After quiet playoffs, Giroux set for an offseason of work
If Claude Giroux was contemplating filing an age discrimination complaint of any sort, he wasn’t letting on Friday. If he took any kind of offense to his coach’s likely on-target comments recently, he wasn’t letting on.
Then again, Giroux is still wearing a playoff beard and it’s hard to see beyond the ginger during a Zoom session.
“I haven’t talked to AV,” Giroux said with a sole reference to head coach Alain Vigneault. “But I think I’ve been with the Flyers for 13 years and I’ve been fully committed to this organization. Every offseason I think I do a good job to be able to get a little better. Obviously when you get a bit older, however the season went on, you always want to tweak the way you work out. That’s something that I might have to tweak one or two things. But At the end of the day, I think every time camp starts, I’m in great shape.”
Giroux could declare himself fit for the start of Training Camp 2020 ... regular version, not the summer-y kind.
When that starts, however, is anybody’s guess. With the Stanley Cup finals between Dallas and Tampa Bay set to begin Saturday, and an virtual NHL Draft scheduled for Oct. 6 and 7, it’s been speculated that the first day of an optimistically compacted 2020-21 season schedule could be Dec. 1.
“It’s definitely a little more difficult than when you actually know,” Giroux said. “You can plan how you want to work out, how you want to skate and make sure you’re ready for camp. I think it’s just important that whatever you do, you’re ready to go. If it’s the date that they are saying right now, you’ve got to make sure that you’re ready for that.”
Before they adapt, the Flyers are looking back all the way to the 2020 playoffs, one Zoom call at a time.
On Friday it was Giroux’s turn to relive the memories of an encouragingly perfect round-robin mini-tourney, a stressful but ultimately successful first round against Montreal, then a sevengame loss to the New York Islanders that was not as close as it seemed.
Or is that too much of a truthful?
“We took a huge step forward,” Giroux countered. “We’re very disappointed that we couldn’t move on to the conference finals. We thought we had a team that was able to go further. It’s very, very disappointing. At the same time, we took a huge step forward from last year. We’ve got to keep moving forward and keep building on this.
“We love our team. We like the pieces we have. We’re all pretty excited for next year.”
If cancer survivor Oskar Lindblom continues his return, and Nolan Patrick somehow can get back on the ice after missing the entire season due to migraines, that would be reason enough to be excited. But while general manager Chuck Fletcher cautions not to expect many changes via free agency — it might be tough just to afford all the restricted free agents he wants to retain — the Flyers would certainly benefit from another high-line scorer who could play a major role in reviving a power play that was suffocated during the postseason.
“I think the other years that we made the playoffs and we lost in the first rounds, we didn’t have the depth we have right now,” Giroux said. “Right now we have older players and younger players. We just have a good mix of guys. Having Carter (Hart) in net, and Moose (Brian Elliott), they give us a chance to win every night. We just like the mix that we have in the locker room.”
Giroux has a good argument that the club has better depth, better goaltending and almost certainly better coaching than the last few years.
But among that mix of players, he’s excited about a few guys who can easily see the career sunset in the notso-distant future. At 32, is Giroux one of them?
In a Zoom last week, Vigneault, while being complimentary about Giroux’s admirable commitment, leadership and talent ... dropped a bomb of a hint that it might be time for a renewed offseason training commitment for Giroux to ward off the advancing years.
“He’s getting older, (and) as you get older, the muscles don’t react as quick, but you can work on that,” Vigneault had said. “He’s going to put in a lot of time and effort. I do believe that there’s some areas that having gone through with Claude this first playoffs, I do believe there’s some areas where I could help him with where he could perform better. I need to see him face to face and sit down. I haven’t had the opportunity.”
When that overdue talk comes, will Giroux find it agreeable?
“Obviously it’s not a secret, I would have liked to play better,” Giroux said. “I think as the playoffs went on, I was starting to feel a little bit better. It was obviously a unique tournament that we had. You are off a couple months and then you go straight to playoffs. It was hard for everybody, but it just felt like it took me a little bit longer to kind of get going.”
Consider that a yes.