Giroux hopes sharp left turn can help Flyers ... and him
PHILADELPHIA » The Flyers will begin their 51st season Wednesday night in San Jose, and as usual Claude Giroux will be there. That will be him to the left of Sean Couturier, who will be to the left of Jake Voracek on Dave Hakstol’s reconditioned No. 1 line.
Just 29, only a few years removed from being called the greatest player in the world, the Flyers’ captain should not be in need of a rescue. Not this soon. Not while he is theoretically in the gut of his career. He should be at the center of an exciting, developing, young but competent hockey club. Instead, he’s no longer at the center of his own line.
There were several initiatives that defined the 42nd annual solemn Flyers’ offseason. Brayden Schenn was traded. Steve Mason was told to go overanalyze everything in Winnipeg. Shayne Gostisbehere got injured again. None, though, was as significant as the move of the captain from the middle of a line. For in theory, that will remove him from the middle of all discussion.
Though Giroux, to his credit, never yelled out loud about it, he was said to have been slowed by first some chronic abdominal pain and then by the effects of surgery on same. If that’s the accepted explanation for the unacceptable drop in his production, it is at least reasonable. Something happened. And it wasn’t benefitting the Flyers.
Giroux played 82 games last season, pain-fee or not. And nine times, single digits, a little more than once every 10 games, he scored an even-strength goal. There were dozens of other reasons why the Flyers went from a 2016 playoff team to the 2017 lottery. Giroux’s inability to score goals was close to the top. Something had to change. So it did. With Ron Hextall nodding approval, Hakstol shifted Giroux over 10 yards. At first, it seemed like a little training camp tinkering. Playful even. A whim. The first missives out of Voorhees suggested that the experiment might never make it to an exhibition-game shift, let alone to Opening Night. But the Couturier line, with Giroux and Voracek on the wings, survived the preseason and will be in place for a while during games that count. If it works, the Flyers could be better. If it doesn’t, at least they will be different, and they need to be different.
Giroux played some wing earlier in his career. Nor is the odd line changeup as dramatic, say, as asking a quarterback to suddenly play strong safety. It happens. It has happened to great players. But it’s not the reasonable scribblings on Hakstol’s white board that most matter. It is what they say. And what they say is that the Flyers are running out of ways to maximize the production of their priciest player, a $9 million-a-year, fourtime All-Star. A more popular idea would have been to free him of the hassle of being a captain. But maybe the shift to the wing will work, reducing some defensive responsibilities that come with facing other top NHL centermen. An added value: Giroux seems to like the idea.
“Playing with the players that I’m playing with, they make plays,” he said. “They’re smart players. Hopefully our chemistry keeps building. It’s still early. So hopefully we keep building on it right now.”
The Flyers have been building for four decades. They don’t need more building. They need homeice-advantage in a postseason series. Yet it was the rebuilding that gave Hakstol the opening to make the move. With Nolan Patrick arriving as the No. 2 overall pick in the draft, options grew. Patrick became the No. 2 centerman. Valtteri Filppula, who showed up late last season from Tampa Bay in the Mark Streit trade, provided more centerice depth. Scott Laughton was not out of place in the middle of the fourth line in the preseason. It all made the Flyers deep enough down the middle to try something fresh with Giroux.
“I was thinking the same thing as you guys,” said Giroux, of the initial move. “I didn’t think anything of it.”
But the move was made, and it stuck. At least, it will stick for a while. Should the Flyers start to stumble on a cruel, fourgame, season-opening road trip, who knows how Hakstol will react? Giroux will be taking faceoffs, and he will keep his position on the No. 1 powerplay unit. He insists he is fully healthy, and he looks it. But he has said that before, too. He hides pain well. And if the move from the glamour spot on a line pains him, he’s masking that, too.
“We’re just going to have to keep building,” he said. “We never really played together, all three of us. It’s definitely exciting, though.”
It’s different. For Flyers fans, it can be exciting, but only if it works. For a player as young and healthy and talented and accomplished as Claude Giroux, it was a reasonable life-preserver to throw.