Flyers at the Midpoint: What's Working, What Needs to Improve

With Thursday night's 4-3 road win over the New York Islanders, the Philadelphia Flyers reached the statistical midpoint of the 56-game 2020-21 regular season: 28 games down, 28 left to play.

Through the first 10 games of the season, the Flyers had a 7-2-1 record but were not playing particularly well. They weren't generating many shots or a high quantity of scoring chances, and they were hemorrhaging shots and scoring chances against. The Flyers were winning because they were very opportunistic offensively on the chances they were getting and they were getting strong goaltending overall.
Since that time, the Flyers have posted a mediocre 8-8-1 record including a 4-6-0 mark in the month of March to date. The team seemed to be coming together at the time a COVID-19 outbreak coincided with the postponements of four games in February. Since that time, the club has remained potent offensively but the team goals against average is unacceptably high. Philly has yielded at least three goals per game in all 10 games played in March to date.
There have been many reasons for this unwelcome development: puck management issues, bad reads, inconsistency among defensemen relied on to play heavy minutes, a downturn in the performance of goaltenders Carter Hart and Brian Elliott, spotty backchecking.
To look at where the team is strictly by the numbers, here's a comparison of where the Flyers were through 28 games in 2019-20 (start of the season through Dec. 3, 2019) and their 28-game numbers this season. Team GAA, far and away, is the biggest area of concern. Within that issue, there has been a backslide on the penalty kill but at least there are recent signs of hope in that area: the Flyers are 12 for their last 14 on the PK through Thursday's game.
Record: 16-7-5, 37 points (2019-20), 15-10-3, 33 points (2020-21)
GPG: 3.14 (2019-20), 3.25 (2020-21)
GAA: 2.64 (2019-20), 3.46 (2020-21)
PP%: 19.2% (2019-20), 19.6% (2020-21)
PK%: 85.9% (2019-20), 74.7% (2020-21)
FO%: 54.1% (2019-20), 53.1% (2020-21)
Shots per game: 33.0 (2019-20), 28.1% (2020-21)
Shots against: 29.3 (2019-20), 29.7 (2020-21)
Last weekend, Flyers head coach Alain Vigneault insisted that the team is "trending in the right direction" overall despite the team losing two of three games to the Penguins and losing three straight in regulation to the Capitals. The coach took a lot of heat for the statement.
The truth of the matter is that Vigneault was partially correct. The team is doing a much better overall job in recent weeks in terms of generating shots and scoring chances, possessing the puck for longer stretches of time and in spreading around the scoring.
After being scorching hot offensively in January and February, James van Riemsdyk has cooled off in March (three goals, four points in 10 games). Sean Couturier has scored just one goal this month but has compiled seven assists. The goal-scoring has come from other sources.
Travis Konecny leads the Flyers in March with 10 points in 10 games (2g, 8a). Joel Farabee has seven points this month despite having to sit out one game while in COVID-19 protocol (4g, 3a in nine games). Claude Giroux has scored a half-dozen goals among his nine points including three goals and five points over the team's last four games. Jakub Voracek has nine points this month (2g, 7a). Oskar Lindblom, after going goalless from the third game of the regular season through being a healthy scratch in the 9-0 debacle at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday. scored two goals in the win at Nassau Coliseum.
In total, 12 different Flyers players have scored at least one goal in March. This includes five goals from defensemen (three for Shayne Gostisbehere, two for Ivan Provorov). The fact that the Flyers have continued to score goals at a healthy clip even with the trio of JVR, Couturier and Farabee enjoying less game-to-game offensive dominance in March speaks to the offensive depth on the roster.
So why are the Flyers facing an uphill battle in the standings? The short answer is team defense and goaltending.
While traditional plus-minus numbers are not a very reliable indicator of play, it is tough to dispute that Travis Sanheim (minus-12 in 10 GP in March), Phil Myers (minus-11 in eight games this month, a healthy scratch twice) and Gostisbehere (minus-10 in eight games, a healthy scratch the last two games) have been struggling mightily with coverages, clearing and breakout opportunities and have also had some sheer bad puck luck as well with pucks bouncing in off their skates or sticks. Sanheim is relied on to play 20-plus minutes per game and Myers and Ghost are also both relied upon to play a lot of minutes.
It's NOT just those three players, however. Ivan Provorov, the team's undisputed No. 1 defenseman in the rotation, has not been nearly as consistent in his overall game this season as he was a year ago. There has also been a rotation of different partners alongside Provorov this season, and there has yet to be anyone to emerge who can play the same sort of all-situation stabilizing role that Matt Niskanen did a year ago. Veteran Justin Braun has played well overall defensively but does not bring all of the dimensions that former teammate Niskanen brought to the team last year before his decision to retire with one year remaining on his contract.
The Flyers' third defense pair has also been rather inconsistent this season: none among Robert Hägg (now on injured reserve with a shoulder issue), Erik Gustafsson (despite posting a respectable 10 points in 20 games played), veteran Nate Prosser or Mark Friedman (now a member of the Penguins after being claimed off waivers from the Flyers) played to a level where they were able to stake down an every-game starting spot on the blueline.
Flyers forwards don't get a pass here, either. Defense isn't just about the six defensemen on the blueline. Forwards have to help out on the backcheck, in zone clears and in maintaining their coverage assignments in the defensive zone. There have been too many back-door goals, bad forward-to-D gaps for puck support (an area that looked a lot better over the first 50 minutes of Thursday's game, but which needs bigger-sample improvement) and turnovers in dangerous areas by forwards as well as the defense.
In the meantime, Hart has encountered the first sustained adversity of his career (whether referring to junior hockey or the pros). His confidence is down and his mechanics seem a little bit off, too, with an alarming number of goals beating him over his glove in particular. Brian Elliott seems to have hit a wall of late, too. While many of both goalies' recent issues relate to the team's defensive inconsistency, there have also been a few too many stoppable shots going in the net.
Moving forward, the gap the Flyers need to close to move back above the playoff cutoff line is a manageable one. Getting there, however, will require a teamwide reset in terms of commitment to 200-foot play and team defense. This may also require an outside acquisition on the blueline while players such as Sanheim and Myers work to sort out their issues. Likewise, the Flyers need Hart to get back on top of his game.
There are segments of the Flyers process that absolutely are trending the right way in terms of doing the things that lead to offensive success and playing less defense. However, there remains a lot of area for improvement for what the team does when it does not have the puck. There is also still a little too much period-to-period fluctuation in how the team executes on both sides of the puck.