Flyers should only be as good as goalies can make them
Flyers start new season with same old questions in goal >>
PHILADELPHIA >> The Millennium may have come years ago and the Millennials in the Flyers’ locker room are, frankly, starting to gray up a bit under those helmets. Their time has not gone as yet, but it certainly should have come by now.
Which is probably why, at the dawn of the 2018-19 season, they Flyers are still lamenting their ancient goaltending problem.
The aging core of this Flyers team prepares to kick off what is essentially its eighth season together Thursday night in one of the most difficult opposing venues, in Las Vegas against the defending Stanley Cup runners-up Golden Knights.
While far too much attention was paid last spring to Vegas’ unprecedented run through the playoffs in its first year as a franchise, the Flyers were experiencing the all-too familiar feeling of being trounced by the hated Pittsburgh Penguins. As usual, there will be plenty of opportunity to turn that rivalry around this season for a Flyers current core-player incarnation that dates to the 2011 trades of Gen Y (and OMG)ers Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, which eventually landed Jake Voracek, Sean Courturier, Wayne Simmonds and the since-departed Braydon Schenn to join generation-spanning captain Claude Giroux.
They are no longer young, this core group, though they are young enough of mind and swear they’ll be sound enough of body to give it another go as what they consider to be a Stanley Cup contending team. They have made the playoffs just three times in the past six springs and went out in the first round in each of those three playoff years. And yet the refrain ...
“This group continues to grow,” Flyers coach for half that time Dave Hakstol said. “You look around the locker room, there’s a lot of different names in here. The guys that are the same ... I think they continue to grow.
“We grew as a team last year into a good team. We had a good, consistent push, to be a team that was in the playoffs. We weren’t happy with the way we performed and played and the outcome of our playoff series, so we have to continue to push.”
They can continue to push and grow, continue to say they have time — especially since Voracek is under contract through the 202324 season and both Giroux and Couturier are signed through 202122. Of course, if there isn’t a sharp uptick in postseason success long before then, there’s no way they’ll be able to see those contracts out.
But Hakstol would be correct to point out the slow but steady influx of talented young players that Baby Boomer general manager Ron Hextall has been able to compile through his drafts since coming here as Paul Holmgren’s front office lieutenant in 2013, then taking over as GM the next year.
Hextall has overseen the development of Shayne Gostisbehere (a Holmgren pick in 2012) and his own first-round prize Ivan Provorov into what this year should be an elite defensive pairing. Other top-round Hextall picks Travis Konecny and Nolan Patrick are stalwarts on the top two scoring lines. And the almost-still-young James van Riemsdyk should be a cog in helping the core group that he could have been a part of the past several years (had he not been traded in 2012) meld with the new wave of stars into a dynamic offensive group.
Add the skills of two-way forward Oskar Lindblom and especially rookie third-line center Mikhail Vorobyev, and there is indeed a fresh air of renewal for this Flyers team.
Old-guard guys like Giroux, Voracek and Simmonds swear the development of the younger players and the addition of van Riemsdyk will make a difference in their postseason fortunes this time around. It certainly should make a difference on a power play that for as long as the old guard has been around, has been a frequently successful threat.
“We’ve played together for such a long time and I think we did pretty well,” Voracek said after a preseason win over the Islanders early in camp. “We’re controlling the puck on our sticks in their zone all the time and obviously it’s going to be (better) in the regular season.”
To that end, both top-line center Couturier and now third-line wing Simmonds are back from preseason injury recoveries and ready to go. They may not be totally up to speed, though, so it will be interesting to see if the Flyers can quickly back up their preseason predictions of production.
Voracek will also start the season on what shapes up to be a dynamic second line with JVR on the opposite wing with second-year center Patrick in the middle.
“We’re three smart skill players playing together and we all have different styles,” Voracek said. “I think usually when that happens, we all have a different role that I think would fit really well. We’re nowhere near as good as we could be yet, but again I think it’s something we can work at and we’ll continue to do that.”
Vorobyev is expected to make an immediate impact, and while veteran grinders Dale Weise and Jori Lehtera start the season on the club (and probably in press box business attire), they will be pushed a few Phantoms who nearly made the club out of camp, including Taylor Leier, Carsen Twarynski and currently injured Corban Knight.
As it is, with the additions of JVR and Vorobyev, the Flyers have three very capable scoring lines.
“He came in and he made an impact,” Hextall said of Vorobyev. “It’s what you’re looking for with your young players: Come in and make an impact. He did. He’s not a young guy who you’re afraid to put him out there because of the defensive side of the puck. He came in and showed that he’s a good two-way player.”
On defense, the Flyers are hoping that Andrew MacDonald and Robert Hagg, and Radko Gudas and Travis Sanheim — another developing Hextall first-rounder — will support their superb top pairing of Gostisbehere and Provorov. They’d better, because the organization’s top prospect, Carter Hart, is expected to stay in the Lehigh Valley during a first growth year as a pro.
Hence a potential problem where problems always seem to exist for the Flyers ... in goal.
Brian Elliott will start against the Golden Knights, but after offseason surgery, he didn’t get as much work in the exhibitions as perhaps he’d like. Anthony Stolarz is the backup, and he’s just hoping to get back into the organizational plan after two injury ravaged seasons.
Above him on the depth chart are Alex Lyon and Michal Neuvirth, both out with lower body injuries.
Goalie injuries? Goalie problems?
Always should be anticipated as part of another Flyers season script.