How to ‘Moneyball’ the Philadelphia Flyers

A lot of discussion on team-building vis a vis the Flyers drives me nuts. It drives me nuts because it exists in a very simplistic prism that doesn’t actually account for the reality as it is on the ground.

We talk about the team in generics, and we ignore the real situation that’s happening here.

It reminds me of the premise behind “Moneyball”

The discourse exists on a simple and seemingly true premise. In order to win more hockey games, the Flyers need better players.

And “better” players are usually defined by higher status within the league. This guy is “better” because he scores 100 points in the league. This prospect that we need to draft in the top 3 is “better” because he’s done this and this leading up to his draft year, which pales in comparison to what X and Y Flyers player has done.

That’s how one side views it, and don’t worry, I’m not just beating up on them. The people they argue with accept all of these same premises, but they argue with insane hypotheticals.

In order to win more hockey games, the Flyers need better players. And “better” players are usually defined by higher status within the league. Which is why we have John Tortorella, who is going to confer his status onto these other players in an osmosis-like process that we label with the umbrella term of “development.”

Do we develop the 100-point center? Or do we acquire the 100-point center?

That is, in a nutshell, the argument being had. And, really, both sides are losing propositions. Neither one of these things is likely to happen.

Allow me to do what Moneyball did and change the premises upon which we think. In order to win more games, the Flyers need to score more goals and allow fewer. I think we all agree on that. We don’t need to buy players. We need to buy goals, just as the “Moneyball premise” is, in a nutshell, that you need to buy runs.

In order to buy more runs in baseball, it primarily came down to buying more baserunners. This is why things like on-base percentage was one of the fundamental concepts. It was more complex than the movie portrayed it, but this part is totally real.

In order to buy a bigger goal differential in hockey, it will primarily come down to buying more chances. Fortunately, this is rather easy to glean with modern statistics. “Expected goals” is really just a mathematical term to quantify your scoring chances.

It’s even more fortunate for the Flyers

Really, this is actually tantamount to falling on your ass and landing in a pile of Christmas.

Over all situations, meaning through the entirety of every game, the Flyers are sixth in expected goal share per Evolving Hockey. They’re tenth in expected goal share per Natural Stat Trick. They’re sixth in expected goal share per MoneyPuck.

In other words, while there is variation in the models, the Flyers are anywhere from the sixth to tenth best team in controlling the flow of the action. This is critical. We’re buying goals, and to do that, we’re buying chances.

But we’re not buying chances, are we? We’re buying chance differentials. Natural Stat Trick doesn’t work with differentials, as far as I’m aware. So, let’s use the two who do.

Per Evolving Hockey, the Flyers are seventh in expected goal differential. Or rather, chance differential. The Flyers are sixth in expected goal differential per MoneyPuck.

So, it’s over, right? We just win now, right?

Well, not necessarily. It is harder to perform a “Moneyball” like stunt in the NHL than the MLB because there are more variables at play, but it isn’t impossible.

The Carolina Hurricanes are doing it. The Flyers can do it, too. It starts with a sober assessment of what they have, and what they don’t.

We just covered what they have. They have half of the battle won. There are ways to maximize their chance differential even further, but that’s largely beyond the scope of this writing. Because the thing that stands between the Flyers and wins is the catch that hockey has which baseball does not.

There is not a perfect relationship between the probability of scoring goals and actually doing it, whereas there is a nearly perfect relationship in baseball between actual runs and the probability of runs. Especially over large sample sizes.

Per Evolving Hockey, the Flyers own the worst save percentage in the NHL. And it’s by far. There’s nobody even close to goaltending as bad as Philadelphia’s. They have gotten .874 goaltending.

The next closest is the Vancouver Canucks at .877.

But let’s put this in the language we’ve been using throughout the piece. How is the goaltending affecting the chance differential?

Total goals saved above expected for every team in the NHL.

Highest
1. Anaheim 32.16
2. Winnipeg 31.06
3. Washington 29.6

Lowest
1. Philadelphia -21.14
2. Pittsburgh -12.14
3. Detroit -11.55

Stats via @EvolvingHockey pic.twitter.com/wLROZ5b50m

— Jesse Granger (@JesseGranger_) January 21, 2025

Well, it’s immediately adding 20 goals to the negative side of the ledger. That’s nearly an entire goal every other game that’s being added to the negative side of the ledger, and crippling the process we need to work with: turning chance differentials into goal differentials.

Now, for the other side of the ledger. The goals they score.

The Flyers are scoring 2.97 goals per hour, perfectly mediocre at 15th in the league. This is slightly underperforming their 3.12 expected goals per hour, a likewise mediocre 16th in the league.

Let’s table the offense for a second and address the simpler issue: the goaltending.

And this really is simple. It’s actually really easy for teams with proprietary data that I don’t have. I can tell you what they have, and how they should use it. NHL teams have the book on every goalie’s strength and weakness. Every NHL team can get it, too. A company, Clear Sight Analytics, will take care of all of it.

They’ll account for all kinds of things like the presence of screens and the pretext of every shot. It’s insanely precise data, and the data goes as granular as every goalie’s respective save percentage and “goals saved above expected” on every type of chance.

So, what do the Flyers do? Isolate the kinds of chances they give up a lot of. Every team has defensive holes and things they allow and then find a goalie who is specifically good at saving those types of chances.

If the Flyers give up screened shots every 3 seconds, find a goalie who navigates screens at an exceptional level. I say it’s easy because they don’t need to find Connor Hellebuyck. Just find a goalie who’s good at saving the types of chances he’ll see a lot of, even if that means he’s weaker against chances you rarely give up.

In the long run, that will equate to more goals saved than expected. And when your expected goals allowed are low, and you are coming in under that number? That means your actual goals allowed are very low, and you will be an exceptional defensive team.

It really is as simple as finding a name on the market who fits a specific set of criteria and acquiring that person, as the New Jersey Devils did with Jacob Markstrom.

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Now, back to the offense. The offense is a little trickier. But not that much trickier.

First, we have to define why their chance creation offensively in a full game context is mediocre. It’s because, if you break that down to component parts, the powerplay is abysmal. Truly awful.

They are the 32nd ranked team at creating chances on the powerplay. That should probably lead to arrests when they are the 6th ranked team at creating chances in even strength settings.

So, the first step to fixing the offense is calling the police. I kid. The first step to fixing the offense is fixing the power-play. Now, why is the power-play awful? This is somewhat speculative in nature, but not really. It’s the coaching. And yes, Tortorella has a hand in this.

Don’t get me wrong, they shouldn’t be the world’s greatest power-play, but they shouldn’t be the worst team in the league at generating chances when they’re nearly a top 5 team in creating chances in a more difficult setting.

The problem is that Tortorella… and this bleeds into the coaching from Rocky Thompson, who works for Tortorella… believes that a fundamental principle of generating offense is actually bad.

Tortorella has repeatedly chastised Matvei Michkov in public for “playing on the weak side of the ice, hoping he’ll get a puck.”

He also chastised Travis Konecny for having the same habit. Someway, somehow, the thought that his two best offensive players have the same “terrible habit” did not click with him. It did not register with him that… maybe these guys know something he doesn’t.

Spoiler alert: they know something he doesn’t. That manifests itself most strongly on the powerplay, but it seeps into even strength play.

Spacing out to the weak side of the ice stretches out the defense, John.

Let me put it this way. You think that the defense has 4 penalty killers available to defend 5 players, but that’s wrong. The defense has 4 penalty killers available to defend a 64×85′ sheet of ice otherwise known as the offensive zone.

If you only play on 42 feet of that 85-foot width, then you just dropped the coverage responsibilities of the penalty kill by, effectively, half. It’s not actually one half, but we don’t need to do the actual calculations to know that it’s making life way easier on the penalty kill.

It makes life easier at even strength, too. You just don’t notice it as much, because puck support… the natural rival of proper offensive spacing… is more of an importance at even strength.

The mission of every hockey team is to balance puck support and proper offensive spacing. The Flyers, led by Tortorella, are leaning far too much on the puck support side of the equation.

That’s killing their power-play, which is killing their offense at large to a significant degree.

The Flyers need a coaching staff that will push things further in the direction of offensive spacing. That will fix the offense, and everyone will score more points. Everyone. It’ll be like magic. I promise.

By simply doing those two things, the most likely outcome is that the Flyers are a top 10 team in the NHL by goal differential.

And if that’s true, then they’re most likely an annual top 10 team by the standings. If that’s true, then they’re comfortably in the playoffs every year.

Now, are there more steps to take to win a Stanley Cup? Yes, absolutely.

But those problems can be solved, too. They can be solved with new thinking and surprisingly simple actions, just like I’m laying out here.

But let’s start with the basics, shall we?

• Read More: No Undo Button: Flyers GM Daniel Briere Defines His Tenure
• Read More: Matvei Michkov Is Hockey’s First Grandmaster
• Read More: On the Flyers and ‘The Culture’

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