Philadelphia Flyers

The Philadelphia Flyers offense remains a potent force, and the surprising play of forward Jakub Voracek is a key component of that success.

Voracek is off to a red-hot start, by far the best in his NHL career. The 25-year-old native of the Czech Republic has already scored five goals and 18 points in the first 12 games of the season. That has him in second place overall in the league, just one point behind Sidney Crosby.

This is the fastest start for the Flyers player in nearly a decade.

Jakub Voracek (18 pts) is off to best 12-game start by a Flyers player since 2005-06 (Peter Forsberg 25 pts, Simon Gagne 23 pts)

— Yahoo Sports NHL (@YahooSportsNHL) November 5, 2014

Last season, Voracek scored 23 goals and 62 points, both career highs. This season he is on pace to score 34 goals and 123 points, nearly double his previous best effort.

There are many reasons for Voracek’s early-season success. The first is that he came into camp this year in the best shape he’s ever been in. During the offseason, Voracek changed his diet. As a result, he lost 10 pounds without sacrificing strength or quickness.

“No pasta, no bread,” Voracek told Randy Miller of NJ.com. “It was tough…I tried it and so far it’s good. I feel quicker.”

His coach noticed the difference right away. “We talked about him coming into camp in really good shape and he put himself in a good spot from the get-go,” Flyers head coach Craig Berube told Marc Narducci of The Philadelphia Inquirer. “He works hard and when you work hard, your skill takes over.”

Voracek’s increased speed and hard work has produced consistent results. He has at least one point in 11 of the Flyers' first 12 games this season. Voracek already has six multiple-point games to his credit. Last season, he had 16 while playing in all 82 games.

In addition, his stamina is better. Last season, he averaged 17:15 of ice time per game. This season, Voracek is averaging 18:28 of ice time per contest.

"When you’re in better shape, you last longer in a game,” Berube told Tim Panaccio of CSN Philly. “[His] speed doesn't drop off in the third period.”

The big winger is happy with his fast start to the season. “I felt pretty good, but most importantly, I’m a year older again, more experienced,” Voracek told Panaccio. “I’m in the spot where I can get the puck the most. It’s important to me and I feel pretty good about our line, so that’s very important.”

Playing on the Flyers' top line also helps. That means Voracek is paired with one of the game’s elite setup men in Claude Giroux. Giroux’s presence means that opposing teams cannot focus primarily on Voracek and that the talented winger will get plenty of quality scoring chances.

Giroux has noticed the improvement in his linemate’s game. “He’s playing with a lot of confidence,” Giroux told Miller. “With that kind of confidence and skill, it’s dangerous. I’m just enjoying playing with him and it’s a lot of fun, but at the same time, we have to keep going.”

Keeping up this torrid pace is also on Voracek’s mind. He refuses to jump the gun and declare himself among the league’s best players—at least not yet.

“I have a good start, but we are only 11 games in,” Voracek told Narducci. “We can start talking about it 60-65 games in and now I am just trying to help the team win.”

He told Miller, “Those guys [Crosby, Corey Perry, Evgeni Malkin] have been doing that for the last 10 years. It’s good to hear that, but I don’t want to get overconfident. We need to make sure we focus on winning games.”

That will remain an important issue for the Flyers. Despite Voracek’s fast start and the team’s explosive offense which is presently ranked sixth in the NHL in goals per game, the Flyers are 5-5-2 after 12 contests. That mark will have to improve if the team hopes to qualify for the playoffs this season.

The Philadelphia Flyers came out of the gates with a whimper, with losses in five of their first six games.

But two of those losses came in a shootout, and there were certainly some silver linings to take away from the rough start.

Those linings have generated better results over the past week or so, as the Flyers bounced back with authority during a brutal three-game stretch.

After being shut out by Chicago, the Flyers traveled to Pittsburgh and then came back home for a two-game homestand against Detroit and Los Angeles.

With Ray Emery standing tall in each game, Craig Berube's squad showed heart, speed and a renewed confidence that was missing during those first six games.

The ball got rolling with a thorough dismantling of the cross-state rival Penguins, whom the Flyers always seem to play well against.

Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier and the Philadelphia's defense got the job done yet again, blanketing Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin all night.

Couturier was especially outstanding, as he provided a goal and two assists in addition to his shutdown defense. His defensive game has already been praised a lot in the past, but this could be the year when the 21-year-old proves that he's a true "two-way" center instead of just a defensive one.

Giroux and linemate Jakub Voracek each tallied a pair of assists in the game, and it's tough for opponents when those two are on.

Let's take a minute to look at Voracek in particular. He has been red-hot to start the season, with four multipoint games leading the way to 13 total points in nine games. That ties him for third-most in the entire league heading into Thursday night's contests.

He's also leading the league in assists with 11. Voracek is certainly a huge reason for the Flyers' turnaround, and they need him to play like this all season.

Then the Flyers came home and showed some serious resiliency against Detroit, scoring three goals in the third period for a come-from-behind victory.

Second-year winger Michael Raffl was the star for Philadelphia, as he registered his first career multigoal game.

The Flyers were outplayed for much of the game and were severely outshot (37-to-17), but the fact that they managed to hang in there and come out with a win is a testament to the team's tenacity and resolve.

Finally, former Flyers Mike Richards and Jeff Carter came back to town to play what had to be a tired Philadelphia team which was playing another game without Braydon Coburn or Andrew MacDonald.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkX_o5tirgw

Rookie Shayne Gostisbehere and veteran Nick Schultz have been nothing but solid in their place, and newcomer Michael Del Zotto has been a pleasant surprise as well.

The game had plenty of offense, with the two teams combining for 83 shots on goal. However, both goalies had great games and the game went to overtime tied 2-2.

Brayden Schenn provided the heroics this time, scoring on a breakaway with two minutes and 24 seconds remaining in overtime to give the Flyers another two points.

Just by looking over this synopsis of the past three games, it's easy to see the Flyers' strength: There are so many different players contributing.

Voracek has been one of the best players in the league, Raffl has been oustanding with five goals already this year, Del Zotto looks like a genius signing thus far and Emery has been great between the pipes.

These three wins have been true team efforts and Berube's squad has shown that it is capable of winning in more ways than one.

The speed is there to compete with other top squads and the offense is going to score a lot of points. Defense remains the biggest question mark, and the Flyers have been up to the challenge in the past week.

Obviously, this streak will come to a close at some point, but there are some really positive takeaways that have to leave Philadelphia fans feeling better than they did after the first 10 days of the season.

The Flyers are definitely not the best team in the league, but they can compete with the best, and that's all that matters.

One thing has become abundantly clear for the Philadelphia Flyers after their first seven games of the 2014-15 NHL season: the team’s defense just isn’t good enough as it is presently constituted for this team to be a true Stanley Cup contender. This creates a difficult dilemma for general manager Ron Hextall and the rest of the team’s management.

The numbers are fairly straightforward, even though we are still early in the season. Through seven games, Philadelphia has allowed 28 goals. The team’s GAA is 3.71, which ranks it 28th in the NHL—ahead of only the Arizona Coyotes and Edmonton Oilers.

The Flyers are also allowing an average of 30.9 shots per game, which ranks them 21st in the league. This means that the Flyers are likely giving up a lot of quality scoring chances, something that does not bode well for the team.

The Flyers goaltending has not been outstanding, but it hasn’t been bad for the most part either. The true issue lies with the team’s overall defensive play.

On paper, Philadelphia has enough offensive talent on its roster to keep up with almost any team in the league. But any team, no matter how talented, will have difficulty scoring four or more goals night in and night out. That’s what the Flyers would need to do to overcome their inconsistent defensive play.

The current group is primarily made up of veteran players with very little upside, with the possible exceptions of 24-year-olds Luke Schenn and Michael Del Zotto. Otherwise, Nicklas Grossmann and Braydon Coburn are 29, Nick Schultz is 32, Andrew MacDonald is 27 and Mark Streit is 36. Coaches and scouts pretty much know what they have with those types of players. They may have a slightly better stretch of games now and then, but a huge jump in statistical performance is highly unlikely.

That leaves Hextall with some tough choices to make throughout this season.

One option is to promote some younger players. The Flyers do have some highly touted defensive prospects in the team’s system that could help the current group. They include Samuel Morin (19), Shayne Gostisbehere (21) and Robert Hagg (19).

But during the preseason, Hextall told Adam Kimelman of NHL.com that he didn’t want to rush any of these players to the NHL before they were ready to thrive in the world’s best hockey league.

“I don't want to put a kid in a situation who is not ready for it," Hextall told Kimelman. "The way to protect yourself is to add a veteran if possible."

Rushing a young player to the NHL before he is ready can create problems in the short and long terms. If the player doesn’t play well right away, that hurts the team on the ice immediately. A young player can also lose confidence and have his development delayed or stunted so that he never develops into the player he could have become had the organization showed patience. This approach may be tempting, but it is not the best answer in the long run.

The second option is to orchestrate a trade for a solid defensive defenseman and maybe even a checking forward who can upgrade the team’s performance right away.

The big obstacle with this option is cap space. According to CapGeek.com, the Flyers are approximately $1.48 million under the cap ceiling right now, and that’s with veteran defenseman Kimmo Timonen on long-term injured reserve.

Acquiring a quality defensive defenseman is usually not cheap because demand usually outstrips supply. Hextall would have to unload a significant contract in order to make this possible.

Over the summer, Vincent Lecavalier was rumored to be a possibility. But the veteran center has a high cap number, a no-movement clause and has already missed time this season due to injury which cannot help his trade value.

Acquiring a checking forward is usually less costly but would also have less of an impact on the team. This can, and should, be done during the season if the right player becomes available at the right price.

The third real choice Hextall has is to stay the course. This means accepting the fact that this year’s team is too weak defensively to be a true Stanley Cup contender.

That doesn’t mean the season is lost or that the Flyers are giving up. They may have enough offensive firepower to sneak into the playoffs this year; they would just be long shots if they did qualify, and the team’s style of play would not be typical of successful playoff teams in recent years.

It may mean trading away some veteran defensemen later in the year for a younger defenseman, a prospect or additional draft choices that can be used as ammunition to complete more trades next summer.

It would require patience, something the organization has not exhibited a lot of historically, although chairman Ed Snider told Sam Carchidi of The Philadelphia Inquirer just before camp started that the team would have more this year.

Hopefully, Snider keeps his word. In the long run, being patient with the prospects and aiming to rebuild the defense next season is the best course. It gives Hextall more time to trade away some of the players with bad contracts that were handed out by his predecessor, which would free up cap space. It also allows the young defensemen more time to mature physically and gain more experience.

Right now, the Flyers defensive play may be frustrating to fans and the coaching staff alike. But if the team takes a long-term approach, the defense and the entire team could have a very bright future before too long.

The Philadelphia Flyers are winless in four games this season. The only two points the team has earned came from losing a pair of shootouts. Unless the Flyers correct this problem, which has plagued them for years, it could hurt their chances to reach the playoffs in the NHL's competitive Metropolitan Division.

A lack of success in shootouts is not a new problem for the Flyers. Last season, Philadelphia won just three of the skills competitions while losing eight for a paltry .273 winning percentage. As a team, the Orange and Black have now lost seven straight shootouts dating back to last season.

The team's all-time record in shootouts is now just 27-53 after the recent home loss to the Anaheim Ducks. The only time the team ever had a winning record in shootouts over a full season was in 2009-10, finishing 4-3. That was also the last time the Flyers reached the Stanley Cup Final.

Surprisingly, for a team with so many talented goal scorers, the Flyers struggle to score goals in shootouts.

This year, in two shootouts, the Flyers have one goal in eight attempts. Fans may say it's too early in the season to worry about that, but despite having seven 20-goal scorers on their roster last season, the Flyers converted only 11 times in 39 shootout opportunities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3ArEA0rgaI

Not surprisingly, captain Claude Giroux is historically one of the better shootout shooters on the current roster. He scored a pretty goal in the loss to the Ducks, which is presently the only score the team has this season in shootouts.

For his career, Giroux is 18-of-42, which equates to a very good 42.9 percent success rate.

However, Giroux can't do it alone. Wayne Simmonds is just 1-of-8 with the Flyers in shootouts. Meanwhile, Jakub Voracek is 0-of-3 and Sean Couturier is just 1-of-8. Some other players need to step up and find a way to get the Flyers some more points in shootouts.

After the loss to the Ducks, head coach Craig Berube acknowledged that the shootout is a big problem for his team.

"We obviously lose a lot of points in the shootouts," Berube told Rob Parent of The Delaware County Daily Times. "We just have to hope we can work, work, work on it and get it better.”

He added that the Flyers practice the shootout frequently and often do well at it.

"In a game, it’s completely different," Berube told Parent. "You are under a lot of pressure. It’s a different situation; different goalies."

How important can the shootout be when it comes time to deciding which teams make the playoffs at the end of the season?

Very important.

Last season, the New Jersey Devils were the league's worst shootout team, losing all 13 games decided by the skills competition. The Devils missed the playoffs by just five points.

Had New Jersey won just six of their 13 shootouts, they would have made the postseason last year.

This year, the Flyers will face a very tough race for the playoffs. Due to salary cap restraints, the Flyers were unable to make any major additions to their roster this past summer. The only major move they made was trading away Scott Hartnell for R.J. Umberger.

Meanwhile, look at the Metropolitan Division. The Pittsburgh Penguins with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and the New York Rangers with Henrik Lundqvist in goal are both favored by most experts to be strong playoff contenders.

The Columbus Blue Jackets made the playoffs last season and figure to be at least as good in 2014-15. Meanwhile, at least on paper, teams like the New York Islanders and Washington Capitals appear to have deeper rosters and should be more competitive than they were last season.

Missing out on five or six shootout points could make all the difference for the Flyers at the end of the season and the players know it.

"They’re big points,” Giroux admitted to Parent after his club lost in a shootout for the second straight game. “Maybe they don’t look like it right now, but at the end of the season those two points are going to be crucial, probably. So next time we have to make sure we get it done.” 

The Philadelphia Flyers returned to the postseason after a one-year hiatus, but that didn’t prevent change at the top of the organization. General manager Paul Holmgren was pushed upstairs in favour of Ron Hextall, an executive who has been long seen as an NHL GM in waiting.

Hextall faces a difficult task in Philadelphia.

The Flyers are not the 100-plus-point regular-season team they were for so many years under Holmgren, and they aren’t the team that could be reliably counted on to win a playoff series every year and go on a deep run some seasons.

The club Hextall inherited is instead a bubble team that was outscored at even strength and squeaked into the playoffs on the back of its special teams.

Things got worse over the summer. The loss of Kimmo Timonen to injury will likely not be made up by the signing of Michael Del Zotto, while the trade of Scott Hartnell for R.J. Umberger moved a good player with a bad contract for a middling player with a bad contract.

A slew of low-end signings—notably depth defender Nick Schultz and Frenchman Pierre-Edouard Bellemare—isn’t liable to have a big impact.

As Hextall tries to improve the team, he will be hindered by salary-cap issues inherited from his predecessor. Philadelphia is currently almost $5 million over the cap ceiling.

What We Learned in 2013-14

For all the obvious strengths on their roster, the Flyers as currently constructed are not a very good team in five-on-five situations.

The Flyers have long had exceptional special teams, and that didn’t change in 2013-14, as both the power play and penalty kill ranked as top-10 units in the NHL. The trouble was at even strength, where Philadelphia’s performance was on par with teams like Ottawa and Winnipeg.

Ordinarily, that would be blamed on the goaltending, but Steve Mason had an exceptional campaign between the pipes. Even Ray Emery wasn’t bad five-on-five—his poor season had more to do with lousy work on the penalty kill (.853 save percentage).

The Flyers lost the puck-possession battle at even strength and as a result lost the goals battle too.

Key flaws in the roster were exposed. Vincent Lecavalier was a dud in the first season of his ill-advised five-year contract. Rather than bolstering an exceptional top nine, he acted as an anchor weighing it down. The defence wasn’t close to good enough, prompting the Flyers to trade for and then sign Andrew MacDonald, even though his performance over a short span was decidedly unimpressive.

If the team is ever to claw its way back above the playoff bubble, those flaws must be addressed to strengthen the club’s even-strength play.

 

Outlook for 2014-15

It’s extremely difficult to argue that the Flyers have conclusively addressed their problems.

Handcuffed by limited cap space, Hextall was largely reduced to tweaking at the edges of the roster. That leaves little reason to expect significant strides from the team.

There are areas where the team can hope to improve organically—Brayden Schenn and Sean Couturier are already excellent and still in their early 20s—but there are enough weaknesses that a significant drop down the standings is not out of the question.

Philadelphia’s primary strength is an extremely impressive top-nine forward group built around three duos:

Left Wing	Centre	Right Wing
Michael Raffl	Claude Giroux	Jakub Voracek
R.J. Umberger	Brayden Schenn	Wayne Simmonds
Zac Rinaldo	Sean Couturier	Matt Read
Jay Rosehill	Vincent Lecavalier	Jason Akeson
	P-E Bellemare

Giroux is an elite forward who finished third in Hart Trophy voting in 2013-14, and regular partner Voracek is a fine player in his own right. Together, they form the foundation of an excellent top line that can run up the score and play against anyone.

Couturier and Read are listed as third-liners, because that’s how the hockey community has been taught to think about checking lines, but they’re incredibly important—outside of Giroux, they're probably the most important forwards on the roster.

They play the toughest competition on the team, take on tough zone starts and still perform exceptionally. Certainly head coach Craig Berube values them.

The truest test of a coach’s faith is ice time, and Couturier and Read rank second and third among Flyers’ forwards in minutes per game.

Filling the secondary scoring role are Schenn and Wayne Simmonds. Superficially, these two had ugly underlying numbers last year, but that’s misleading because they were shackled to Lecavalier for half the year.

Simmonds’ Corsi percentage jumps from 43.4 percent with Lecavalier to 53.9 percent with Hartnell and 58.0 percent with Michael Raffl, the two other wingers primarily used on that line.

These are good players, and with competent help—which they may or may not get—there is no reason they can’t excel as second liners.

Left wing is a bit of a dog’s breakfast, but thanks to the six guys we just looked at, the Flyers should be able to get away with it. Raffl, Umberger and Bellemare could find themselves on any of those lines, with Lecavalier perhaps showing up on a scoring unit.

The fourth line and reserve group are heavy with enforcers and question marks, but Akeson is an interesting prospect whose chances would be improved immensely if he were a left-handed shot.

Additionally, it’s important to note that the battle for depth slots is going to be extremely competitive. The Flyers have four or five players not listed above who could make the team somewhere in the No. 12 to No. 14 forward range.

The weakness of the club is its back end:

Left Defence	Right Defence	Goal
Andrew MacDonald	Mark Streit	Steve Mason
Braydon Coburn	Luke Schenn	Ray Emery
Michael Del Zotto	Nicklas Grossman
Nick Schultz

The defence flat-out isn’t good enough.

We don’t know what form the pairings will ultimately take, but CSNPhilly.com’s Tim Panaccio reported recently that Berube was looking at pairing Coburn with Schenn, an arrangement which would suggest that MacDonald will be paired with Streit, who was an occasional partner during their time with the Islanders.

MacDonald was the veteran fix the Flyers turned to at last season’s trade deadline, but he’s been an advanced-stats horror show for years now and isn’t likely to change his stripes just because it would be convenient for Philadelphia.

Streit wasn’t able to correct that as a younger man with the Islanders—he isn’t likely to correct it now.

Coburn is a very good player and should be okay anywhere. It seems a fair guess that if he sticks with Schenn, he’ll be in a shutdown role, spending a lot of time with the Couturier line and leaving MacDonald’s pairing as generalists.

The pairing’s success is going to depend on Schenn, who isn’t certain to succeed in that role.

The depth isn’t particularly impressive, either. Grossman’s okay, and pairing him with a puck-mover seems like a sound move. He may even work his way into the top four.

However, the guys behind him have real problems. Del Zotto is young and has some upside, but was a late signing in the summer because he has massive holes in his game. Both the New York Rangers and Nashville Predators have given up on him within the last year.

His contract with the Flyers pays him less than half the salary he made a year ago. Nick Schultz was a healthy scratch in both Edmonton and Columbus.

This is a group that could really use a rapid return to health from Timonen, though the 39-year-old’s NHL future is uncertain following an offseason diagnosis of blood clots.

The weakness on defence is going to put a lot of pressure on Mason to live up to his performance last season and the Flyers’ obvious faith in him.

History suggests that it’s extremely rare for a goalie to break out at the age of 25. While we tend to think of 25-year-olds as having upward potential, by that age they’ve generally established what they are.

Mason may be the exception to the rule. Philadelphia is betting heavily on it, to the point of employing a backup goalie in Emery who has blown hot and cold over his major league career and can’t be firmly counted on to step in if the man in front of him falters.

The Flyers are a team that faces a wide range of possible outcomes this season. The forwards would not be out of place on a true contender. They’re an excellent group, and if the defence and goaltending are even passable, this is a team that should make the playoffs and could even start the year with home-ice advantage.

But the potential for an epic collapse exists, too.

Mason has a not-too-distant history of destroying the playoff chances of otherwise capable clubs, and if he collapses, the Flyers don’t have a strong internal option while their ability to land a good external one will be limited by their cap space.

The defence is a Coburn injury away from being perfectly terrible.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work. Statistics via NHL.com, Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com and BehindtheNet.ca. Salary information courtesy of CapGeek.com.