Mixed feelings cloud summer for Flyers
The beer thrown by non-fans in the stands wasn’t even freeze-dried to the Wells Fargo Center surface yet when the Flyers, freshly scrubbed yet still all wet in the sanctity of the losing locker room Sunday evening, starting ticking off their laments and regrets. And other emotions, too... “We have a pretty young team. A lot of guys’ first time around,” defenseman Andrew MacDonald said in the wake of an 8-5 elimination loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 6 Sunday.
“It’s a tough league,” MacDonald thought to add. “It’s a grind. It’s a long season. A lot of ups and downs. But you know, there was a lot made of out of the big losing streak. We had some winning streaks. I think we did a really good job of staying even keel in the dressing room regardless of how we were playing on the ice. That is what a true team does. They stick together. I thought we did a really good job at that.”
It could be argued that players have no choice than to stick together when their general manager refuses to make in-season trades of much significance. Ron Hextall’s move at the trade deadline was to pluck Johnny Oduya off the waiver wire. He played for literally as long as it took to break a sweat, got hurt and was never seen in a game uniform after that.
The Flyers, as per MacDonald’s reference, were indeed a streaky team both ways during the season. Yes, that November losing streak that went into the first days of December reached 10 games (0-5-5), and yes, they had some positive streaks afterward.
At one point eight points out of any kind of playoff positioning and feeling the mildew of the Eastern Conference basement nipping at their boots, they won six in a row immediately after that 10th loss. They’d have three more streaks of four victories, followed that with a six-staight winning streak to roar to the top shelf of the Metropolitan Division in their last game of February.
Then March came and they promptly lost six of seven and would wind up fighting for their playoff lives down the stretch. They made it, though, with a couple of victories in the final week at home, where they hadn’t played all that steadily during the course of the season. Not as steadily as they usually did on the road, that is. And surprise, surprise ... didn’t that tendency carry right over into the Penguins playoff series.
It started with a 7-0 defeat at PPG Paints Arena, but the Flyers would follow that with stunningly solid road wins in Games 2 and 5. But then there were the three meetings at Wells Fargo Center ... where the Penguins went 3-0 with a combined score of 18-6.
Yes, 18 goals allowed in three home playoff games. Shouldn’t someone pay for that kind of flop before the home fans? Dave Hakstol, do you have any thoughts on that?
“I just (felt) like we’re our own worst enemy in those games,” Hakstol said after Game 6. “I think you always just look in the mirror and say we could have done things better for sure in those two games and in different areas of the series. We’ve always done things as a group. So as a group we could have played better in this series and in this game done a better job and we had a really good opportunity to push this to game 7.”
Indeed they did. In fact, with a 4-2 lead and the clock ticking down to a little more than seven minutes to play in the second period ... you’d think they SHOULD have done things better and gotten the series back to Pittsburgh.
Alas, that troubling penchant for making mistakes at home got in the way. And although largest one loomed on the shoulders ... well, shoulder ... of Ivan Provorov.
He played with a shredded left shoulder after slamming into the boards in Game 5. And Sean Couturier somehow registered a hat trick and five points Sunday while playing on a torn MCL in his right knee.
If you were scoring the Flyers on style points keeping in mind that between them, Claude Giroux, Jake VOracek and Wayne Simmonds petered out at a total of 1 goal and 8 points in their combined 18 playoff games.
Sean Couturier played five games in this series. He had 5 goals and 9 points.
It was easy to see, from an offensive standpoint, which veteran core players didn’t pull their weight.
As Giroux would say when asked about his personal series performance: “Not good enough. I’ve got to find a way.”
Yet Nolan Patrick went from a teen-age non-entity No. 2 overall draft pick coming off an injury riddled junior hockey experience to a solid No. 2 center by the end of the regular season. Still 19, Patrick isn’t as advanced on the hockey maturity scale as Provorov, but both Patrick and 21-yearold sparkplug Travis Konecny both showed star material in the season’s second half.
The three of them, with Couturier (only 25) and with supposed future star goalie Carter Hart ready to graduate from juniors, present a bright future picture for the Flyers. But that is the future. As it is, the Flyers improved 10 points and a few standings spots over a lousy 2016-17 season.
Giroux had a career year. Voracek had a very good year. There’s no guarantee any repeats will be coming with them.
So as for next season ... do you give Hakstol a fourth season? Can you wait while Giroux, Simmonds and Voracek continue to age before making a true significant free agency or trade move to greatly enhance this team’s chances to really compete in the postseason?
Maybe Hextall will have an answer or two in his planned season postmortum Wednesday.
Or not.