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Coming off a weekend split in St. Louis and Dallas, Rick Tocchet’s Philadelphia Flyers returned home on Sunday from their dads’ trip. The team overcame deficits of 1-0, 3-1 and 5-3 to beat the Blues 6-5 (1-0) via shootout. Arriving in Dallas around 2 a.m., the team faced the daunting task of going up against a well-rested top Western Conference contender the next night. Thoroughly outplayed for 45+ minutes, the Flyers took a 5-1 drubbing from the Stars.
Sunday was an off-day for the team. On Monday, the team resumes practice at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees. After additional practice days on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Flyers face a rematch at home with the Blues (currently 6-9-4). Jim Montgomery’s club absorbed a 4-1 home loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday. Come Tuesday, the Blues are in Toronto to face the Maple Leafs.
What to watch at practice this week
After Saturday’s game in Dallas, Tocchet said there would be a heavy emphasis on small-area play at this week’s practices. He was unhappy with the team’s performance in 50/50 puck battles in that game (whether 1-on-1 or 2-on-2). Additionally, the coach felt there was far too much puck watching and backing into the defensive zone.
Heading into the weekend, the Flyers had outstanding defensive metrics (see Inside the Numbers in the most recent Friday Forecheck). Unfortunately, those numbers took a beating in the last two games. On Friday in St. Louis, a combination of turnovers and subpar regulation goaltending from Samuel Ersson overshadowed the generally low volume of chances Philly gave up. However, the Flyers allowed five goals again on Saturday. This time, the goaltending play from Dan Vladar was fine. The team yielded too much time and space — both at 5-on-5 and the penalty kill — to the Stars.
Tocchet and assistant coaches Jay Varady and Yogi Svejkovsky have worked to gradually implement more offense coaching into the mix. There was very little offensive zone coaching under the previous staff. However, the team’s play off the rush in transition has taken a step backward so far this season. They’ve had some recent progress in getting pucks and traffic to the net.
Who’s hot, who’s not
- The Flyers’ bedrock trio of Noah Cates centering Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink has been a bit off-kilter since Foerster’s foot injury and recent three-game return. It will be interesting to see if Tocchet and company experiment with juggling the wingers centered by Cates and Sean Couturier this week. Brink is pointless (-3) in his last five games. Cates is four games removed from his last point (winning goal in Nashville).
- Meanwhile, the trio with Christian Dvorak centering Trevor Zegras and Owen Tippett figures to stay intact for a while. The line exploded offensively in St. Louis. Subsequently, Dvorak scored the lone Flyers’ goal in Dallas.
- No team relies on its fourth line to score. Within any individual game, the fourth line is there to supply energy, physicality and to set up the next line with an advantageous start to their shift. At the very least, don’t give up a goal or leave the team shorthanded. However, every club needs at least periodic offensive contributions from Line 4. The Flyers haven’t gotten a single goal yet from the 4th line in 18 games. Nikita Grebenkin’s three points (1g, 2a) came elsewhere in the rotation. None among Garnet Hathaway (18 games), Rodrigo Abols (13 games), Nicolas Deslauriers (eight games) Jacob Gaucher (three games) or Carl Grundstrom (one game) have chipped in a point to date.
- Cam York got “banged up” late last week. He’s played through it and continued to log 21-plus minutes of ice time time. However, he didn’t quite look like himself this weekend after a run of outstanding games in all three zones. Meanwhile, Jamie Drysdale had a rough game on Saturday in Dallas.
- Samuel Ersson has been stellar in shootouts this season. Unfortunately, his career-long pattern of being streaky and injury-prone has continued this season. When he’s on top of his game, Ersson can provide excellent goalie play for a month-plus. However, he’s also struggled for weeks at a time. That’s been especially true when he misses stretches due to (mostly groin) injuries.
Flyers Daily: Meltzer’s Musings (“Ask Billy” edition)
The Flyers have played 18 games to date. That’s less than one quarter of a season. However, they’ve already played 11 home games (more than one quarter of the entire home schedule). It’s still too early to make big-picture conclusions, especially with an all-new coaching staff. However, there’s been enough hockey played to look at early season trends.
Saturday’s game aside, the Flyers have looked resilient and much-improved defensively plus in goal (Dan Vladar). They’ve been competitive in 16 of the games played to date. Conversely, the team’s offense has been sporadic, especially at 5-on-5. Additionally, they’ve been prone to slow starts to games.
It’s great that the team has already gained 10 points (four wins and two regulation ties) from games they’ve either trailed after two periods or fallen behind in the third. However, this is not sustainable for any team. The Flyers must start to play from ahead (or at least even). Ultimately, it’s losing hockey to chase the game too often. Even when done successfully, there’s a wear-down effect. For example. the Flyers may not have won in Dallas even under ideal conditions. However, the run of consecutive OT/shootout games made the last game of the 3-in-4 even tougher.
In this week’s Mondays with Meltzer edition of Flyers Daily, Jason Myrtetus touch on all of these issues and more. Later, we turned it over to the viewers who submitted “Ask Billy” questions on X/Twitter or by email.
