What You May Have Missed: Process Updates

A cursory glance at the weekend's sports results will show that the Philadelphia Flyers dropped yet another overtime decision in Arizona on Sunday night. A deeper dive into the game, however, will discover more of the foundational play that John Tortorella has been talking about his team trying to establish.

Jack McBain's goal 10:21 into the second period gave the Coyotes a 3-2 lead, but also marked a turning point. From there, over the final 29:39 of regulation and nearly five minutes of overtime, the Flyers produced 53 shot attempts while holding the Coyotes to just 12. The game total went Philadelphia's way 79-50, but Arizona was able to swipe the game much like they did from league-leading Boston their last time out.

"We're in every game," head coach John Tortorella said afterwards. "We've got to figure out the overtime period. We battled back three times. Now we've just got to figure out the end of games."

So, as the Flyers play through their first of two long road trips this month, they have found themselves with a few somewhat frustrating results. But the scores that pop up on NHL summaries and the boxscores that go with them don't necessarily show that this is a team that has continued to grow in key areas of the game, and hopefully is on the cusp of stringing together some more wins.

The start of December was a dud of a loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, but since then the Flyers are 1-2-2 in their last five games. They took advantage of an injury-depleted Colorado Avalanche club for their lone win but still had to put forth an excellent effort in order to get it, a situation they hope to duplicate in Denver on Tuesday night. The four losses have all been one-goal games in effect, discounting Alex Ovechkin's two empty-netters in the loss to Washington. All four of those contests have entered the third period with a tie score, and in all four situations the opponent has been able to make one more play.

So unfortunately, the Flyers have only four points to show for a body of work that by and large has been good, and is continuing to track in the right direction. The underlying numbers bear that out. Against New Jersey, a team that has burst onto the scene in the Eastern Conference this season, the Flyers outshot the opponent 33-18 and had a 63-42 advantage in total shot attempts. In Vegas, the Flyers kept the Western Conference's best team to just one goal in regulation and were right there with them on total shot attempts, 63-57. Then came the second-half dominance in Arizona that also didn't translate into a win.
"We competed hard," said Flyers forward Scott Laughton after the Vegas game on Friday. "Couple chances there late in the third, we had a breakaway. We had a couple good chances in overtime, I thought we possessed the puck pretty well. Just couldn't get it done, but we play like that, continue to grow our game and get better in little situations, I think we'll get a couple more wins here."

A reminder could be in order that this is all part of Tortorella and his staff building up this team the way they want it to play. The first order of attention was defensive play, which this team has sorely needed to improve for essentially three of the last four seasons - spending too much time defending and giving up too many opportunities. That part of the Flyers' game has noticeably improved, and is also becoming consistent. The Flyers have allowed 31.7 shots on goal per game through 29 games, which is essentially right in the middle of the pack, 15th to 17th in the league. But last year through 29 games, they were allowing 34.6 shots per game, a virtual tie for the worst in the league at that point.

The improvement in that category is more apparent when looking at smaller sections of this season. When the Flyers were 7-3-2, they had gotten there despite allowing 35.8 shots per game - third-most in the league at that time. That was a situation that the team knew was unsustainable. Since then, the Flyers have been able to hold opponents to 28.7 shots over 18 games since November 9, which is sixth-best in the league during that time period.

So why hasn't that translated to wins? That part could be somewhat maddening. The Flyers are one of ten teams who have held opponents to fewer than 30 shots per game since November 9; all of those 10 teams have played at least 15 games in that stretch. Eight of those ten teams have at least eight wins in that time. The Flyers have three.

Look a little closer, and you'll see a glaring number there - of those 10 teams, eight of them have allowed fewer than 50 goals in that time. The Flyers have allowed 67. That's second most in the entire league in that timeframe, not just among that 10-team group.

So the first instinct there would be to look at goaltending, but that's certainly not the problem. The biggest issue at this point seems to be that the mistakes the Flyers do make are ending up in the back of their net, and frequently, because the resulting situations have often given the opponent extremely good scoring chances. According to Natural Stat Trick, in that Nov. 9 - Dec. 12 timeframe, the Flyers have given up 37 goals on high-danger chances. That's the highest number in the league.

What that indicates is a lot of situations where the opponent is getting breakaways or odd-man rushes, such as the Vegas overtime winner when the Golden Knights forced a turnover in their own end and went the other way, or Nick Ritchie's breakaway goal in the third period of the Arizona game that came after he blocked a shot just inside his own blue line.

"Situational play is so important, especially for this team here," Tortorella had said ahead of the Washington game. "I think we struggle to understand momentum of games."

Fast-forward to Sunday night, and Tortorella was lamenting that particular situation.

"I don't like how we gave up the fourth one," he said afterwards. "I think we've got to keep our patience there and not even give it a chance to be a blocked shot that leads to that goal."

All of this wouldn't be as much of an issue if the Flyers weren't having as much trouble as they are scoring goals. An average of 2.41 goals per game isn't going to cut it no matter how well they're playing defensively. But again, the coaching staff has an idea of how they want this team to come together, and they've taken care of the first part of it. Next will come the offensive side - trying to generate more goals, while also being more situationally aware and cutting down on giving up high danger chances. The next step comes Tuesday night at Colorado.