With 10 games under his belt, interim head coach Mike Yeo has steered the Philadelphia Flyers to a 5-3-2 record after the firing of Alain Vigneault, including a 5-0-2 run after snapping a 10 game winless streak. Their play hasn’t really changed that much from Vigneault to Yeo, granted they look a little better but that won’t really cut it in this league. With COVID protocol ravaging the NHL, several teams including the Flyers have had their rosters depleted, so it’s not necessarily much of an excuse anymore in regards to their poor play.
The Flyers are set to welcome the returns of Scott Laughton and Carter Hart on Tuesday night against the Anaheim Ducks with Derick Brassard soon to return as well. Sean Couturier and Ryan Ellis remain on the COVID list but both players are also dealing with injuries on a week-to-week timeline. Ellis has only played 4 games this year, while Couturier has struggled mightily since being a point-per-game player in the first month of the season. He never looked like himself before landing on the IR and it seemingly makes sense now.
The roster for the Flyers have been an ever-changing carousel, but that’s the current landscape of the NHL and sports in general. Players are falling into the COVID protocols left, right, and centre, and because of it the NHL has re-introduced the taxi squad. Players like Max Willman, Jackson Cates, Patrick Brown, and Gerry Mayhew have found themselves in and out of the lineup, which would have been an afterthought back in August.
The irksome thing about this season is that the Flyers haven’t played good hockey all that much. There have been pockets but very little to be excited about. In fact dating back to their win against Edmonton back in October, the Flyers have played maybe four good hockey games, where you sat there and thought to yourself, “Wow. This is the Flyers team I was expecting during the off-season.”
They started flip-flopping between wins and losses in the early part of November and then crashed and burned with a 10-game winless drought that cost Alain Vigneault and Michel Therrien their jobs. Now, based on how they played, players’ comments, and the sudden “success” Mike Yeo received, it’s obvious that those moves had to be made.
Under Yeo, certain players who were being repressed under Vigneault’s system and tutelage have re-awoken and are currently the best players donning the Orange and Black. Before Yeo got the interim tag, players like Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim, and Oskar Lindblom were barely noticeable and rarely producing any offense. Travis Sanheim didn’t have a goal, Oskar Lindblom didn’t have a goal and only had one assist, and Travis Konecny was having issues with even providing assists.
Since then, Konecny has 9 assists in 10 games, Lindblom and Sanheim have scored 7 points including 2 goals, and James van Riemsdyk has 4 goals and 7 points in his last 8 games, on top of Claude Giroux consistently leading the team in points. Morgan Frost and Cam Atkinson are playing better as well but the rest of team as a whole have struggled mightily and its becoming rather concerning.
Kevin Hayes is still noticeably making a recovery from his surgery, Ivan Provorov will have his good and bad days, Joel Farabee is starting to pick up the pace in goals and points, and the goaltending remains a strong suit. But in the last 10 games, they’ve really only had one standout game and that was the thrashing of the New Jersey Devils.
Even during their 7-game point streak, they didn’t look all that great and I understand that a “win is a win” but their play from start to finish has been abhorrent. They got outplayed by the Vegas Golden Knights and got bailed out by Carter Hart, then against the Arizona Coyotes it was a fast-paced game because both teams were playing extremely loose. Then they lost to the extremely shorthanded and without-fans Montreal Canadiens, and followed that up with an inexcusable final 50 minutes against the Ottawa Senators, who dominated play after the Flyers took an early 2-0 lead, but the Flyers held on in overtime.
Christmas break and COVID postponements gave the Flyers 11 days off, to which they came back and beat the Seattle Kraken but once again got thoroughly dominated. They tied it late and won the game in overtime but thanks to Martin Jones, they were lucky to even salvage a point. The next night it was the same song and dance but this time the San Jose Sharks defeated the Flyers in overtime. In their most recent game against the Los Angeles Kings, the Flyers were dormant for 40 minutes but had an eccentric 3rd period, but fell short and ended their point streak.
However with their dormant game-play, the Flyers were able to pull off a 7-game point streak and it’s even more important considering it came off the heels of earning two out of a possible 20 points. They currently sit on the outside of the Wild Card race, trailing the Boston Bruins by two points, however the Bruins have 4 games in hand. The Flyers also trail the Pittsburgh Penguins by 9 points for the top Wild Card spot and 4th place in the division.
With Laughton and Hart returning on Tuesday and Brassard very close as well, the Flyers will welcome the return of any of their players back with open arms as they really need to figure themselves out. Their play doesn’t give us any confidence that they can turn this around, but maybe with more reinforcements on the way, that can change. They’re getting the goaltending for the most part, their penalty kill has steadily improved, and the power play is a little better ten games after the firing of Therrien.
Are we satisfied with how they’ve played? No, we definitely shouldn’t be. Are we satisfied they received points in seven games? For now, yes. Can they turn this around with a healthy roster? Of course, but how long do we have to wait for that to happen?
Getting points while playing poorly is okay for a short stint, as most teams go through a stretch like this on a yearly basis but it usually doesn’t last long, especially not for a stretch of games spanning a month. The Flyers have these stretches often as they also looked bad in 2020-21 even though they were winning games and earning points. In fact they were near the top of the division heading into the month of March, before their poor play finally caught up to them and their season combusted.
They are having issues with zone entries again, their power play looks flat and listless, their offensive chances are few and far in between, their offensive time of possession is very low, and they’re not threatening the opposition with much of anything. They have found a way to combat those issues by scoring timely goals, but if this play continues, their luck is going to run out fast.
After playing in Anaheim on Tuesday, the Flyers return to the Wells Fargo Center for a 3 game home-stand against the Pittsburgh Penguins, San Jose Sharks, and Carolina Hurricanes. It’s going to be yet another pivotal stretch of hockey for this club as every game is going to be scrutinized under a microscope if they want to turn things around and make the playoffs. Every home-stand is going to be that much more important, every road trip is going to have immense pressure behind them, and every week of hockey is going to be a block of utmost importance until the following week.
Until the whole team starts collectively chipping in and playing a full 60 minutes, the Flyers will continue flip-flopping between wins and losses and can find themselves well out of a playoff spot soon enough, especially if they let the Bruins take off and create distance with their four games in hand.
