Therien's Take: The Sounds of Hockey Approach

It's been more than four months since the familiar sounds and rhythms of hockey have echoed across the Skate Zone in Voorhees. The blast of head coach Alain Vigneault's whistle as a new drill starts. The gunshot-like rattling of the glass behind the net as a rising puck strikes it. The banging of sticks, the chatter and laughter. The bursts of profanity when a puck rolls off a stick blade as a shot is flubbed. The clang of the goalposts and crossbar.

Barring any major problems in the next few days, it appears that Phase 3 of the NHL return to play will begin early next week, as the Philadelphia Flyers and other playoff contenders return to the ice for what I will refer to as Training Camp 2.0.

To recap the great regular season that the Flyers had Is the easy part. We saw a team in the fall with a new coach, a young goaltender continue his positive and fast-rising trajectory. We saw an influx of new players make an impact, such as Kevin Hayes and Matt Niskanen. We saw young Flyers that are just getting better and better, such as Travis Konecny and Travis Sanheim, We saw established veterans elevate their games, such as Pelle Lindbergh Memorial Trophy winner Scott Laughton.

The coaching was superb this year. Vigneailt established the kind of presence you love to have in a coach in any year: demanding but fair, and someone who makes it enjoyable to come to the rink because he clearly loves his job and is good at it. He has the right temperament and demeanor as a guy who's been around a long time in this league. He runs a solid system where players know what's expected of them, and there are no excuses accepted. This attitude rubbed off on his team, especially his leaders.

The trajectory this team was on this year was that of an uneven October, a stellar November, and an emotionally difficult (in light of Oskar Lindblom's cancer diagnosis) December that saw the team dominate at home but get crushed on the road. After a brutal post-Christmas road trip ended, the team gelled.

The last 26 games before the leaguewide pause that abruptly ended the 2019-20 regular season saw the Flyers in their best sustained groove in quite a few years. They'd had significant winning streaks before in recent past seasons, but this felt different. The Flyers weren't just winning, they were winning the right (and sustainable) way.

There were different heroes every single night. Different players stepped up in critical times and it really was the definition of a true team. The locker room atmosphere was strong; the guys WANTED to play for each other, held each other accountable, and had a good time. Even when there was an occasional loss, the team turned the page immediately.

Unfortunately, the sheer length of the stoppage erased any momentum that teams had before the coronavirus pandemic forced the pause. The Flyers are in the same boat with every other team, in that regard.

So what do we expect from training camp 2.0 as we move the round-robin of games the Flyers will partake in for seeding? It won't be exactly like a September camp -- the roster is pretty much set (barring injuries), systems need only a refresher rather than being installed from scratch, etc.

As such, the main focus in Philly and elsewhere will be on recovering game-level conditioning and timing (which is hard to replicate in the practice setting) as quickly as possible. With every team, there is a lingering threat of positive Covid-19 tests removing players from the mix for multiple weeks.

Ultimately, as Phase 4 arrives and the games resume, the entire objective will be to get off to a very quick start even as it takes a couple games to re-establish chemistry and get the hockey legs and hockey lungs back to a reasonably normal level. There WILL be sloppy games early on; it's inevitable.

The teams that win as the playoff seeding games and qualifying round matches are played will be the teams that are the mentally toughest to deal with adversity -- and get the best goaltending, of course.

The Flyers have not typically been a rocket-out-of-the-gates team in recent years. That will have to change for the team to make a deep run in the playoffs this summer (how odd it feels, even now, to say that). The REAL test is yet to come, and it all starts with the preparation stage in Phase 3.

We'll be back next week to discuss how the first week of training camp goes.