After a 1-5-1 beginning of a season, victories of any kind are welcomed if not sorely needed. Thursday’s 2-1 victory over the St. Louis Blues is the third Philadelphia Flyers victory in their last four contests after winning a track meet over the Minnesota Wild last Saturday and notching their first road regulation win on Tuesday in Boston. Though falling to the rebuilding Montreal Canadiens on Sunday wasn’t optimal, it’s understandable given that the Flyers were in the second half of a back-to-back (in fairness, so was Montreal) and handed the net to 22-year-old Aleksei Kolosov for his NHL debut.
But not all wins are created equal. It will take more than one solid week for the Flyers to restore the version of themselves that fired on all cylinders in the middle of last season, not to mention rebuilding all of the trust lost over the last several years. Evaluating Thursday’s game a little deeper shows which areas of the team are trending in the right direction and where progress still needs to be made.
Flyers Can Ride Ersson if They Want
After starting the season with three back-to-backs in their first nine games, the Flyers won’t have to deal with another until the final weekend of November. The Flyers won’t leave the Eastern time zone until Nov. 27 and are home for eight of their 14 games next month. There is no such thing as an easy month in the NHL, but from a rest and travel standpoint, it’s rarely less strenuous than that.
That creates a different set of circumstances than the ones that caused head coach John Tortorella to run Sam Ersson into the ground at the end of last season. It’s apples to apples in some ways, namely the concerns surrounding the backup goalie situation, a role that has become Kolosov’s to lose, at least in the short term. But Ersson’s performance over the last two games (.978 save percentage, plus-4.18 goals saved above expected – per Moneypuck) affirms the strong play that preceded last season’s fade wasn’t a mirage.
“Sam’s playing well. I don’t know his numbers. I’m not sure what they are. I know they’re not great numbers, but he’s played well right from the get-go,” said Tortorella. “Last year when he struggled, it was too much. Plus, I told you guys last year that I would have done the same thing because we really didn’t have anyone else playing at that time. Sam had to eat it, so we’re going to try to do it the right way with him here in a long season.”
Tortorella later said that while he isn’t afraid to ride Ersson, they aren’t committed to waiting a month for their next back-to-back to give Kolosov another opportunity. He is just 22 years old, so the Flyers certainly don’t want him sitting for too long. Their Nov. 11 home game against the rebuilding San Jose Sharks (tied for 28th with 2.45 goals per game) would seem like a natural spot to give him another look.
That would mean four more starts in a row for Ersson, all of them against teams that made the playoffs last season, including bonafide Cup contenders in the Carolina Hurricanes and Florida Panthers. Not only did Ersson play well from a volume standpoint, but he showed he can make the type of game-saving play a true No. 1 makes when he stonewalled the Blues’ Brayden Schenn at point-blank range in the closing seconds on Thursday. Ersson said earlier in the season he didn’t feel he was making enough of those saves. That may be starting to change.
“I think the guys, how they’re playing in front of me is a huge part of that. I think I’ve been playing pretty good. Like, it’s kind of for me to kind of like dig in a little bit, to trust my structure and like knowing that the results are going to come if I play the right way,” said Ersson.
5-on-5 Strides
Of course, that only works if the structure is strong. The Flyers allowed just 21 shots on Thursday, their lowest total of any game. They didn’t allow fewer than 25 shots in any of their first five games and have now done so in four of their last five (they yielded 26 on Tuesday). They allowed 1.98 expected goals to the Blues, their second-lowest total of the season. Out of that total, 1.73 came at 5-on-5, ranking fifth out of their 10 games.
“To speak to the structure, it’s been void for most of the eight, nine, ten games here. I think the past couple of games we’re getting there,” said Tortorella. “What I appreciate from the players is that they’re not over-extending themselves offensively because we’re struggling. They are staying within that concept of it and we’ll get out of it… it was a very low event game again for both teams, our fourth game in six nights. I thought their first period – I don’t think we played with enough energy in the first period, but we grinded.”
There were a few extended defensive zone shifts early in the first and second periods. The numbers didn’t love the Flyers’ game — they finished with a 40.75% expected goals share at 5-on-5 and were below 50% in every period, according to Natural Stat Trick. But 24 blocked shots, the team’s second-highest total behind 28 in their previous game, helped keep the Blues at bay.
“I think most of the guys are saying this, but this is how we have to play. I mean, we know that, and I think you can kind of sense it like when we’re blocking shots, when we’re doing the small things right, you can kind of feel it on the bench and on the ice that we’re rolling, and I think that gives us confidence,” said Ersson.
His comment about blocking the right shots is particularly telling compared to Ivan Fedotov saying that the team’s efforts to block shots when he was in the net sometimes made things tougher on him. The Flyers are confident playing in front of Ersson, and if there’s any positive from him playing so much late last season, it helped accelerate acclimating to him as the team’s No. 1 goaltender after Carter Hart exited the picture. Ersson also talked about how that heavy workload helped him learn to recover from games, which should make him better equipped to handle a full season as a starting netminder.
Offensively, Tortorella had to be pleased with Ryan Poehling’s dazzling end-to-end burst that set up Philadelphia’s opening goal after saying the team lacked speed after Sunday’s loss to Montreal, Poehling’s first NHL team. Everyone knows Poehling can fly — according to NHL Edge, he’s in the 97th percentile in speed bursts over 20 miles per hour (he was in the 95th percentile last season). Turning that speed into creating scoring chances is where it gets hard — there’s a reason Poehling isn’t Connor McDavid or Nathan MacKinnon, who are in the 99th percentile in that category (then again, what aren’t they in the 99th percentile at). But it offered an injection of energy after an uninspiring start.
“It’s always just staying in motion,” Poehling said when asked how he channels his speed. “I mean, a lot of this, a lot of today’s hockey, is just anticipation, and then on top of that, just being ready to skate.”
Teaching Moments
During his first shift on Tuesday, Matvei Michkov could not push a puck on the wall near the Flyers bench out of the defensive zone, contributing to a strong shift for St. Louis. He finished the period with just 2:53 of ice time, last on the team. He finished the night at 13:56, an NHL low by 100 seconds. That led to some interesting insight into the Michkov-Tortorella dynamic.
“He is a 19-year-old kid playing in the best league in the world. I think he is beginning to see what the National Hockey League is as far as the speed, as far as time and space. All the things it comes with,” said Tortorella. “There’s going to be some major struggles with him 5-on-5. We expect that, where I’m going to have to teach. In that teaching moment, I’m not going to tell you what it’s all about, but if we keep on seeing the same mistake and he totally is not concentrating on a certain part of the game and that’s where I’ve been very honest with him about that.”
Evaluating Michkov’s 5-on-5 play is a difficult balance between process and results. He has just one 5-on-5 point this season, and it was a secondary assist. His 49.29% xGF% is solid, though, ranking fifth among Flyers forwards and within a percentage point of the top three. He’s been held pointless in his last three games as the Flyers’ power play has sputtered a bit. That means more work for Tortorella, which he planned for, and he is preaching positive reinforcement.
“He is a great kid. He wants to do so well, but it’s a lot. It’s a lot for him… I wanted him to sit, relax, and think about what I said to him. I think it was two or three rotations then we put him back out there. That’s the way it’s going to be,” said Tortorella.
Tortorella did say he wouldn’t rule out Michkov sitting for a game at some point. One young player who already has is Bobby Brink, one of Tuesday’s heroes by scoring the late tie-breaking goal. The finish was impressive, especially for a 5-foot-8, 169-pound winger to score so close to the net. But it was the entire play that truly impressed Tortorella.
“He’s gone through a little bit of an up and down with me as far as the defensive part of the game, but the puck follows him. Not the goal but the play before he scores the goal. He’s in traffic and he just pushes it wide and goes to the net. It was a really good offensive play.”
Related: What Caused the Flyers’ Last Rebuild to Fail
It was easy to wonder if Brink would get lost in the shuffle. He didn’t impress as much as Tyson Foerster last season and Michkov naturally stole the spotlight among skilled, young right-wingers on the roster. But Tortorella’s comments and the first 11 games have reminded fans that it will take a village for this Flyers team to succeed.
“I thought tonight we played good enough to win,” said Poehling. “but not to our standard.”
Advanced stats via Natural Stat Trick
