There have not been many things the Flyers have done since last June that have gone according to plan. The team did not come away with any of the players they targeted in free agency. The early going of the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season has been a mess.
One of the few things that, thus far, has worked as designed has been the acquisition of Luke Schenn. The team is off a 2-5-0 start, but the 23-year-old defenseman has been a solid and physical presence on the top pairing.
Although Philadelphia is a high-pressure market in its own right, it pales in comparison to the constant intense scrutiny that players get in Toronto. Schenn is playing like there's been a weight lifted off his shoulders, and he's benefiting from playing alongside Kimmo Timonen (who still isn't at 100 percent and has been surviving on guile this far, but his savvy and calming presence are a boon to his partners).
From the first seven games of the regular season, it is safe to say that Schenn's hitting game (which included an 11-hit game) and willingness to drop the gloves when needed have come as advertised. His passing game was underrated. Although Schenn isn't zipping long stretch passes or anything like that, he's doing his part to get the team out of the defensive zone after he retrieves pucks. He's also been hard for forecheckers to knock off the puck when he retrieves it behind the net.
Schenn isn't going to win any fastest skater competitions, but the "mobility issues" that were so often pinned on him in Toronto were greatly exaggerated. He gets around just fine. There have been a few times where he's over-committed and attackers have gone past him, but it hasn't been a habitual issue by any means.
In the first weekend of the regular season, Schenn was clearly just trying to get acclimated and shake off the rust of not playing during the lockout. Since then, he's settled in and has played just fine. He even scored a goal in the blowout win in Florida.
On the opposite side of the coin, the early season has not been very kind to Luke's younger brother, Brayden Schenn. The second-year forward, who ran hot and cold offensively both during his NHL rookie season and lockout stint with the Phantoms, has thus far been unable to establish any sort of rhythm.
He started out the season with the opportunity to play right wing on the Claude Giroux line. Schenn did not look out of place during the practices in the abbreviated run-up to the season opener, but it was a different story once the season started.
During his abbreviated stint on the top line, Schenn did not look fast or creative enough to keep up with Giroux. Meanwhile, with Scott Hartnell (pre-injury) handling the north-south grunt work to create some space and down-low scoring chances, Schenn did not jump into seams in the defense. He merely skated up and down his own wing, not wanting to make mistakes. When Schenn did have the puck on his stick, he was impatient to get rid of it.
Since being moved off the top line, Schenn has shuttled between centering and playing wing on other line combinations. I kind of wish Peter Laviolette would just settle on one spot for him and leave him there for awhile. The (questionable) one-game suspension for leaving his feet on an otherwise routine check in the New Jersey game also didn't help things.
Offensively and even forechecking-wise, Schenn is really scuffling right now. Lots of wasted motion. He'll chip-and-chase and then not recover the puck in the corners, which is something he typically does well even when the goals aren't coming. When he does come up with a hard-earned puck, he'll immediately throw it into the slot, whether there's an open teammate or not. A little more patience is in order, whether it means simply holding on a split second longer or getting a cycling game going down low.
Right now, I don't know when Schenn will break out of his goalless drought. Usually, a player on the brink of a breakthrough has a game or two where he gets a bushel of chances but just can't put the puck home. But Brayden hasn't even been in the middle of many scoring chances yet, and that concerns me even more than the zero that's currently in his goal scoring column.
When things go well for Brayden Schenn, he's playing with an edge physically. He'll create a little room for himself, bounce or spin off opposing check attempts and most of all, crash the net. We really haven't too much of that so far.
On the positive side, I think the lockout time spent in the AHL under Terry Murray helped Schenn to continue to work on some of his defensive skills. Murray put him out in all game situations and while his AHL plus-minus rating was ugly, there was some improvement on the other side of the puck.
Frankly, I did not think Schenn was all that good defensively as a rookie, although it was not often mentioned. I'd characterize his rookie defensive play as "adequate when he also contributed in other ways." This year at five-on-five, even with the Flyers ugly record, I think he's been a notch better than that in helping out when the puck is in the Flyers' end of the ice. So there's at least one thing he's done thus far that he can build upon.
Hopefully, with the two-day break between games, Schenn (and other offensively struggling teammates) can take a deep breath, work on a few things at practice and start to recover their offensive games come tomorrow night in Washington. They need to get back to the things they did well when they were scoring goals last season.
In Brayden Schenn's case, that means winning pucks on the forecheck, using his body to make space and getting himself to the high-risk, high-reward areas of the ice. It would be great if he scored a goal (or more) against the Capitals. Right now, I'd settle for him being part of more scoring opportunities. He can build from there.
In hockey, when you can't score 'em pretty, you've got to score 'em gritty. Many of Schenn's rookie goals were of the latter variety: rebounds, scoring from the ice on crease scrambles, muscling himself into the slot and using a quick shot release to beat opposing goalie. In the AHL, he got some pretty goals off the rush. But at the NHL pace, Schenn seems to be a guy who will primarily score when he's getting his nose dirty.
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Something that has been lost due to the unusual severity of the Flyers' penalty killing problems in the early going of the season has been the fact that they actually have shown defensive improvement in five-on-five play.
Philadelphia has yielded nine even-strength goals this season, which would be an acceptable number if the penalty killing was even marginally better thus far. It should also be noted that the ES goal against total includes an empty net goal (Buffalo), a four-on-four goal (Buffalo) and a Tampa Bay goal scored immediately after a penalty expired.
In other words, in "typical" five-on-five situations, the Flyers have given up just six goals in the seven games to date. Ilya Bryzgalov deserves a huge share of the credit for that, because he's erased quite a few defensive breakdowns. But the team has also generally done a better job of boxing out in front and blocking shots.
Someone asked me on Twitter the other day if the pressure imposed by management to clean things up defensively has been a detriment to Peter Laviolette's up-tempo system (which he insisted will not change and does not ignore defensive responsibility in the first place). I would hope that's not the case.
I think it all starts with players keeping their feet moving and embracing the process of how defense can be turned into offense. That goes for the forwards as well as defensemen. Sooner or later, if you are skating hard and cutting off passing lanes, you will start to intercept puck with open ice head or chip them out past stationary defensemen at the blueline for two-on-one opportunities. The Flyers haven't had many of those chances so far.
On the whole, with the major exception of what happened with Claude Giroux on Tampa Bay's fourth goal on Sunday night, I think the Flyers forwards HAVE shown a willingness to backcheck when pucks are lost. So that has been a positive for the most part.
The defense-to-forward gap control on breakouts and clearing attempts has been OK at times and not so great at other times. So that's an area that can still use improvement in terms of consistency.
In terms of overall defense-offense balance, I think it should be said as well that the Flyers' personnel on the blueline has changed a lot since 2011. They have gotten bigger, which has helped in the boxing out down low in the zone at five-on-five and shot-blocking, but they have gone backward in terms of puck movers.
With the exception of Matt Carle, however, the Flyers current blueline is pretty much the same as the one that was in place when the Flyers ripped the Penguins' defense and goaltending apart in the playoffs last spring. Andrej Meszaros was out of the lineup then, too, and Chris Pronger had long since been lost by that point.
As such, I don't think it's as simple as saying that if the Flyers added one puck-moving defenseman in the Carle mode, the offensive floodgates would open. Would it help? Sure. But I think it's silly to say "If only Matt Carle were still here, the Flyers would be scoring a lot more goals." If that were the case, the team should have paid ANY price to keep him. In reality, the lack of a frequent puck-handling, stretch-passing defenseman is but one of many factors that have hurt thus far.
Here's one of the biggies: If the Flyers were doing better on the power play, other teams would have to take more chances that leave them vulnerable defensively. Then you see more Philadelphia five-on-five goals as well. It all goes hand-in-hand.
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