Flyers disappointing end shouldn’t take away from successful season
The Flyers are more than their lackluster end to the 2019-20 season. Here's why.
Hello friends!
Today’s newsletter is all about the Philadelphia Flyers and their rough Game 7 loss that ousted them from the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Flyers had a disappointing effort in a win-or-go-home match against the Islanders, but I’m here to give you a bit of a pick-me-up and tell you why this is only just the beginning for this squad. Let’s dive in!
(Photo by Chase Agnello-Dean/NHLI via Getty Images)
The start of the 2019-20 NHL season feels so long ago. In fact, it really was. With the calendar flipping to September, we are essentially 11 months removed from the beginning of the latest NHL season. In normal times, the next hockey season would be just around the corner, with training camps and preseason set to begin later this month had things turned out just a little bit different.
But… you all know the story by now. We are no where close to precedented times and this season is not at all a normal year by any stretch. Which, in turn, has made the end of the Philadelphia Flyers 2019-20 season a bit of a hard pill to swallow.
The Flyers season ended at the hands of the Islanders over the weekend with the team one game removed from reaching the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 2010. The Game 7 that ended their playoff run was a tough watch, given the team’s poor performance in a do-or-die situation after showcasing quite the effort to tie the series up to get them to that point.
Even before the sub-par effort in Game 7, fans were already anxious given the Flyers went down 3-1 in the series early and seemed to be headed for a swift exit. Nothing, outside of the warm-up round robin tournament, was easy for the Flyers this postseason it seemed. The team’s hard-fought 4-2 series victory over the Montreal Canadiens felt more like a relief to win than a cause for celebration of the team’s first playoff series win in eight years due to how much the Flyers were pushed by the opposition.
That sentiment carried over into the Islanders series, where the Flyers didn’t look like the dominant team they had been before the season pause and during the round robin. Simple passes were missed, uncharacteristic defensive breakdowns were had, and the power play just… stopped working completely. The Flyers top-end scoring talent in Travis Konecny, Claude Giroux, and James van Riemsdyk were silent for a majority of the postseason, and some of the team’s more reliable defensemen in Travis Sanheim and Matt Niskanen made bizarre mistakes that lead directly to goals against.
It was, in total, quite a messy postseason from this Flyers team that really hadn’t been in the last few months of the regular season.
The prevailing feeling from Flyers fans on social media during Game 7 and in its immediate aftermath was one of abject frustration and disappointment. How could the team play like this after such a dominant showing in the round robin? Where were the Flyers’ stars in the biggest game of the season? Is this team that we had such high hopes for coming into these playoffs… a fraud?
It’s an easy spiral to go down in the wake of a crushing loss, I’ll admit. However, taking a few steps back from the situation brings into view a broader — and more positive — picture than expected.
For starters, yes, the Flyers effort in Game 7 — and throughout parts of the postseason as a whole — was lacking. There’s no excusing that in the slightest. The Islanders were ready from puck drop until the final horn, and the 16 shots the Flyers generated over the course of the 60 minute match is not acceptable in a win-or-go-home situation.
Given the effort the Flyers showed in getting to Game 7 in the first place after being down 3-1 in the series, it stings knowing that this was all the team could muster.
However, even with the way the playoffs ended for the Flyers, I don’t think you can say that this season wasn’t successful by some metric. For the first time since 2012, the Flyers won a playoff series and advanced to the second round of the postseason. For a team that didn’t qualify for the playoffs in four of their last seven years as a franchise, this is a huge step forward for the team no matter how you slice it.
I get that 2020 has gone on for years now, but it wasn’t that long ago when the Flyers were being coached by Craig Berube (before he Got Good™ with St. Louis) and Dave Hakstol, and oscillated around in the middle of the Metropolitan Division without much direction. Alain Vigneault, for all his missteps in these playoffs, has — without question — turned this team into an annual contender for the foreseeable future, if his regular season resume is anything to go by.
There are things that need to be fixed, for sure. The power play — which went 4-for-52 all postseason — absolutely cannot stand as it is going into next season. Should Michel Therrien, who heads up the team’s special teams, get the hook this offseason for the unit’s disasterous performance? It’s a possibility that should be on the table for sure, but retooling the team’s power play is at the bare minimum a must before the 2020-21 season.
Flyers vs. Islanders Game 7 shot heat map at five-on-five, via Natural Stat Trick.
And Vigneault, for all the good he’s done, has relied too much on players such as Derek Grant and Nate Thompson this postseason instead of leaning on his star players. It is a fault many head coaches have in the NHL (they like their role guys for… some reason), but it’s one that bit the Flyers at times these playoffs.
There’s also something to be said for the team’s star players. Kevin Hayes and Jake Voracek were big-time performers, but it’s hard not to wonder where Giroux, Konecny, and van Riemsdyk went wrong this postseason. I’ll be interested to see if we hear from any of the players in exit interviews over the next week or so, and if they’ll be asked these questions by the media.
Personally, I’m not terribly concerned by the lack of production from certain star players, and this playoff loss is not by any means all at their feet. It takes a collective team effort to win a postseason series, and it certainly takes a collective effort to lose one as well. Players like Giroux, Voracek, and van Riemsdyk are getting older, but they’ve yet to decline dramatically in their regular season numbers for me to get too worked up about them, but your milage may vary on that front.
There are positives for this Flyers lineup going forward, however. For starters, the Flyers played a full season and playoffs without former No. 2 overall pick Nolan Patrick due to his migraine disorder. I’m still high on what Patrick can bring to this Flyers lineup, especially given that he plays such a pivotal role at center. His presence in the lineup would no doubt be better than Thompson, who will likely hit the free agent market after his one-year deal expires this offseason.
The Flyers will also add Oskar Lindblom back into the lineup after his successful cancer treatment. Lindblom was one of the Flyers best players before his diagnosis in December that shook the team, so getting him back for a full season will be huge. Not only that, the Flyers have players like Morgan Frost, Isaac Ratcliffe, Yegor Zamula, and Cam York waiting in the wings to get their shot at cracking this lineup. Frost, Ratcliffe, and Zamula all have a real shot of making it into the Flyers lineup for next season, and they’d no doubt be an upgrade over league veterans in Grant, Thompson, and Justin Braun.
Obviously, no fan wants to hear “there’s always next year” when it comes to their sports team of choice. For Flyers fans, that sentiment has been part of the team’s mantra since the team began its rebuild after their 2010 Stanley Cup Final loss. If you’re a Flyers fan, it’s more than alright to be sick of waiting for this team to look good and win a championship while doing so.
However, this will not be the last time this team will have a shot at the Stanley Cup. Coming into the season, this was supposed to be the start of a long window for this Flyers team. Carter Hart has officially passed the test in net. Homegrown talents like Lindblom and Joel Farabee have made real impacts on the ice. Sean Couturier is finally getting the recognition he deserves as a Selke Trophy finalist. After so many years of mediocrity as a bubble playoff team, these Flyers were clearly one of the NHL’s best teams by the season’s end and were given a crucial bye to the first round of the postseason to show for it.
It is hard not to feel cheated of what could have been had the season not paused right when the Flyers were finding their groove. The round robin showed us a glimpse of the team from the regular season that was firing on all cylinders, but it never materialized when the games mattered. In the most Philadelphia way possible, we got our hopes up over a meaningless three-game exhibition series and were crushed when things didn’t turn out the way we had hoped it would.
If these playoffs taught us anything it’s that there’s a lot this Flyers team can improve upon, but at the same time, there’s legitimate reasons to be excited about the team going forward. And I, for one, cannot wait for puck drop on the 2020-21 season to see them in action again.
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