Lack of scoring support ongoing problem for young, older Flyers
VOORHEES, N.J. » There are always going to be half-empty and half-full gulps of opinion belched out about a team not performing up to par. So it is once again with the Flyers.
Approaching games at home Tuesday night against the Vancouver Canucks and in Brooklyn against the Islanders Wednesday, the Flyers stood at 8-8-4. Such a quarter-pole record for this team isn’t so bad by historicaly standards, but by the NHL’s own peculiar sense of hockey math, that equates to .500.
Even if it does represent four more losses than wins.
From a half-empty view, however, it also was the mark of a last-place team. The Flyers were eighth out of eight in the Metropolitan Division entering that Canucks game.
Yet they were also only seven points behind (with one less game played than) the divisionleading Columbus Blue Jackets.
So the spin can go either either way.
“When you look at how close and how tight things have been for us, that’s just the way the league is,” coach Dave Hakstol said Tuesday after morning ex-
ercise at the Skate Zone. “We’ve gotten points out of five of our last seven games, yet we’re a .500 hockey team. So the difference between losing ground and gaining ground is very close in this league.”
Again, they’re at .500 only by NHL math standards, but why quibble with details when one root causes is so difficult to solve?
No matter how you spin the half-empty, half-full numerical perspectives, it’s quite clear the Flyers are still a club that can not, will not score enough goals. Their 56 goals scored through Monday also ranked eighth out of the Metro’s eight teams. And that’s with the top line of Sean Couturier, Claude Giroux and Jake Voracek performing every bit as one of the premier forward trios in the league, and scoring nearly half (26) of their team’s goal total.
That reveals a main Flyers problem: As their top forwards age, their younger forwards have yet to pick up the scoring slack.
That’s not surprising for a team in transition, which is precisely what this Flyers team has been in recent seasons and continues to be.
The defense has been nicely rebuilt through the draft in recent years, and yes, the blue line ranks were so empty it’s taken a while. Even with Ivan Provorov playing like an All-Star in his second season, the mistakes of youth are still evident there, especially since veteran Andrew MacDonald — once the most maligned member of this crew — has been out injured.
But improvement has been evident, too, a sign that in time the growth will blossom into steady support. Up front ... not so much. Take away their top three guys and the Flyers’ forward lines are at least half-empty from a production standpoint.
Wayne Simmonds has appeared to be playing through a groin problem that should have been rested, putting more pressure on young Travis Konecny and Jordan Weal to pick up the scoring slack. They haven’t ... not yet, anyway.
“Lots of Grade 1 opportunities,” said Konecny, the 20-year-old sophomore winger who had two goals and seven points over his first 20 games. “When I am shooting, I’m just missing the net. So I have to make sure I put pucks on the net and make (goalies) make saves. If I do that, I’m sure it’ll happen sooner rather than later.
“I feel like the opportunities are there. I’m not worried about that. I’m working hard and doing all the things I’m supposed to be doing; I think it’s just a matter of time before they start going in.”
Similar sentiments were expressed by Weal, 25, who sat out Saturday’s loss to Calgary but was moved into a center spot at practice this week.
“It’s been a lot of hard work and not much to show for it,” said Weal, who had two goals and six points entering play Tuesday. “No matter what line I’ve been on, I’ve been getting three or four chances a game to put something in and nothing right now seems to be going in. It’s just one of those things that happen during a season and I have to keep working, keep battling, because when it breaks open hopefully it’ll break wide open.”
By the sounds of it, his perspective continues to be one that’s half-full.
Then there’s the full-support perspective, which in the Flyers’ case comes from a coach trying to get his lower-line forwards to play at a level at least halfway productive. That brings us to veteran left winger Michael Raffl.
He may have played his first 20 games of the season on the fourth line, but Raffl is a former Flyers top-line guy who once scored better than 20 goals in a season. This campaign? Raffl had no goals, no assists, all of two penalty minutes and a 0 for a plus-minus rating ... along with a new assignment to go to the third line against the Canucks.
Consider him a poster child for lack of secondary scoring. Or look at it another way...
“Anybody that’s watched our team play knows Raff has played extremely well since the start of the year,” Hakstol said Tuesday. “He hasn’t had very much to show for it offensively, which I’m sure is freustrating for him. But he’s played very, very well and he doesn’t need to change his game . ... He’s just got to stay with it, keep doing the things that he’s doing very well, and the rewards — the points, so to speak — will come.”
There will be some who consider that opinion not half-empty or half-full, but half-cocked. But when a team continues to slog through a “period of transition,” what better perspective could a coach have?