QUICK HITS: MAY 2, 2018
1) Flyers forward Michael Raffl will be joining Team Austria for the IIHF World Championship, arriving on Sunday in Copenhagen to play vs. Slovakia. He will miss the team's games against Switzerland and Russia. The holdup in his travel was related to waiting in the United States to receive the Villach-issued birth certificate/paperwork that he needed in order to bring his 3-month-old daughter, Elina, on the trip. More info
here. The only other Flyer playing the Worlds this year is defenseman Radko Gudas (Czech Republic).
2) Yesterday, Brian Smith and I recorded a new edition of the FlyerBuzz podcast for
Flyers Radio 24/7, which should be available in the next day or so. This 40-minute episode looks at the growth of young Flyers players this season with Nolan Patrick and Travis Konecny being focal points, the additions of Travis Sanheim and Oskar Lindblom to the Phantoms' Calder Cup playoff run, previews of the Phantoms' second round series against the Charlotte Checkers and the three CHL Final series with four Flyers prospects involved. There's also a Flyers Alumni update.
3) While NHL rookies Patrick, Sanheim, Lindblom and Robert Hägg all showed varying degrees of development at the top level this season and second-year NHLers Ivan Provorov and Konecny took big steps as well from an offensive standpoint, it would tough to argue that Taylor Leier's NHL rookie season moved his career in the right direction apart from spending the entire season on the NHL roster (which, no doubt, was due to the fourth-year pro no longer being waiver exempt if the Flyers were to try to assign him to the Phantoms).
Leier impressed in the preseason, including a two-goal game in the Allentown half of the Flyers' now-annual split squad game. Opening the season, he was a regular in Dave Hakstol's lineup in the early part of the season as part of a fast-skating checking line with Scott Laughton and Raffl. The line generated a lot of puck pressure and scoring chances relative to its role, but Leier and Raffl struggled to finish off any of their opportunities. Leier was also part of the penalty kill early in the season.
Soon, however, Leier fell out of favor with Hakstol. The Flyers penalty kill, which was at a respectable 54-for-67 (80.6 pct, 17th overall) heading into the Nov. 18 game against Calgary, got strafed for three power play goals against in that game and went into a lengthy tailspin. Leier individually struggled and then got pulled off the PK rotation with Hakstol publicly noting he was having issues and "needed a break" from those duties.
No longer part of the PK and unable to contribute much offensively in his brief NHL career, Leier eventually found himself on the outside of the lineup entirely. In the final two games before the Christmas break, he skated only 7:03 and an unusually eventful 6:07 (costly defensive mistake and a disallowed goal on a puck he knocked in with what was ruled on replay to be a high stick) of ice time. After the Christmas break, Leier only dressed in nine games the rest of the season; only four appearances after Feb. 3 (7:08, 9:04, 10:09 and 4:27 of ice time) and none after March 3.
Hakstol is not one to go into public specifics about what an oft-scratched player needs to improve. falls back quickly into coach-speak ("[so-and-so] is a valuable member of our team and he is working hard for his next opportunity") while saying little else beyond the player generically "needing to clean up a few areas."
Without specifics, one has to read between the lines.
In Leier's case, the fact that the player was taken off the PK was likely strike one in him staying in the lineup. The fact that his puck-pressure efficacy dropped a bit after a strong start, both forechecking and in back pressure, was likely strike two. Strike three was the fact that he is relatively undersized and despite his speed and pre-NHL background as an all-situations player in the AHL with good overall hockey sense, has not contributed enough offensively despite a decent number of scoring chances (two career goals and seven points in 55 games, including one goal and five points in 39 games this season) to be considered a candidate for a look higher in the lineup.
That left Leier, no longer waiver exempt, in limbo. He came to the rink every day and diligently did all of the extra work expected of both rookies in general and health scratches in particular, but there probably came a point where he realized he had been moved down to the very bottom of the coach's depth chart and there was nothing he could do to work his way back up again after veteran Matt Read returned from AHL exile to do a solid job on the defensive and PK side of the role in which rookie Leier had initially unseated him.
No doubt, Leier was frustrated but he never let it show. As a rookie NHL role player with much to prove, he wasn't really in position to say much. The personable 24-year-old player never been the complaining type, anyway. He's always been someone with a positive, no-excuses attitude from his first Development Camp in 2012, through his years as a Phantom (even saying injuries were a non-factor in a downturn in his play as he tried valiantly but ineffectively to play through separations in both shoulders the second half of his rookie year) and up through his still-brief stints in the NHL.
At first this season, he seemed to have found his niche as a contemporary NHL 4th liner after he'd been a two-way top six forward in the American League. Right now, though, it's hard to say what Leier's outlook is for next season.
Certainly, he'll be in training camp and compete for an NHL roster spot. Temporarily at least, Read's impending departure as an unrestricted free agent helps Leier's chances. However, if the Flyers sign a veteran UFA winger with some two-way cache and a penalty-killer with proven ability to chip in offensively, too, Leier is back to fighting an uphill battle to remain on the Flyers' NHL roster.
It does neither the team nor him much good to sit out weeks, even full months at a time as a 14th forward. If he's waived late in camp and claimed by another team (which would have to place him on its NHL roster), that is one possibility. However, there have been flashes of another level being accessible in Leier's game, at least as a fourth liner who is capable of faring better on the PK with the benefit of added experience after a full season on an NHL roster and loads of practice time. Forechecking and back pressure with speed must be constants in his game, and he has to clear pucks defensively when there's a chance.
Offensively, Leier will never be a star. But he does have enough game to still develop into the role that was initially envisioned for him as a versatile forward who can move around the lineup. He has enough skill to where he needn't be a zero offensively in the NHL, even though he's probably never going to be a top-six type. Some guys just blossom a bit later. Some never do, and some temporarily make progress and then revert to a lesser game.
Back in 2011-12, struggling fourth-liner Andreas Nödl -- who couldn't buy a goal at the NHL level despite having once been projected as such as a collegiate hockey standout and having untapped potential to become an above-average pro -- was moved onto Mike Richards' line by Peter Laviolette early in the season. For about five weeks, Nödl suddenly started to chip in a bit offensively and his game as a whole picked up. Unfortunately, there was eventually a large-scale regression and Nödl dropped in the lineup again before being waived the next season and claimed by the Carolina Hurricanes. Nödl was both bigger and stronger than Leier, but the point is that there something in his game that just wasn't translating to the NHL level.
In Leier's case, the player needs at the NHL level to better use his speed to get inside and below the dots, stopping at the net, when he does get an opportunity in the offensive end. He'll often beat one guy and then either drift to the perimeter or skate around behind the net. At the AHL level, he was always much more opportunistic. His hands aren't bad, either, although he hasn't shown it at the top level.
There is only so much one can tell from watching practice, especially the "fifth line" (i.e., healthy scratch) guys dressed in the dreaded powder blue practice jerseys, of which R.J. Umberger once quipped, "I'd rather be in dog [poop] brown than powder blue." How much did Leier's game come along from day one of 2017 training camp to exit day in April 2018? Not enough to keep him in the lineup, apparently, and not enough for him to have a defined role for next season as the summer approaches.
4) Phantoms defenseman Samuel Morin, who has dealt with a recurring injury and has been out of the lineup since getting reinjured in the Jan. 20 outdoor game in Hershey, was a full participant in the team's practice ahead of Game 1 of the upcoming second-round series against Charlotte. If Morin can get back into the lineup to beef up what is currently a rather thin Phantoms blueline beyond its top three (the NHL callup by the Flyers and then waiver loss to Colorado of Mark Alt was also a blow to the Phantoms' defense corps), it would be a big addition for the Phantoms.
Likewise, playmaking rookie center Mikhail Vorobyev, is working to get back in the lineup from an upper-body injury. In the meantime, veteran forward Phil Varone (the American Hockey League's Most Valuable Player Award winner this season) has resumed skating but is a no-contact jersey as he works to get back from an upper-body injury that prevented him from playing in the series-clinching Game 4 against Providence in the first round.
5) 2018 Flyers Alumni Golf Invitational: Thus far, the list of confirmed attendees for this year's event are as follows. Participating Alumni members include Terry Carkner, Mitch Lamoureux, Brian Propp, Brad Marsh, Danny Briere, Doug Crossman, Paul Holmgren, Dave Brown, Orest Kindrachuk, Lindsay Carson, Steve Coates, Ross Fitzpatrick, Neil Little, Chris Therien, Lou Nolan, Ed Hospodar, Bob Kelly, John LeClair, Bill Barber, Bernie Parent, Jim Watson, Tim Kerr, Gary Dornhoefer, Reggie Leach, Don Saleski, Todd Fedoruk, Larry Goodenough, Andre Faust, Bob Clarke, Jesse Boulerice, Ric Nattress, Frank Bathe, Riley Cote, Darroll Powe, Terry Murray, Daryl Stanley and Guy Delparte.
6) The top regular season team in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada, earned a 6-1 home win over the Charlottetown Islanders in Game 7 of their playoff semifinal round on Tuesday. The Armada, who lost three semifinal games in overtime and have only one regulation loss in the playoffs, will now face German Rubtsov and the Acadie-Bathurst Titan in the President's Cup Final.
The Armada do not currently have any Flyers-affiliated players on the roster. However, there are Flyers-related connections to their management. Ian Laperriere and Danny Briere are minority partners in the ownership group. Laperriere's close friend, former NHL player and 2012 Flyers Development Camp instructor Joel Bouchard, is the team's primary owner, general manager and head coach.
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