In the end, a lack of size was Flyers’ biggest problem
PHILADELPHIA >>
The Flyers’ season was over, Game 6 of their playoff series against the Washington Capitals not unlike the first five. With that, there would be the unfolding of two enduring hockey traditions.
First, the Flyers would line up, chins down, and do the handshake walk of shame, congratulating the Capitals for advancing to Round 2 with a 1-0 victory. Then, they would retreat to the locker room and promise that it would be different the next time.
“We’re going to be better off for this next year,” Wayne Simmonds would say. “We’re going to come back bigger, stronger and faster.”
Faster always helps. But if it is going to be better for the Flyers next season, better than squeezing into the final Eastern Conference playoff position and then being pushed around for 18 periods as if the foil in a bad pro wrestling skit, then they will be bigger and they will be stronger. If not, they will never be able to
survive a playoff series, not as the postseason has become in the NHL.
For the six games, including the final two when not one of them was able to successfully push a puck past a Washington goaltender, the Flyers attempted to create offense. For six games, particularly Sunday, they instead were made to move out to the boards and denied room to collect whatever rebounds were possible. And that was only when they were to penetrate the Washington zone at all.
As the series ended, the 19,925 in the Wells Fargo Center, perhaps inspired by giveaway tee-shirts reading “Stay Classy, Philly”, quoting Lou Nolan’s Game 4 plea, remained to give the Flyers not just an ovation but a continued “Let’s go Flyers” chant. It’s what sports fans do when the undersized battle, whether they win or not.
“That’s Philly fans,” Brayden Schenn said. “They’re going to obviously root for their team no matter what. Obviously by cheering for us, they were happy with our effort throughout the season, and they were showing their respect for us.”
That was the situation. The Flyers played hard, very hard, as hard as they could, twice summoning the pride to avoid elimination, coming within a goal Sunday of making it a one-game series. Yet even with all of that effort, they could not overcome the obvious, which was that if they were a basketball team, they would struggle in a six-foot-and-under league.
In a way, it’s historically quirky that it has come to that for a franchise that thrived with the Broad Street Bullies, the Legion of Doom and the legend of Keith Primeau in the 2004 playoffs. But it has. While the Flyers were down-sizing to adapt to the faster, 21st-century NHL, the better teams, the ones likely to advance in the playoffs, were growing larger.
Consider the tale of the tape in their openinground playoff series. The Flyers’ top line and the foundation of their power play included 185-pound Claude Giroux, the 185-pound Simmonds and the 195-pound Schenn. By contrast, the Caps’ No. 1 line of Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and T.J. Oshie went 239, 213, 189. The final score of the top lines: Six Capitals goals, including Backstrom’s game-winner Sunday; zero Flyers goals.
Through the season, there were enough sparkling moments from those three Flyers to reveal their value. But every time Giroux was smothered in the Capitals’ zone in the series, the long-ago wail of Bob McCammon that the undersized Rangers were “smurfs” tended to resonate. Giroux was limited to one series assist, that on the power play, with few, if any, loud scoring chances.
“I don’t know,” he said, when asked what the Capitals were doing. “I don’t think we can be focusing on the other guys. I think we’ve got to focus on us. And it wasn’t good enough.”
They were wearing the Flyers down. That’s what the Capitals were doing. All season, the Flyers’ lack of bulk down the middle was a problem. But once playoff customs are in play, it’s a chore to survive one game, let alone a series, let alone four series with four lightheavyweight centermen, with only Michael Raffl weighing in at exactly 200 pounds.
By the end of the series, the Flyers were receiving as much offensive thrust from 219-pound Colin McDonald as anyone. His size is why the 31-year-old, who has spent most of his professional career in the minors, was brought into the situation. The Flyers did miss the two-way excellence of Sean Couturier, but he is a slender 197. And the Caps’ centermen go 213, 192, 196, 210.
The Flyers wasted three more power plays Sunday, including a five-on-three, finishing the series 1-for24. That’s because Simmonds and Schenn, so able to make themselves big near the net in the regular season, were neutralized. Giroux, who can energize a power play with his vision, was forced too far from the play.
“They did a good job,” Schenn said. “They came with a lot of pressure. They pressured G on the half-wall, pressured Ghost (Shayne Gostisbehere) up top. They had pressure everywhere, and those are obviously the toughest PKs to go against. They did a good job on us.”
They did, because they could. With that, the Flyers will try to reinvent themselves then reconvene in late summer in Voorhees, energized by their own postseason effort. But they’d better be bigger and stronger, as Simmonds said, whether he meant it or not.
“It’s a learning experience,” he said later, insisting he was not to be taken too literally. “We battled our butts off all year long. We go back, we train, we get stronger, we get faster.”
That would help, especially the stronger part.
Surely, the Flyers have a history of responding to being overpowered by hiring on-ice bouncers. That’s not what it is about, not this time, maybe never again in the NHL. It’s not about being tougher or rougher or more likely to draw blood with a right cross. But there would be nothing wrong with becoming bigger. And as they headed into Round 2 Sunday, no one knew that better than the Capitals.