The Flyers Are Confounding

The Flyers confuse the hell out of me. They give off so many mixed signals that, were they a woman, any sane man would be moving to a different state just to see this person less. Really, that’s why I’ve found the club difficult to write about. I’m truly lost as to what angle to take.

So, I figured I’m going to write this stream of consciousness. It’s going to be the least refined thing I’ve ever produced. All of my thoughts about the Flyers were unleashed en masse into a single blog post. I write enough that the formatting should be easy enough to follow, but I’m specifically going to do as little editing of this piece as possible.

Let’s see if this torrential downpour of partially related thoughts can give me any idea what the hell this hockey team is doing. And let’s hope that you, the reader, find the process to be entertaining. Or, more unlikely, informative.

So, let’s start with that original question I alluded to. What angle would I take while covering this team?

There’s the angle they take. The angle they take is that they’re a rebuilding club that is just looking to get their culture right or whatever. But I have a long list of priorities in my hockey teams before I ever get to culture. That isn’t measurable. You can’t even see it in film, usually. It’s reductive and silly. It’s the kind of pseudo-analysis that bores the living shit out of me. I refuse to write a word about it.

Moreover, there’s no overarching story here. It’s a full-blown “play it by ear” process that, once again, bores the shit out of me. I want a full narrative. I want the team to be chasing something. I want the long term to matter. As a fan, your mileage may vary. Perhaps you would prefer to fly by the seat of your pants. That makes me no better than you. In fact, you’re probably having more fun than me. And well, isn’t that the point of all this?

But I want an overarching goal that the team is working towards. I want the games to be steps forward or backward in that process. And to that end, I have nothing.

Going into the year, the season was posed as the beginning of a rebuilding year. I was willing to follow that. In that event, the ultimate goal of the year was to acquire a high draft pick and look out for the development of players young enough that their prime would occur in 2-4 years (an ideal rebuilding timeline.)

But that angle of a rebuilding team doesn’t quite connect to reality. Be it the reality of the team presently or the reality that they, themselves operate in.

The Flyers have a record of 10-7-1. They’re meaningfully above .500, and they have a points percentage of .583. Their points percentage is 13th in the NHL and 7th in the East. They currently hold the 3rd spot in the Metropolitan division by points percentage, which would result in a playoff berth. They’re heading into Thanksgiving in a playoff spot, and history says that they’re overwhelmingly likely to keep it if that comes to pass.

What part of that sounds like a rebuilding team? Well, none of it. So, they’re doing better than they expected? Perhaps, but they aren’t actually behaving like a rebuilding team either.

No matter how much you try to sugarcoat it, no rebuild involves sitting Morgan Frost or Bobby Brink in a combined 11 games of a possible 18 while Nic Deslauriers and Garnett Hathaway have perfect attendance.

These are two of the players whose season I would have been following closely, if this were a rebuilding year, as was originally sold to me. But if I were to follow them closely, I’d be doing film breakdowns on their popcorn-eating technique in the press box.

That’s how a contending team skeptical of youngsters and cozy to grizzled energy guys would behave. That’s the kind of lineup decision I expect out of the Tampa Bay Lightning, and that’s exactly how the Flyers are making their decisions.

And you want to tell me that’s a rebuilding team? Not in any meaningful sense, it isn’t. This isn’t turning “the rebuild” into the latest iteration of the No True Scotsman’s fallacy, either. The Flyers aren’t just saying “A true rebuild hasn’t been tried yet!”

No, rebuilds have definitions. They entail specific events and have actionable goals. The Flyers are not satisfying the definition of a rebuild.

All of these off-season moves that everyone points to as the beginning of a rebuild… they don’t even make that case for me.

Kevin Hayes was a cap dump for a 6th round pick. Tony DeAngelo was a cap dump for a prospect who’s unlikely to ever see the NHL. Ivan Provorov, while his departure did bring back a 1st round pick, also brought back a top-4 right-handed defenseman in Sean Walker. Walker has been a revelation, and everyone is surprised by how good he’s been. But still, you see how even that starts to look like a hockey trade more than an earnest attempt to collect future assets?

So, the off-season was a mixed bag as far as rebuilding goes. Okay, let’s just pretend that GM Daniel Briere was talking out of his ass, and they’re not actually rebuilding. Let’s treat them like the contending team they are.

This is usually where I come and tell you that the current winning is a mirage. It’s an all-time PDO bender fueled by a wild shooting percentage and even a wilder save percentage. But… no, actually, it isn’t.

Unlike last year’s October, this isn’t a team that is winning because Carter Hart is standing on his head. In fact, all of the underlying metrics point strongly towards a genuinely good team that actually has the ability to compete for a playoff spot over the long haul.

They’re 8th in the NHL in expected goal differential over all situations. That includes their epically and historically awful power-play dragging down the rest of the product. They’re an elite penalty-killing and strong even strength team that is controlling the run of play… consistently.

These numbers have become popular for a reason. They’re a good indication of whether you should buy a team’s short-term record or not. Is this a mirage? Or is this something real?

By those numbers, this is real. The Flyers are outer-circle contenders looking to become inner-circle contenders. They still need pieces to be considered true threats to win a Stanley Cup, but they’re certainly likely to see the playoffs.

That’s a fine place to be, especially if you planned to be there, but the Flyers didn’t. If they did, they didn’t tell any of us that. Under-promising and over-delivering? Not really, because they did promise things. They promised something beyond wins, and they aren’t delivering that.

But they are delivering wins.

So, maybe that’s just what the Flyers are. They’re a team that’s trying to win. And that’s okay. It’s not as if that’s illegal in the NHL. Nobody held a gun to Danny’s head and forced him to declare that this was a rebuilding team. Turns out they’re a flawed and incomplete contender.

Then his mission as the GM shifted. It’s no longer to wait out losses and ship out valuable players for future assets. It’s time to complete the team and finish this thing off. None of us need a Hextall-esque contending-rebuild or rebuild-winning. That guy can’t hold a job, and it’s for a reason. Nobody wants a fence-sitting franchise.

So Danny should be adding to the roster but seems unlikely to do that. There is the worthwhile question of: what could he add? What does this team actually need?

To answer that question, you have to understand how they’ve come upon the success that they have. That isn’t a mystery. Actually, it is the most logical thing about this franchise by far.

The Flyers are playing the style of counter-puncher. And I don’t mean that they’re sitting back and letting you have the puck in the offensive zone until you inevitably cough it up for a chance at a counterattack. That isn’t a strategy or a style. That’s just what a bad team looks like.

Instead, the Flyers are playing a passive 1-2-2 neutral zone forecheck that encourages teams to carry the puck past the first layer of resistance and then inevitably get swallowed up by the succeeding two layers comprised of four men.

It’s passive in the sense that they encourage you to make a move first. But they react harshly to that move. They respond with extreme aggression, in the truest sense of a counter-puncher. Their defensemen are encouraged to gap up early with the opposing team and force them into the boards.

Once the opposing team has been forced to the boards, the closest forward in that middle layer of the forecheck will converge on the pinned player and create a 2-on-1 situation for the Flyers. The ultimate and obvious goal is to get the puck under their control.

If things go according to plan and they create a neutral zone turnover, that usually means a rush against an unsuspecting opponent who lacks the time to set up their defensive zone coverages.

For that reason, the Flyers are 4th in the NHL in rush chances per Sportlogiq.

In this way, they remind me of the 21-22 Kings. They were another team who certainly expected to be amid a rebuild. In the prior 2 drafts, they drafted 2nd overall and 8th overall respectively. Then things click for them. Things go correctly, and all of a sudden, they’re a playoff team.

The Kings responded to this by going to trade for Kevin Fiala in one offseason then Pierre Luc-Dubois in the next offseason. Combine those swings with the development of the established players, and the 23-24 Kings look like inner-circle Stanley Cup contenders to me.

The resemblance to the Kings is even similar in the respect that they both used similar tactics as the foundation of their team: aggressive defense leading to transition offense.

If that’s the case, then I’d suggest Danny break out his wallet. Actually, I would strongly support Danny pulling out his wallet. If he’s not going to rebuild, then let’s just do what the Kings did and go for it.

The kind of player you want to find isn’t exactly mysterious, either. You want the kind of forward that the Kings went and got. Savvy playmakers who double as extraordinary rush threats. Guys who can fit right into a team that wants to do loads of damage in transition, but also guys who can add a new dimension to the team.

The Flyers–more than even the Kings did before them–desperately lack guys who can protect the puck in the offensive zone. They’re something of a one-and-done team, especially against teams who are stout defensively.

They don’t have the fiercest forecheck in the league, but worse than that, they have no plan when play slows down and the offense isn’t ready-made. They can’t create in the half-court.

Sean Couturier and Travis Konecny can both make plays and protect pucks, which leads them to being the two exceptions to the team’s issues. But you need more.

And if you aren’t going to trade significant present-day pieces for meaningful future assets, if you aren’t going to collect picks at the top of the draft, then go out and get what you’re missing.

Bring me guys who can run a half-wall on the powerplay. Bring me guys who can protect a puck and keep play alive then make something happen off of the cycle. Bring me guys who fill out the holes in the roster. Why the hell not? What are you waiting for? A rebuild that isn’t happening?

Here’s what I’m afraid of. What if “the rebuild” is actually an excuse for the suits to keep their jobs for the foreseeable future with no defined deadline to meet? What if teams like this… teams who have promise but clearly need something a bit more to get where they need to go… become the norm?

Is it really that far fetched? Hell, isn’t that exactly what’s happening now? A team that’s good enough to be “respectable,” while they claim–without evidence–to be rebuilding. They’ll sit back and hope Cutter Gauthier solves all their problems. They’ll sit back and hope Matvei Michkov solves all their problems.

They’ll sit back and hope they draft a game-changer at 14th overall. Anything to make sure that they don’t actually have to go out and do the hard work to shape the team. The rebuild will be their way of saying “Leave us alone” until they get blessed by God.

If you’re going to rebuild, then do it. None of this “what is a rebuild really” nonsense. None of this “well, it’s a rebuild, not a tear-down” pabulum. Go and rebuild in a way that leaves zero room for doubt. Make it so apparent that I couldn’t have even written this piece, because the Flyers wouldn’t be confounding.

If you’re going to contend, then do it. None of this “the players will determine the timeline” nonsense. None of these “We’re not going to block the kids” empty promises before Morgan Frost sits out for the 13th time in 21 games. Go identify what you’re missing, and bring that in. Leave zero room for doubt that you’re coming for the damn Stanley Cup. Make it so apparent that I couldn’t have even written this piece, because the Flyers wouldn’t be so damn confounding.

Whatever you do, do it wholeheartedly. Do it with absolute conviction. Everyone is owed, at the very least, that much. Don’t do this slimy routine of promising nothing so that fans expect even less. Give the fans a clear direction.

I don’t even care which one you choose. Just pick one. Then, at the very least, the Flyers wouldn’t be so confounding.

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Mandatory Credit: Getty Images

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