Flyers’ Konecny working through scoring drought
PHILADELPHIA >> While there were multiple explanations for the Flyers’ mild midseason move toward NHL relevance, one stood out: Travis Konecny.
At age 25, with the benefit of John Tortorella’s counsel and line decisions, healthy and peaking, Konecny was scoring at such a level that the Flyers were stunned he was not an All-Star. And when he hat-tricked the Capitals in a Jan. 11 victory, the versatile, aggressive right wing had already tied his career high with 24 goals.
Then … he stopped scoring, and including a 4-3 Flyers loss to Seattle Sunday, has gone 14 games without scoring a goal. Explain?
“I knew eventually it was going to come,” Konecny said. “I said it all along that I was getting some bounces and eventually it was going to stop and someone else would get the bounces and score.”
Scoring opportunities can be that way, but the Flyers — already low on shooters with the season-long losses of Cam Atkinson and Sean Couturier — could not afford the dropoff. It was one reason they have lost ‘d lost six of their last eight and eight of their last 12 since that hat trick..
“I think he’s getting chances,” Tortorella said. “It’s always a concern when one of your top goal-scorers on a team that for a lot of this year struggled isn’t scoring.
“I think for the last little while, he had some chances. We have to start scoring goals. He led the way there for a while. It’s not a concern but certainly we’re hoping something good happens for him to get him going. I think he’s very close. ”
With that, there are two hovering questions: Is Konecny close to being a breakout, All-Star-level
scorer? Or at this point in his career, has he already shown what he can be, three times having scored that career-high two-dozen goals?
In a six-game stretch from Dec. 29 through Jan. 8, Konecny supplied seven goals, at least one in each game. After that outburst against Washington, he had 10 goals in eight games.
“I just think he’s ‘playing,’”
said Tortorella at the time. “He’s a reactionarytype player. I’d only seen him play from afar before this year. He just plays. The puck finds him. He plays in the areas. Everything about his game is effort. I think he’s getting rewarded.”
To Tortorella, it was that simple. But once the slump began, concern grew that Konecny was not as loose on the ice — that he was doing less playing and more thinking.
“The biggest thing for me with TK is him getting in his own head,” Tortorella said. “He’s such a competitor and a guy that wants to help the team so badly. He knows we need his scoring and he’ll wrap himself up in a ball.
“I haven’t seen that. I think he’s come close to it a few times along the way, but that’s just who he is. That’s what I want to coach: Just continue doing some of the other things you need to do in the game until something happens for you. When he was scoring all of those goals, a lot of good things were happening for him, too. Some goals were going in that maybe shouldn’t have gone in. It happens that way.”
Another theory for Konecny’s midseason burst was that it coincided with a relative scheduling break, with the Flyers catching a run of less-than-premium opponents. Since then, the schedule has stiffened, and with the Flyers technically not out of the playoff race, they are bracing for the usual post-All-Star break increase of on-ice intensity.
“When we start playing a really hard part of our schedule — from here until the end of the year — because of the intensity of the game,” Tortorella said, “hopefully he gets on another streak for us.”
If the Flyers are to make something of a shocking playoff run, they will need their best players playing their best hockey. As they are structured, that means they need Konecny to continue to grow from a good goal-scorer to an All-Star level shooter.
Konecny will embrace the challenges — the one to score more often, the one to help steady a belated playoff push.
“It’s about getting our team back on track, getting myself back to playing the right way,” he said. “And it’s about not worrying about that stuff. It will all take care of itself.”