Philadelphia Flyers 2018-19 Season Preview Part 1 - The Forwards (SPOILER ALERT: They're A Wagon)
The Philadelphia Flyers are currently in Colorado on a “team building retreat” while the 2018-19 NHL season gets underway tonight. To me, that sure sounds like they’re smoking a bunch of doobies, but as long as they don’t get as high as this team’s potential this year, they should be fine. I’m pretty happy with that joke, if we’re being honest. I didn’t intend on writing it when I started that sentence but sometimes the keyboard just strokes itself in mysterious ways. But yeah, their season doesn’t get started until tomorrow night in Vegas and it wouldn’t truly be a Philadelphia Flyers season without starting off the year with a 10pm EST puck drop.
I feel like this is the first time in a little while that I’m heading into a Flyers season completely optimistic. Obviously this team still has some issues when it comes to goaltending and all we can really do is just pray that the Carter Hart era begins sooner than later. But outside of goaltending, I really don’t see any major flaws in this lineup and especially not when you look at the group of forwards they are starting off the year with. One of the biggest issues with the Flyers over the last few years has been a lack of secondary scoring and forward depth. The top line would always be nasty but then after that it was like sending an ECHL team out there. But this year? Well I would go to goddamn war with the Flyers top 9 here and then the 4th line (depending on who is at center) may actually be a skill line for the first time in forever.
Giroux – Couturier – Konecny
Lindblom – Patrick – Voracek
JvR – Vorobyev – Simmonds
Laughton – Lehtera/Weal – Raffl
Now I know that Lindblom is probably going to start off on that 2nd line with NolPat and Voracek. Especially since you probably don’t want two rookies in Lindblom and Vorobyev on the same line out there. But my dream lineup and hopefully the way it looks a few weeks into the season once the boys get some games under their feet is for JvR to slide his way up there into the top 6. That line could be an absolute machine with JvR cashing in on all the opportunities set up by Jake Voracek going to work along the boards and Nolan Patrick having a breakout season. But regardless, those are 3 full lines of dudes who can play and guys who can put points up on the board. I really don’t remember the last time I’ve went into a season feeling completely confident about 2 full lines let alone a 3rd.
Obviously everybody knows what to expect out of the top line. Last year Claude Giroux had a career year after being shifted over to the wing. In case you took a few too many pucks to the dome over the summer and forget, he had 34 goals and 102 points on the year. That was in 82 games as compared to his 82 games he played in 2016-17 when he put up 14 goals and 58 points. To be fair, he was still dealing with some injury issues that season but a 64 point differential? Not a big deal or anything. And then there is Sean Couturier who finally started to receive the credit and attention he deserves as one of the best two-way centers in the league and was a Selke finalist last season. He put up 30 goals for the first time in his career, had 76 points, and oh yeah he just so happened to have 5 points in the final game of the season on a torn/sprained MCL. Now he had always been one of the better shutdown centermen in the league but a major reason he was able to really breakout offensively last year is because it turns out that playing with Claude Giroux is great for your point production.
Not too bad when all you have to do is go to the net with your stick on the ice and you’ve got a nice little bowl of marinara coming your way. So you’ve got a guy who finished 4th in Hart Trophy voting in Claude Giroux on the wing of a guy who finished 2nd in Selke Trophy voting in Sean Couturier. You can put pretty much whoever else you’d want to on that 1RW spot and it would still be a nasty line. Fortunately for the Flyers, they can throw Travis Konecny out there.
I wrote a blog last year titled “Brad Marchand Is The Floor For Travis Konecny’s Potential, Not The Ceiling”. Part of that was just trying to troll the sugar cookie soft Boston fans into clicking the blog. But as the old saying goes, “there is truth in every jest”. Do I think that Marchand is Konecny’s floor? No. Marchand is one of the best players in this league and if he’s the floor, then Konecny is the next Gretzky. But do I think that Travis Konecny is the Flyers’ version of Brad Marchand with the potential to end up being a little better as he continues to develop? Absolutely. He’s a small little sack of shit who you hate playing against for a variety of different reasons. #1 being that he’s a fucking prick and always pissing everybody off. The kind of guy who only his mother could love and she’ll probably even tell you he’s a prick. And #2, despite how much of a little jackass he is out there on the ice, he’s still a skill player who has a ridiculous amount of speed and can put the puck in the back of the net 24 times last season, and that’s while he was still making a few trips to Dave Hakstol’s dog house every now and then. A full year on the top line? He’s looking at 30+ at least. This line has a little bit of everything. Giroux is one of the best set up guys in the league. Couturier is a complete 200′ player. And Konecny brings the break out speed + gritty intangibles to round out the top line. I could gush over this line forever but we’ll move on from here.
In my opinion, there are two main additions to the Flyers’ lineup at forward this year. One of them was obviously bringing back James van Riemsdyk and we’ll get to that in a bit. But the other? Well it’s a healthy Nolan Patrick. Now I don’t want to jinx anything here or not but for the first time since probably the kid was playing peewees, Nolan Patrick went into the summer without any serious injuries to rehab or take care of. For the first time in years, he got to spend the entire summer training instead of trying to get healthy again. Is it a little worrisome that he already has such a lengthy history of injuries and he’s only coming into his 2nd season? Sure. But he’s developing physically and now he’s able to train at the NHL level so I’m not too nervous about it. That fact of the matter is that there was a significant difference between Nolan Patrick’s first half of the year last season and his 2nd half of the year. That was due to the combination of getting a little more experience in the NHL and getting healthier as the year went on. 13 goals and 30 points last year. It’s not terrible but those aren’t exactly star numbers. I think what we’ll see this year is Nolan Patrick start to assert himself physically and come into the season hungry as shit to prove why he was the 2nd overall pick and projected to go #1 for most of his draft year. Being able to play a full season on a line with a guy like Jake Voracek who had 65 assists last year should definitely help his numbers jump up.
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James van Riemsdyk is coming off a year where he scored the most goals in his career with 36. Now it’s a little different signing a guy coming off a career year who is 29-years-old as opposed to signing a guy coming off a career year who is still in the beginning of his prime. But for the most part, the Flyers are absolutely stacked with set up guys. Giroux and Voracek were both top 5 in assists last year. They needed somebody who can go out there and put the puck in the back of the net without looking to make that one last pass, and they got their guy by bringing James van Riemsdyk back. Some people may look at the $7M contract and think it’s an overpayment but the Flyers have plenty of cap space to work with so the money means absolutely nothing besides the fact that they needed to get a guy like JvR back in the lineup and they were willing to pay to make it happen. And adding JvR to the lineup gives this team so many more options to work with. He fits perfectly into the middle 6 whether that’s with Patrick and Voracek or if it’s with Vorobyev and Simmonds. I mean that combo of van Riemsdyk and Simmonds will be one of the greasiest tandems in front of the net the league has ever seen. If there is ever a loose puck around the crease when those two guys are out on the ice together, it’s ending up in the net. That much is a fact. And then he can also jump around between the two powerplay units. So there are plenty of options for how James van Riemsdyk can fit into this lineup, all of them are positive, and the Flyers have needed a guy like JvR ever since they traded him to Toronto so Hextall was smart as shit to make sure he went out there and brought him back this summer.
We already know what to expect out of Jake Voracek so we won’t spend too much time on him. He might end up pissing you off a little bit after he goes a few games without scoring but he’ll always get some assists, he’ll always be making plays happen, he’ll always be driving possession, and the physical toll he puts on defenders who have to try to take the puck away from him is enough to make most guys just want to quit by the 3rd period.
You may remember Mikhail Vorobyev from that time that Troy Terry put America on his back in the shootout of the 2017 World Juniors Semifinal. His last name at the time was spelled “Vorobyov” but he ended up scoring a goal in that shootout and broke out the dab while going down the line. That’s confidence. That’s swagger. That’s what I want to see out of my newest 3rd line center. I don’t think too many people over the summer thought Vorobyev would crack the roster at all, let alone being on the opening night roster. But he’ll be making his NHL debut tomorrow night and I think he’ll fit right in. I wouldn’t expect Vorobyev to put up any crazy numbers this season especially since he only had 9 goals in 58 games last year playing for Lehigh Valley. But he’s another 200′ type of player. It might take him a little bit to adjust to the speed of the NHL but he’s not going to be a guy whoo ends up watching the game from the press box because Hakstol can’t trust him out there defensively. He has a nice little mean streak to his game, isn’t afraid to mix it up, and then can also make things happen in the offensive zone.
Really what you’re looking for out of your 3rd line is a group who can go out there and not get scored on right away, can hopefully eat some time in the offensive zone, and will occasionally end up on the scoresheet here and there. And that’s what the Flyers are going to get out of Mikhail Vorobyev.
I mentioned this yesterday in my blog but I don’t think I can stress the importance of Oskar Lindblom switching his number from 54 to 23 enough. Finally being able to grab a sweater number that doesn’t suck is going to do wonders for the kid’s confidence. Especially when he’s starting off the year with the 2nd line. I think a lot of people went into last season thinking that Lindblom would have been a lock to make the roster. Now that we can just look back on it in hindsight, I have a feeling that the extra year in the AHL is going to really pay off with his development heading into this year. We saw him struggle a bit in the time that he did spend with the Flyers last year. He didn’t look completely out of place out there or anything but he also wasn’t a difference maker. But after spending most of last season in the AHL as well as heading back to Lehigh Valley for the playoffs, he should be ready to take on an actual role this year with the Flyers.
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Let’s quickly talk about Wayne Simmonds before we wrap this thing up. Obviously last year was tough on him. He played seemingly the entire season injured. He maybe had 2 or 3 games where he wasn’t hurt and the rest of the year he was dealing with a CVS receipt long list of injuries. He still had 24 goals and 46 points on the season but everybody would still agree that it was a down year for Simmer. Now when the Flyers signed JvR this summer, I think a lot of people–myself included–thought that meant that a Wayne Simmonds trade was on the way. But I guess the Flyers realized a couple of things. 1) That they probably already missed their window to get the best return value on Simmonds and if they were going to trade him at all, it would have needed to be when he was an All Star Game MVP. And 2) that he was playing all of last season hurt and still put up some decent numbers. So why not keep him around and see what he has left in the tank going into this season healthy? Wayne Simmonds plays a throwback style game. And the way he plays the game obviously takes a toll on the body so even though he’s only 30 years old, his playing style makes him an old 30 year old. But he’s healthy enough right now and on the final year of his contract. I’m willing to bet he’s been keeping tabs on everybody who has been counting him out and I’d expect a bounce back year for Wayne Simmonds on the ice. Combine that with how big of a role his plays in that locker room and I think in a couple of months we’ll all agree that holding on to him was the right choice.
The 4th line looks good for a 4th line. I think I’ll like them a lot better the nights that Weal is in there at 4C instead of Lehtera but yeah, that’s not a bad line at all. Especially considering how bad Flyers 4th lines have been the past few years.
Feels great to finally be blogging the Flyers again, boys and girls. Welcome back. Let’s have a season.
*Tomorrow I’ll preview the defense, goalies, Hakstol, and make a final prediction on where the team ends up*.