What the Flyers Game 1 win means for the series vs Penguins
The Flyers not only made the playoffs, which was a miracle in and of itself, but they’ve already won a playoff game. Far from the nightmare scenario depicted during the bitter months of December and January… showing up just to be summarily executed in 4 games… the Flyers find themselves in a dogfight against an old, bitter rival and it’s a dogfight that they’ve proven they can win.
Just because they’ve proven they can win doesn’t mean they will win, so now that I’ve had a chance to watch all of game 1… let’s step back and analyze where the team stands in their series against the Penguins.
To do that, we’ll borrow a strategic framework often deployed in the business world known as SWOT analysis. We’ll examine the Flyers from their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Flyers Strengths:
The Flyers are the superior 5v5 team. That is their number 1 strength in this matchup.
For the full regular season, the case that the Flyers are the stronger 5v5 team is somewhat murky.
Their 51.9% expected goal share ranks 7th in the NHL, ahead of the Penguins’ 9th. But the expectations are essentially even.
Furthermore, the Penguins have a 53.7% actual goal share, marginally outstripping the Flyers’ 51.9% actual goal share.
But the full-season outlook isn’t why I classify Philly as the superior 5v5 team.
In the Flyers’ final 20 games, they had a 55.2% expected goal share. They ranked 5th in the NHL and 2nd in the East, using their vastly improved 5v5 play to catalyze a miraculous charge to a postseason berth.
In that same timetable, the Penguins maintained their standard 5v5 numbers of with a 51% expected goal share and a 54% goal share.
In game 1, the matchup played out from a statistical perspective exactly how one might expect if the Flyers were the team of the last 20 games.
Flyers 5v5 domination
The source of the Flyers’ 5v5 excellence is their play through the neutral zone. Once upon a time, I had railed about the Flyers’ woes from a tactical perspective. And at the time, I was right to!
“The Flyers’ Looming Collapse”
The collapse did happen, only a couple of weeks after I had written about its imminence.
But the collapse inspired change. Necessity being the mother of all invention, the Flyers used the Olympic break to “go back to the drawing board,” as it were, and make tactical changes that put new life into the roster.
Even at the time of the collapse, the Flyers were a good defensive team. They checked as well as any team in the league because they have a surplus of two-way talent. Most of their defensemen are plus-defenders, even ones we don’t particularly like. And their forward group has multiple guys who could win a Selke if defensive results were the primary criteria.
The heart of their problems, and I wrote about this at the time, was an overreliance on defending. They defended, and defended, and defended, until the dam finally broke.
A defensive fighter has this problem when they’re in the ring or the cage with an overly aggressive opponent. They can’t just passively absorb and evade the avalanche of incoming blows. Eventually, a mistake will be made. It’s just human nature.
To stop the avalanche, you need to encourage the aggressive opponent to back off. You incentivize him to keep his distance, to mind his P’s and Q’s, with precise and lethal counter striking.
The Flyers finally tapped into their counter striking nature, and they found that they were exceptionally gifted in that particular art.
In game 1, the Penguins were simply countered to death.
I would expect this trend to continue for the rest of the series, barring a deviation for a game or two.
The Flyers are the NHL’s preeminent counter-strikers.
The Weaknesses..
It doesn’t exactly take an analytical genius to tell you what the Flyers’ ultimate weakness is in this series.
Special teams.
On one side, you have the worst power-play in recorded history… that being the Flyers.
On the other side, you had one of the better power-plays in the NHL… that being the Penguins.
The Penguins ranked 7th in goals-per-hour on the PP this year. The Flyers ranked 32nd.
On the other side of that equation, it isn’t much better.
The Penguins surrendered the 7th fewest goals-per-hour on the PK this season, and the Flyers surrendered the 12th most.
As surely as the Flyers have the 5v5 advantage, the Penguins have the special teams advantage.
Opportunities.
For our purposes, we’ll take “opportunities” to mean “ways in which our strengths can be maximally exploited.”
Staying out of the box is obvious, but as I’ll go into during “threats,” that’s going to be easier said than done.
Instead, I think the Flyers are going to have to run up the score at 5v5. And they have the means of doing just that.
Stuart Skinner played one of the best games you can expect him to play in this series in game 1.
Surrendering 3 goals on 2.91 expected is unusually strong goaltending for Skinner, and I wouldn’t expect that to continue.
He stopped multiple breakaways and odd man rushes, making those numbers harder to come by than the stat suggests on its own.
In addition, the heart of the Flyers’ counterstrike offense didn’t actually appear in full force.
Porter Martone, before his iconic snipe, was okay… but clearly hadn’t settled into the game fully. As the goal suggested, that won’t last. As Porter dials in, the Flyers’ offense becomes ever more dangerous.
The same can be said for Matvei Michkov, who used some quality forechecking and his characteristic awareness to grease the rails for Flyers offense. Because of that, his on-ice results looked stellar for game 1.
But 0 shots, 0 points, and -1 is what it is.
He played like he was amped up. His typical otherworldly puck control was largely out on vacation, and it prevented him from making plays with the puck in space that’d lead to putting points on the board.
I classify this as an opportunity rather than a threat because Michkov’s hands are what they are. They won’t be gone for long. I’d be shocked if he wasn’t operating in peak capacity by game 3, and more likely than not, he’ll have that problem fixed headed into game 2.
The on-ice results demonstrate that Michkov’s particular blend of genius-level hockey intelligence and sturdy build are deeply translatable to playoff hockey.
The heart of the Flyers’ success is having skilled and cerebral players like Martone, Michkov, Zegras, and Konecny leading counter-rushes. Players for whom even a single quality puck touch can spell extreme trouble.
None of those guys played their best hockey in game 1, and if they can play back up to their previous standards, they can exploit their 5v5 advantage and win the series by running up the score before special teams come into play.
Furthermore, they can play from ahead and force the Penguins into playing a style of game that will invite additional counter attacks, thus creating what’s essentially a positive feedback loop.
Threats.
If opportunities were about finding ways to maximize and exploit your strengths, threats are ways that your weaknesses can be used against you.
The Flyers are not only terrible at special teams, but they’re also masters at finding themselves in a situation where they need special teams.
Michkov and Martone have spent the entire regular season treating penalty taking as an event in the Olympics, and they’d win gold and silver respectively if it were.
It sounds unfair to say to Martone who has only played 10 NHL games, but he was equally gifted in the art of taking penalties for MSU.
Likewise, Konecny and Zegras are known to be friendly with the odd excessive penalty. Compound that with the usual sources for penalties in the NHL, and you have a problem.
Now mix the Penguins vs. Flyers rivalry and all the intensity that comes alongside that into the batter, and you can see the problem becoming ever more ominous.
Finally, note that the refs constantly have hyper-active whistles in the first round of the playoffs. And that legends like Sidney Crosby tend to get the benefit of the doubt while young upstarts like Martone or Michkov get the opposite.
There is a real possibility that this series ends up becoming an unending parade of special teams, and for a team with a mediocre penalty kill and a historically awful power-play? That possibility becoming manifest means near certain defeat.
Conclusion?
The Flyers have a fight ahead of them, and there is no shortage of ways for them to lose this series despite the 1-0 lead they’ve just garnered.
But there’s also no shortage of ways to win.
They’re the better 5v5 team with the better goaltending situation. They’re a team of highly skilled attackers and especially ferocious defenders who can counter a punch better than any team in the NHL.
If they can force the Penguins to play from a deficit, they can capitalize on a Penguins’ weakness… their puck moving on the back end, which ranges from poor to high-risk.
If the Flyers can establish a forecheck as a secondary form of offense, they can go from 5v5 superiority to 5v5 supremacy and effectively take the Penguins out of the series before we even go back to Philly.
Join The Chase
Read More
Paul in Philly says the Flyers beat the Penguins like Mikey Miss beat his fiancee
After the Flyers took Game 1 in Pittsburgh on Saturday…
Flyers steal Game 1 in Pittsburgh, beat the Penguins 3-2
The Flyers are playing playoff hockey for the first time…
Preview: Flyers playoff hockey is back there’s no better first round matchup than The Battle of Pennsylvania
Nobody thought that the Philadelphia Flyers would be a playoff…
Comments (0)