen. Making up for them is something a bit more costly and complicated.