PDO Killed the Flyers – Does the Story End There?

The Flyers have lost eight consecutive games, and with the Rangers up next, it’s a relatively safe bet to assume that number will grow to nine.

By then? I wouldn’t bet against the streak growing to meet the Flyers’ tradition of 10 or even 11 consecutive losses. They may easily lose the remaining 3 games of the season.

Any investigation into how or why this might have occurred would be mishandled if it didn’t begin with the PDO nosedive that the team has experienced.

In the last 10 games, covering the streak as well as a couple of games before it, the Flyers are 2nd to last in the NHL in points %. They’re behind only the Calgary Flames, which means… yes… the Blackhawks, Sharks, and Ducks have all amassed more points over the home stretch of the season.

Flyers 5-on-5

4th in the NHL in shot attempts share (55.2%)

This ranks behind Carolina, Calgary, and Edmonton.

2nd in the NHL in unblocked shot attempts share (57.61%)

Only Carolina has been better.

1st in the NHL in shots on goal share. (57.5%)

Quite literally, no team has been better at getting pucks to the net while preventing pucks from going to theirs.

5th in the NHL in expected goal share. (56.67%)

Even when controlling for shot quality, the Flyers are still lagging behind only the Stars, Oilers, Hurricanes and Canucks.

The Flames, the only team worse than the Flyers during this stretch, have controlled shot attempts like madmen. But unlike the Flyers, that dominance in Corsi has not translated to actually having an elite share of quality scoring chances.

The Flyers have had that!

2nd in the NHL in scoring chance share. (57.52%)

Only the Avalanche have more controlled scoring chances (as Natural Stat Trick defines them) than the Flyers in the last 10 games.

1st in the NHL in high-danger chance share. (63.18%)

To put it succinctly, no team has controlled the netfront area better than the Flyers. They get to the opposing net and they keep the other guys from reaching theirs.

All of that sustained dominance at 5 on 5, absolutely throttling teams as far as possession is concerned, and yet…

The Flyers are 32nd in goal share at 5 on 5. (34%)

The Flames, the second worse team here, are running 3% ahead of the Flyers.

They are shooting 6.4% at 5 on 5, 4th worst in the NHL.

That’s almost inconceivable. The instinct is to say that the lack of high-end talent killed their shooting percentage, but Carolina is even worse than they are. You know, the Carolina Hurricanes.

Possessors of Sebastian Aho and Jake Guentzel among others.

There is a luck component to shooting percentage. There always has been, especially at 5 on 5. And the luck is all running against the Flyers.

They have a team save percentage of 83.57%, by far the worst in the NHL.

Again, you’d be well within the realm of reason to say that an NHL neophyte and a veritable corpse are the two current goaltenders, so OF COURSE, their save percentage is low.

But their save percentage at 5 on 5 is 5 percent worse than the next worst team… the New York Rangers.

You know, possessors of generational goalie talent Igor Shesterkin. The guy, if the guy isn’t Vasilevskiy. A goalie who is one part athlete and one part myth.

Yeah, that guy and his backup are combining for the second-worst save percentage at 5 on 5. The backup here? Jonathan Quick. You know, the future Hall of Famer and the guy who was originally experiencing a career renaissance in which he was almost more trusted than Igor.

All of this is to say that… yes, even here… there’s simply a luck component.

Simply put: yes, the goalies are playing badly, but they’re also unlucky.

This is an all-time PDO-fueled collapse. And it’s rather difficult to draw extreme conclusions based on something like that.

I include myself in that mix.

I look at a team losing 9-3 to the Montreal Canadiens, and I see a team who has given up. I see a team that has given up, and I look to the coach who was allegedly instilling a culture, and I say… “clearly, you failed.”

But Torts isn’t wearing goalie pads.

So, to be fully transparent, I went too far with insinuations that John Tortorella has lost the room. I did.

Does that mean I think John Tortorella is covering himself with glory in the way he’s coached through this miserable stretch?

No.

PDO generally stands for percentage-driven outcomes. But I think there’s a next step of PDO, where it has gotten so bad… or so good… for a team that it becomes psychology-driven-outcomes.

When nothing is going in the net for you, while the other team literally can’t miss a shot? You’re going to feel like shit in short order. It’s going to affect the way you play. Maybe you hesitate on a pinch as a defenseman, or maybe you never bother to fly the zone as a winger even though you’ve correctly anticipated the flow of the game.

You hesitate because you’ve lost confidence. After all, every mistake ends in the back of your net and every positive play is little more than a number on someone’s chart. A hypothetical scenario at best.

In this way, poor percentages beget more poor percentages as a team commits uncharacteristic breakdowns or fails to make plays they’d otherwise make on the offensive end.

That’s a confidence thing. As a coach, I think it’s your duty… any coach, not just Torts… to know what’s happening and react accordingly.

You’re being buried by PDO. If you don’t like the mathematical term or think analytics are too nerdy? You have unbelievably shit luck. You can’t buy a goal no matter what you do, and you can’t get a save if you pray for one no matter how well–or terribly–you play defensively.

In that situation, a coach should know the crisis of confidence that can manifest for the athletes. And I think he does, at his core, know that. He’s made a few allusions to “getting some swagger back” or “realizing we’re a pretty good team.”

But he also allows himself to be completely overrun by emotions, and it happens publicly, so I know it happens privately.

Your team is getting crushed by simple percentages, and you think the best thing that you can do is to tell them that the pucks won’t go in because their balls haven’t dropped far enough? They can’t get a save because they lack the testicular fortitude to will the goalie into making a save.

Really?

Your team is getting shit on by a mathematical anomaly, shitty luck in its purest form, and your reaction to that is to say your players just aren’t as gifted as other NHL players?

I don’t care whether you believe either of these things to be true. It just isn’t the time for a head coach to say it.

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When percentage-driven outcomes can become psychology-driven outcomes, you don’t throw fuel on the fire by saying they suck and they don’t have any balls. Maybe I’ll say that on X. Maybe others with social media accounts will say that. Maybe they’ll write an article about it or do a podcast and say something to similar effects.

You, as the one who is here to control the collective psyche of a locker room, should not contribute to a crisis of confidence because you can’t control your emotions in public.

PDO runs have gotten coaches fired before. Just look at Todd McClellan in Los Angeles or Jay Woodcroft in Edmonton. Less severe PDO runs than this at more auspicious times have ended careers, and those guys didn’t do anything to contribute to the problem.

John Tortorella has done something to contribute to this problem. How much he’s contributed or how little is a subjective thing. You can have your assessment, but I think we can all agree that the number isn’t zero.

He needs to control himself. Especially at this time of year. He talks about getting the players to take their game to the next level. He needs to meet the moment as a coach, and he hasn’t done that.

That’s different from losing a room, but it’s still a problem.

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Jamie Drysdale

I’m going to include a little section here to talk about the amount of attention Jamie Drysdale has received for being on the ice for six goals against.

His defensive flaws at this stage of his career are very real, but we don’t need to pretend that this game was the proof. Did he miss some assignments? Surely.

Do you know what else he had? A .500 on-ice save percentage. Yes, you read that right. Half of the shots that went on goal while he was on the ice went into the net.

Man, Jaccob Slavin couldn’t look competent defensively if half of the shots on goal with him on the ice found twine.

Nobody is that bad defensively. A lot of the missed assignments that he was being harangued for? If he got any realistic number of saves, they would have never been noticed.

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I mean, this guy had a positive (over 50%) expected goal share through 40 minutes. By the 3rd period, he was probably so beaten down by PDO that he refused to play the game outside of his defensive zone. And like I just talked about… percentage-driven outcomes became psychology-driven outcomes.

For all of the breath people have committed to defending Torts through a team-wide PDO disaster, I think it’s a little bit ridiculous that people have wasted an equal amount of breath talking as if I should read significantly into a guy who has an on-ice save percentage in the dumpster.

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Their PDO in all situations is a .876 over the last 10 games. The next worst team, the Calgary Flames, has a PDO of .928. That, in itself, is an aberration. The next worst team after them? The Vancouver Canucks at .973.

Every criticism we dish out and every decision that ultimately gets made concerning this team should bare that in mind. I know, the reflex for everyone is to assume that we learned something throughout this epic collapse. But we didn’t. We learned that PDO is a fickle bitch, but most of us already knew that.

With that said, the Flyers–as currently constructed–are not a team who can have flaming PDO benders like the Canucks or the Bruins. They don’t have a goalie that can steal games. And they don’t have forwards who can manifest the kinds of shots that just go in all the time for a month.

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Real contenders have those things, at least to some capacity. Danny Briere constructed a possession monster of a hockey team. But possession without goals is hypothetical. Possession without saves is a neat statistic.

Does he have to tank because his goalies can’t stop a beach ball? No.

Does he have to tank because the forwards couldn’t hit an empty net while standing still at the goalmouth right now? Also, no.

But he does have to change the paradigm of this team come the summer. He has to address these issues.

Or PDO benders like this followed by periods of stable PDO will create for the next seasons what has been created this year… a mid and utterly forgettable hockey team.

If the general manager has a plan to be something more and to create something better? Now is the time to act on it.

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