Everything Else

Game #73 – Flyers vs. Hawks Spotlight: Try To Understand, Try Try Try To Understand…

By Sam Fels 1371 0

When the Hawks visited The Iladelph in November, we documented just what a hellscape filled with suffering and blisters the Flyers goaltending spot has been. It has been a generational problem. At this point your father probably barely remembers Ron Hextall. You have never seen a competent Flyers goalie. You don’t know what it looks like. If you were presented with one, you would be paralyzed by confusion, if not a whole Birdbox scenario.

Could it be in the same year the Bears maybe have found a quarterback, the Flyers have found a goalie?

Carter Hart wasn’t supposed to be here. The Flyers definitely wanted to wait another season before bringing him up from Allentown (though you can’t blame anyone for rushing their escape from Allentown). But as is Flyers tradition, everyone they’ve asked to don the gear for them has either been hurt, bad, or both. We seem to be the only ones who continually point out that Brian Elliot has a terminal case of being Brian Elliot, and yet teams keep diving in. This is what you get. This is a team that actually traded for the broken and lost Cam Talbot. So they had no choice but to turn to Hart.

Hart popped up on the radar for Flyers fans after a simply dominant last season in the Western Hockey League, where over 41 games he put up a .947 SV%. That followed a .927 season where he also backstopped the Canadian World Junior team. Now, the WHL tends to throw up some pretty high save-percentages and defensive stats. It’s the anti-QMJHL. The leader this year has a .936. You’ll recall Mac Carruth putting up a .929 once upon a time, and he landed in the Upside-Down eventually. But .947 is .947, and leading the league in SV% three years running as Hart did turns a lot of heads.

Hart’s numbers in the AHL this year were not impressive, as he only put up a .902 SV%. But then everyone in the Flyers crease caught The Plague, and up he came. And he’s been brilliant. His .919 SV% is top-1o in the league, and it’s not like the Flyers are making it easy on him. Hart has seen just a tick under 35 shots per night. The Flyers are middle of the pack when it comes to scoring chances against per game, and top-10 in high-danger ones. So the volume of shots might be up there, but the quality of them isn’t that bad.

Hart’s .919 ranks 10th in the league overall. His .895 SV% shorthanded is sixth in the league. The signs are clearly encouraging. What does it mean in the long run?

Again, this is Carter Hart, and what has gone on before will have pretty much no influence on him. But the signs are encouraging. In the past 10 years, only 10 rookie goalies have bettered Hart’s .919. That list is: Joonas Korpisalo, John Gibson, James Reimer, Frederik Andersen, Matt Murray, Jimmy Howard, Juuse Saros, Cory Schneider, Jordan Binnington, and Tuukka Rask. Other than Binnington, who’s a rookie this year, all of those have at least been serviceable NHL goalies. Gibson, Schneider, Rask, and Andersen have been Vezina contenders at various points. Murray has two rings. Just below Hart in rookie seasons are Connor Hellebuyck, Corey Crawford, Pekka Rinne, and Petr Mrazek. Only Mrazek is a name that would cause Philadelphians to choke on their wooter-ice.

That’s if you don’t believe there’s some sort of voodoo sign hanging over the Flyers’ blue paint. We tend not to believe in things we can’t see, but this has gone on so long you wonder. This is Philadelphia after all. All the goalies mentioned above had some sort of dip or adjustment period along the way. None of them had to deal with Flyers fans throwing themselves off the upper deck in response or hurling dead pigeons at them. It’s a different place. Patience goes there to die.

Hart has the best chance of anyone to navigate it. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy.

 

Game #73 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #73 – Flyers vs. Hawks Q&A: We’ve Found The Sludge

By Sam Fels 1376 0

If it’s the Flyers, that means we have to turn to one of our creatures of the internet. We found @FlyGoalScoredBy in 2010 during the Final. He’s been stuck to our shoe ever since. 

So the Flyers have fired a coach and GM. Are we to believe they’re finally on the right path forward? Because we’ve heard that before, y’know…
There was a ton of optimism when Hextall took over, and rightfully so!  He won Cups in LA with rosters he helped build.  We thought our Canada Dry baby had come home but all we got was a very good farm system and a Finnish drug kingpin playing the penalty kill.  Hakstol was, Hextall’s “guy” but bottom line is neither of them did anything net positive with regards to building a contender in this era.  Sure, Hextall’s fingerprints may be on the next Flyers playoff team but nobody gonna remember this time as a fun one.  Chuck Fletcher comes in and by all accounts, has a mandate to change the roster around quickly and decisively.  I guess that means we’re about to lock up Milan Lucic to a max deal.
Is Carter Hart finally going to end the generations of hurt in the crease or will you monsters chew him up and spit out a husk just like always? 
The only good thing about the season has been Carter Hart.  Yeah yeah Couturier looks like a player and some nice small contributions from younger guys, but Hart is it.  Something about his calm demeanor provides stability that I honestly haven’t seen since early Hextall late 80s teams.  I will give him infinite amount of patience and time because he is a good hockey boy who needs love and protection from the likes of you. 
Shouldn’t Ivan Provorov be better than this?
I’m willing to give Provy the benefit of the doubt in a  year as shitty as this one.  I think his positives far outweigh his negatives and besides having a down year when he needs a new contract may be good for business.  As long as MacDonald is on the roster, all other defenseman will be shielded from blame and harm.  Hey, maybe THAT’S why they still give ice to AMac. He’s like a human shield for the young D core.
The Flyers have a shit-ton of cap space next year, though with Konecny, Provorov, and Sanheim to re-sign. They’re going to do something utterly hilarious, right?
I’m thinking we’re locked into a “Player-Coach Vinny Lecavalier” scenario. The Flyers are boring and slow.  They need some juice on this roster to even register in a four-sport town.  Myself and all other zombies are praying from some elite talent to get excited about….or at least sign like eight goons and embrace who we really are.  Does anyone have Colton Orr‘s phone number?

 

Game #73 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #73 – Flyers vs. Hawks: Lineups & How Teams Were Built

By Sam Fels 1251 0

Notes: Michael Raffl has been sick, so he might not play…Giroux’s shooting-percentage is almost half of what it was last year, and he has one goal in his last 10 games…It’s a rough go for that bottom-six right now…Couturier has 29 points in his last 22 games, and that line is probably the main threat at the moment…Provorov has had a hard season, and maybe giving him the toughest assignments at a tender age was a bridge too far…Given the youth in this lineup, you can see why they’re the clubhouse leader for Joel Quenneville’s services next year…

Notes: There’s no idiocy like doubled-down idiocy. Sikura-Toews-Kane makes no sense. It doesn’t provide Daydream Nation with another puck-winner like Saad would be. It doesn’t provide a finisher for Kane to set-up, nor is Sikura enough of a playmaker to reverse that. Sikura has played well, but there was nothing wrong with Saad here. And now what is that third line? What does it do? It’s not a checking line with Anisimov there. It has very little dash to score. This should last no more than a period…Perlini didn’t score on Monday, so we guess he sucks again…Dahlstrom shouldn’t be scratched again, because Forsling and Koekkoek are nothings and Dahlstrom at least does something…

 

Game #73 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #16 – Hawks 0, Flyera 4: All Seven And We’ll Watch Them Fall

By Sam Fels 1926 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Corsica

At least the Colliton Era already has a familiar pattern.

Once again, the Hawks were the better team in the first period. They had the better chances, they looked faster and more creative than they have for most of the season, and yet they couldn’t solve a goalie who for the most part has struggled for a while. And then a defensive miscue causes them to fall behind. They don’t panic, but can’t scratch one out. At least it didn’t all fall apart like Thursday. Progress?

But then two veterans completely shit it on a power play, including some really questionable effort, and now you’re down two. The Hawks couldn’t crack a Flyers team that could then just sit back and wait, because they don’t have enough of those players. You know where it goes from there.

Let’s sort it out.

The Two Obs

-Let’s start with Duncan Keith. In the first period, the broadcast was all gaga about his “activity,” which pretty much amounted to impersonating that shortstop on your little league team who chased down every ball, even if it was deep in the outfield. And while activity looks nice, there’s a problem.

It’s not what supposed to be happening.

The main reason Henri Jokiharju was paired with Keith, other than there being no one else really and his veteran tutelage, was to take that part of the game off of Keith’s plate. Keith simply can’t be all over the ice anymore, he can’t be jumping into the play because he can’t get back, and he wasn’t that good at it anyway. As he settles into the sunset years of his career, a free safety role where his still useful mobility would be better suited is what’s on the menu. It’s Jokiharju the Hawks want jumping into the play. They want him making those passes and taking those shots. That’s where his game is. He’s not going to develop by having to catch all the fly balls Keith loses in the sun behind him. If Keith can’t, or won’t, reel it in, then there’s going to have to be another solution. This is part of the reason HarJu is drowning in his own zone. He’s there on his own a lot. And when his instincts to be aggressive come up, he’s finding his partner already there.

As for the first goal, yeah it’s a bad turnover, and a symptom of the Hawks still trying to do the things they used to. But still, when Keith does look, Anisimov is in that circle. Anisimov then proceeds to just float backwards toward the blue line, letting Giroux in front of him, for no discernible reason. Keith is under pressure and facing the boards, how’s he going to get that puck to you at the line, Arty? If you want to know why Anisimov’s possession and defensive numbers blow, there you go.

-Now to the second goal. Keith biffs a puck, admittedly rolling, at the blue line, letting Couturier in. And then Chris Kunitz…well I’m not sure what the verb is here. Blobs on Coots? Attempts to confuse him with his taco breath? Whispers in his ear about the emptiness and meaningless of life in an attempt to get Coots to be buried in ennui? I can’t tell.

I’m not going to rant and rave about him being on the power play at all, though I want to. With Saad out and the first unit loaded up, the alternatives are like Kahun, Fortin, and….well, you. So whatever. But if that’s the best effort that Kunitz can muster, to be shrugged off that easily, then he’s not an NHL player anymore and should be on waivers tomorrow. If he didn’t bother to do more, well that’s some veteran presence you’ve got there.

-Every time David Kampf, who does have use, makes a move at the offensive blue line to put his teammates offside, he should have to spend five minutes with a weasel in his pants.

-The third goal is mostly unlucky, except for the part where Jan Rutta is hesitant, takes a shit angle, and gets beat to the outside. Otherwise there isn’t even a shot to bounce off Crow and Manning to go in. Ain’t no coach going to do anything with Jan Rutta or Manning or Davidson. Too bad Connor Murphy is dead.

-At least Crow looked more like Crow than he has in weeks.

-A word on the broadcast. First, the barely concealed contempt Foley and Olczyk have for Barry Smith during that interview is excellent television.

We went through this last year. I know this team is a tough watch, but Pat and Eddie are getting paid a fair sum to be professional about it. I don’t need them to agree with the firing, I really won’t argue with anyone who does. But it’s not their job to sit around and lament it two games later. To make it clear how miserable you are having to broadcast this team. No, it wasn’t a great game today, but the mark of a broadcaster is what you do with the bad games. We’re all wondering what we’re doing here, but it doesn’t help when the broadcast of the game sounds like they’re narrating a trip to the DMV. Do better.

Onwards…

Everything Else

Game #17 – Hawks vs. Flyers Spotlight: The Abyss In The Crease

By Sam Fels 1683 0

You can go around to any of the four major sports and it would be nearly impossible to pick a team and position, or helplessness at said position, more identifiable than the Flyers and their goalie situation. For as long as you’ve been alive, no matter how old you are, the Flyers have had goalie issues. And that’s putting it kindly. When describing the Flyers’ crease, some might be tempted to use words like, “garbage dump,” or “wasteland,” or “Chernobyl.”

Going through the list, it’s like Bears quarterbacks. Have some penicillin on hand. The Rockies and a rotation? That’s setting-based and they may have actually solved it, finally. The Cubs and 3rd basemen was in this category for a while. That’s solved now, too (and Kris Bryant is likely to keep both of his feet!). The Browns and a QB? The Browns and everything? That’s about the closest comparable.

Did you know that the best SV% in a season for the Flyers is Roman Cechmanek’s .923 in 2003? That’s 15 years ago, where the SV% of everyone has steadily risen to the point that that mark is just about league-average now. 15 years and they haven’t bettered it. And yes, Cechmanek is now a thrower at some one-terminal airport in the Czech Republic now.

Nor have they even really come close. Once in the past 10 seasons have they had a team save-percentage over .920, and that was three years ago that saw them be a first-round out anyway. For as long as time it seems, the Flyers have been searching for anyone or anything that can make a stop. This is what the U2 song was about, as if it wasn’t bad enough being a Flyers fan.

You want to hear some names? You don’t, but here’s the list of fuckwits and shit-gibbons that have taken the starter’s role in eastern PA for the orange: Brian Elliot, Michal Neuvirth, Calvin Pickard, Petr Mrazek, Steve Mason, Ray Emery (twice), Ilya Bryzgalov, Brian Boucher, Michael Leighton, Sergei Bobrovksy (pre-Vezina form), Marin Biron, Antero Niittymaki, Robert Esche, Jeff Hackett, Shawn Burke, John Vanbiesbrouck at 107 years old, and Ron Hextall at even older. That’s 20 years worth of Flyers goalies, and our fingers just disintegrated after typing all of that.

You’d think over that span, 20 years, you’d just find a goalie by accident. On that list, who even had a passable NHL career after leaving the Flyers? Bobrovsky and….Bobrovsky. Fuck, Ray Emery is dead and he’s assuredly dead from being a Flyers goalie twice. It has to be terminal.

How do you miss this consistently, not just on one position but the most important position in the sport? Of any sport? You’d almost have to be trying to do this. You can’t do this by accident. Even the biggest dumbass GMs end up with a goalie. Somehow, someway they get there. Glen Sather was incontinent and blind as Rangers GM and he got Henrik Lundqvist. Every Canadien GM has literally been the French teacher from the Simpsons and they have Carey Price. The Leafs at least signed Curtis Joseph back in the day or whatever. Bob Pulford was throwing up 17 hours a day and thanks to Mike Keenan as well the Hawks had both Eddie Belfour and Dominik Hasek at once.

Even if you stick to the last 20 years, pretty much every team has had a goalie worth a shit. Not the Flyers, Nope, fuck you, that’s the Flyer way! It’s going to be loud and stupid and orange and then some clown is going to let in a beer-belch from the red line in and we’re going to Wawa (which also sucks)! Generations of Flyers fans have grown up staring at some jerk-ass in net and wondering how they’ve been cursed with such a thing. Or maybe that’s why they’re cursed with such a thing. They want it this way, because it gives them something to complain about.

Maybe that’s why it has to be this way. The Eagles have won a Super Bowl now. The Phillies a World Series and look to be rounding into contenders again. The Sixers are at least young and interesting. As long as the Flyers don’t have a goalie, and at this point you’d be right to conclude they never will, it give the Philly fan something he can stab himself with a fork over in front of the viewing public, because it’s that last part they care about most. They need you to know how angry and red they are, otherwise they wither and die. It’s true. If a Philly sports fan goes eight minutes without someone looking at them they fucking get Thanos-snapped.

They’re going to throw Carter Hart into this at some point, maybe even this year. With any other team, he would probably go on to a successful NHL career. In Philadelphia, his hips will turn into a loose band of goldfish within months. It’s just that way. It’s the way they want. Well, they get it.

 

Game #17 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #17 – Hawks vs. Flyers Q&A: An Escaped Lab Experiment

By Sam Fels 1507 0

Like most of our friends, we don’t know where @FlyGoalScoredBy came from, and we’d rather not. Because then someone would have to be held responsible for his creation, and the penalties for that are too harsh to think about. 

By the time people read this the Flyers might have fired Dave Hakstol and hired Joel Quenneville. What is the general problem with Hakstol when it’s obvious the Flyers have no goalie?

I made a note of how Coach Q would be such a perfect fit for the Flyers, yet it will never ever ever happen. The Flyers are like some inbred family that can ONLY hire someone they’re related to. I’m surprised we don’t have “Coach Dan Carcillo” yet.  My biggest issue with Hakstol is his player usage. The Flyers are clearly in a long rebuild and have been for a long time, but their GM and coach always trot out these slow, old “vets” like Dale Weise, Jori Lehtera, and whatever a Christian Folin is. Play the kids Dave, it won’t matter with these goalies.

The Flyers were going to move forward as much as Konecny, Patrick, and Lindblom developed. How’s that going so far?

In short: well! I think everyone would love more consistency out of Konecny, but its a minor gripe. Patrick has started the season off very well and is putting on a solid two-way game. He looks more and more like a top pick now that he’s over a year removed from hernia surgery. Lindblom is just spicy. Feels like once he figures out the NHL game a bit more especially maneuvering around the offensive zone he’ll be lethal. These three are extremely important for the future.

Is Ghost Bear good? We know the power play numbers, but the metric suggest otherwise. Is he passed on the depth chart by Provorov and Hagg?

Ghost Bear is the best Flyers defensemen. He’s got that jackhammer of a shot, skates exceptionally well, owns three very beautiful doggos and is one of the only sources of personality on this team.  Protect the Ghost at all cost. Provorov is a scoop of strawberry ice cream. Ghost is a scoop of fudge ripple with walnuts and whipped cream.

How far away are we from Carter Hart?

Ron Hextall is frustratingly the most patient man in all of professional sports.  He’ll keep Hart in the AHL for as long as humanly possible. For right now, Hextall looks smart, as Hart hasn’t exactly been dominant down there.  He’s been fine, but not performing like an elite prospect. Hextall clearly was punting this year when he decided to roll our Brian Elliot and Michal Neurivrth’s bloated corpse as their goalie tandem. Hextall will not be rushed. I bet we see Hart end of the season if they are out of the playoff race for a few games, or in training camp next offseason.

Where should the Flyers be finish when all is said and done?

They’ll be exactly where they always are.  90-94 points. Struggling to get a playoff spot, hoping not to get their doors blown off by Pittsburgh or Washington. It’s a team stuck in the middle because their GM didn’t blow the thing up and do a full rebuild. The Flyers right now are like the early 2000 Leafs (sorry, do Blackhawks fans know hockey existed before 2008?).

 

Game #17 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

You Get What Anyone Gets: Saying Goodbye To The Philadelphia Flyers

By Sam Fels 1871 0

It used to be tradition that playoff exits were complimented by eulogies on Puck Daddy. But with Wysh off in the Connecticut hinterlands and those who remain at Yahoo! being a bunch of Canadian giblets who take things far too seriously (and Lambert being angry and definitely not a Bruins fan), we don’t need them to do what we do best. So fuck it. We’ll eulogize all 15 teams that will eventually fall. And now, to the routine of Western PA…

If I were to ask you to sketch out what a Philadelphia Flyers crash-out would look like, you almost certainly would have presented something that looked a lot like yesterday afternoon. Even if the Flyers haven’t done this as much recently as their reputation suggests, you would know exactly what it looks like.

They would take a lead in the second period. They would be running all over the place trying to hit everything that moves, including their captain boiling over. Their crowd would be in a frenzy. They would be on the cusp of a real breakthrough by sheer fury. And then their superior opponent would inhale deeply and say, “Ok, enough of this bullshit.” Then there would be defensive breakdowns everywhere. They would treat the puck like it was covered in space herpes. Their goalie would have an existential crisis and have to stay in because the one on the bench is an existential crisis. They would give up an avalanche of goals in like four minutes, and then it would be over. Their still-Super-Bowl-drunk fans would hurl whatever garbage was hurl-able onto the ice, as the only garbage they couldn’t throw was themselves. But they’ll figure that out one day. It was ever thus.

It wouldn’t be complete without Flyers fans conspiracy/inferiority complex shining through, which I guess is what happens when your city is wedged between a bunch of other cities people would rather go to and your weather level switches from winter to sweat. By the time October rolls around, Flyers fans will have convinced you that the trip on Sean Couturier leading to Guentzel’s goal was a crime on the level of various Kennedy assassinations, even though Couturier looked like he was trying to moonsault a ghost and probably was having trouble standing up anyway thanks to his own teammate shredding his knee in practice. Something about Philadelphia and practice.

Only an organization and institution this rockheaded could just wave away their dumber version of Rocksteady and Bebop d-man, Radko Gudas, handicapping their #1 center in practice because “THEY’RE SO TOUGH.” This is a place that wears it as a badge of honor that they get their sandwiches out of a fucking gas station. You’d think the Flyers would know that running around and grabbing your sac for a whole game eventually is going to leave your defense and your goalie exposed, and yet they dive headlong into it every time. In Philadelphia it’s always 1976.

Lots of people will tell you Cold Ones have a bright future ahead of them. And they do, if you think being the Maple Leafs is a bright future. They could be loaded at forward in two years, but have exactly one d-man worth a shit in Ivan Provorov, assuming Gudas hasn’t broken  his will to live by passing him another hand grenade when he’s already covered. If this series proved anything it’s that Ghost Bear is just a cooler name for Marc-Andre Bergeron (stick tap to Anthrax for that one).

And the Flyers will continue to have a Gudas on their roster, because it’s what they do. Fuck, you can totally see Roman Polak ending up here when he’s finally forced out of the loving arms of Mike Babcock. If we can get Gudas and Polak on the same pairing we actually would have Rocksteady and Bebop on an NHL team.

And when it all goes belly up again because wearing orange turns every goalie into an actual traffic cone, there will be Claude Giroux yapping and running around like a frat boy on a coke binge, without actually scoring any goals that might help his team get anywhere. In his last 19 playoff games Giroux has three goals. But man, he sure got all of Carl Hagelin eight seconds after the puck was gone, didn’t he? And in the end, isn’t that the real truth? The answer, is no. Giroux joins the unfathomably long list of ultra talented Flyers that the city and fans turned into a slobbering dingus with granite for brains and then hands when it matters most.

So long to the Flyers, who definitely are the Flyers more than anyone has ever been anything else. It’s reassuring in a way, the dedication to their character. If the NHL were a movie they would be the scenery chewers. They live in this role and always have, and always will. And it’s always good comedy.