Quick Hits: September 15, 2020
1) Over the course of this week, in lieu of a traditional Exit Day in which Flyers players address the media on the same day, there are a series of ongoing teleconferences. On Monday, Travis Sanheim, Nate Thompson and, later, Ivan Provorov spoke to the media. On Tuesday, it was Scott Laughton (transcript follows below). On Wednesday, Carter Hart will speak.
2) On the Flyers official website, we have a synopsis of three key themes that Flyers head coach Alain Vigneault raised during his
Exit Day availability on Monday.
3) Tomorrow on the Flyers Broadcast Network, the playoff wrapup edition of the Broadcasters Roundtable podcast will go live. Earlier today, Tim Saunders, Jim Jackson, Steve Coates, Chris Therien and I recorded the episode. Later this week, Bundy will have a Therien's Take on the Flyers' website with his thoughts on the Flyers' playoff run and observations on the Stanley Cup playoffs in general.
4) Early this season, the Dallas Stars got off to a 1-7-1 start. Dallas was clearly a considerably better team than its record suggested but few would have predicted that the team, especially after a mid-season coaching coach from Jim Montgomery to Rick Bowness that was not performance related, would go to reach the Stanley Cup Final.
The Stars' second win of the season came at the Flyers' expense; a 4-1 victory over Philly at the Wells Fargo Center on Oct. 19. From the reactions of Flyers fans at the team, even the Stars were held to a measly five shots on goal over the final 40 minutes (one of which was an empty net goal), you'd have thought the Flyers had lost again to Swiss team Lausanne HC , except in a regular season game rather than an exhibition game.
Dallas, which last season came within a Game 7 overtime loss to the eventual Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues of advancing to the 2019 Western Conference Final, had goal-scoring difficulties through much of this year's regular season. They ranked 26th in goals per game (by comparison, the Flyers ranked 7th). But the Stars, who were quietly very good under Bowness and kind of flew under the radar because they had dug themselves an early hole in the standings, have peaked at just the right time.
I am happy to see the Stars reach the Cup Final, especially for goalie coach Jeff Reese and assistant coach John Stevens. Assuming they face Tampa Bay in the Final, they will be the decided underdogs. But don't count them out; this is a good team, with solid depth, a very good blueline and hot goaltending right now.
4) The Washington Capitals have hired former Flyers head coach Peter Laviolette as their next head coach, replacing the dismissed Todd Reirden. The contract is a three-year deal. Laviolette's hiring reminds me of a few choice stories I have heard about him.
* Twenty years ago, when Laviolette was a young assistant coach with the Boston Bruins, head coach Mike Keenan took a disliking to him. Keenan saw that Laviolette was bright and energetic with a future as an NHL head coach, but he felt that Laviolette was a little TOO ambitious and was after Keenan's job. Keenan accused Laviolette of trying to undercut and subvert him. Oddly enough when Lavy later took Carolina to a Stanley Cup championship and coached the Flyers to a Stanley Cup Final, his hard-pushing, "we can win every game" mental mindset -- although his systems were a bit different and very offensive oriented -- were sometimes compared to Keenan.
* Paul Holmgren has said that, as a GM, whenever he met with Laviolette, he'd come away feeling fired up that the Flyers were going to win that night. That's Lavy himself was always absolutely convinced of an impending victory, and he made the normally stoic and pragmatic Holmgren feel like the team would find a way regardless of the underlying circumstances or opponent.
* Danny Briere has said that Laviolette was the first and only coach he had in the NHL who actively coached offensive strategies. It wasn't that he didn't expect players to defend well and especially to block shots, because he did, but his No. 1 philosophy was attack more with a fast tempo, defend well when you don't have the puck but then focus on transitioning ASAP back to offense.
Briere has also credited Laviolette with delivering the best pregame locker room speech he ever heard in his career. It came before Game 6 of the Flyers-Penguins series in 2012, and went something like this:
"This is what we need from you: one game of your best hockey of the season. Not one week. Not one month. One game. Can you, Danny Briere, play your best game of the season today? Can you, Scott Hartnell, do that? Can you, Claude Giroux? Because if you do that, we're going to send the [bleeping] Pittsburgh Penguins home and we're moving on!"
Briere has said that, to a man, the Flyers were ready to break down the door to get to the ice. It also may have inspired Giroux to tell Briere, "Watch my first shift." (The result was the famous game-opening shift that started with Giroux landing a big check on Sidney Crosby and ended with Giroux scoring a goal to make it, 1-0).
* The downside of Laviolette's intensity and offensive focus is that he needs the horses both up front and on the blueline that can skate and execute at the kind of pace he tries to set. Additionally, too much challenging of players, high intensity type of coaching gets tuned out after a couple seasons. Laviolette will enter Washington with good weapons still at his disposal and a closing window to try to win a second Cup with the current core group, so they're going to be a fascinating team to watch next season.
5) Nowadays, many Flyers fans take to branding Giroux a playoff underachiever. It's really been a story of his first five playoff runs vs. his most recent three.
FIRST FIVE
2009: 6 GP, 5 PTS (2G, 3A)
2010: 23 GP, 21 PTS (10G, 11A)
2011: 11 GP, 12 PTS (1G, 11A)
2012: 10 GP, 17 PTS (8G, 9A)
2014: 7 GP, 6 PTS (2G, 4A)
Total: 57 GP, 61 PTS (23G, 38 A), 1.07 PPG
LAST 3
2016: 6 GP, 1 PT (0G, 1A)
2018: 6 GP, 3 PTS (1G, 2A)
2020: 16 GP, 8 PTS (1G, 7A)
TOTAL: 28 GP, 12 PTS (2G, 10A), 0.43 PPG
Giroux deserved some leeway for his 2016 series against the Capitals, because he was gritting out a combination hip/groin injury that required surgery after the playoffs. The last two playoff runs, however, he has been healthy.
Giroux had been so dominant down the stretch of the 2017-18 season, including 18 points over the final 10 games and a hat trick in the playoff spot clinching regular season finale to finish off his career-best 102-point season and be serenaded with "M-V-P! M-V-P!" chants. But that memory got washed away quickly because he was unable to step up against Pittsburgh in the first round of the playoffs.
This year, I'm not entirely sure what happened in the playoffs except that Giroux was one of the players who was unable to pick up in the Bubble where he left off at the time of the pause. It's easy to forget now that he was on an offensive hot streak at the time of the NHL season stoppage due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Over the Flyers final 15 games before the pause, the team captain racked up 18 points (8g, 10a).
For whatever reasons, whether it was his conditioning over the pause not being to playoff-ready level for a 32-year-old (which Vigneault all but directly said on Monday) or his game simply not being at its best when his A game was needed the most -- except for Game 5 of the Islanders' series, which was a step-up night for him -- Giroux was unable to accomplish what was needed. He had company in that regard, but when you wear the "C" and have been a fixture for as many years as Giroux has, the heat inevitably comes down.
In terms of the team's last two playoff years, Giroux deserves a share of the criticism. On a career-long basis, though, the narrative that he "disappears in the playoffs" is demonstrably false. It just feels pretty lousy that it's happened in two healthy playoff runs in a row, and most especially in one where the Flyers were a win away from a trip to the Eastern Conference Final despite playing nowhere near their best hockey in either the first or second rounds.
6) Update on Samuel Ersson: The injury the Flyers goaltending prospect suffered in a household accident is not said to be serious. Swedish newspaper Expressren reported that Ersson is expected to miss about two weeks before he can resume full practice and prepare to play again. Already worked out in the gym on Tuesday.
7) Today in Flyers History: September 15, 1980
The Flyers career of Andre "Moose" Dupont, after seven-plus season with the team, came to an end 40 years ago today. As Keith Allen often did as an expression of gratitude to veterans who had served the team well but no longer fit in their plans, Dupont was signed to a new contract with a heads up that he could either accept a reduced role or be traded somewhere where he'd likely have more chance to play. Dupont choose the latter with a preference to return home to Quebec. He was traded to the Nordiques for a seventh-round pick in 1981 (Czechoslovakian forward Vladimir Svitek) and cash.
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Scott Laughton Transcript
Courtesy of the Flyers, below is the transcript of Scott Laughton's Exit Day media session.
There were three series in the Second Round where a team trailed three games one and then won the next two. None of the teams -- yourselves, Colorado or Vancouver -- was able win the series in the end. How much does it take out of a team just to come back and take it to a Game 7 and then in your case, chase the game early on?
It’s tough when you go down in a series like that. Obviously a lot of emotions are put into the game. You go into a couple of overtimes and have a couple big wins. Obviously Game 7 didn’t go the way we wanted to. You can’t really blame it on coming back. They were in the same situation. They played in those overtimes. Just need to be better in that situation.
What do you think was the biggest positive this season and what was the biggest negative?
Biggest positive I think just our team play. We’re so much better than we’ve been in the past couple years of holding on to leads and coming back in games. Just overall the way we played together. You guys saw it right before the pause. I thought we were really coming together and playing our best hockey. We just couldn’t get back to that level in the bubble. I think that was our biggest positive. I’m not sure about a negative, probably losing and not being able to finish our end goal of winning. All in all, at the end of the day, I thought our regular season was the best since I’ve been here. That was definitely a positive.
You had kind of an odd playoffs. You were hot in the round robin and then in the Montreal series, you weren’t’ great. Then in the Islanders series, you had some really big goals and played a really big role. In your mind, what explains the up and down playoffs that you had?
I think at the start in the round robin games, obviously they’re not really playoff type games. I thought we were trying to find our game and get better. Obviously had some good puck luck. Played with TK and Hayesy and we had some good chemistry. I don’t know if I played awful in the Montreal series, but definitely didn’t play the way that I wanted to. Definitely had some big turnovers that could lead to some costly things in the playoffs. Hartsy bailed me out a couple times. Montreal’s a good team and a really good series.
Going into the Islanders series, at the start, I couldn’t play the way I wanted to. Then was able to find some chemistry with some guys and be able to have some goals. Just a different playoff for everyone. At the end of the day, got to be a little more consistent, trying to bring the same game and bring some energy. Definitely a weird playoff.
Do you look at this as a coming out year for yourself? Do you feel like you belong more now than before?
Yeah, I do. It’s been a little bit to feel pretty comfortable at this level and have a role where I’m contributing on a nightly basis. I think this year, AV and the coaches gave me a role right from the beginning and I tried to stick to that and play to it. That’s definitely the best I’ve felt in my career, just confidence-wise. Being able to move pucks and skating. Definitely a good year for me that I enjoyed playing hockey and being with this group. I think team success has a lot to do with that. The way guys were playing and everyone was coming together. I feel a lot more confident in my game coming into next year.
Just how important could guys like Oskar Lindblom and Nolan Patrick be to the team without having to go out and doing something significant in the offseason?
I think it’s huge. I think you saw with Oskar there in Game 7, he started making some plays and I think he hit a post. He was starting to play the hockey that we saw in the start of the year. I can’t wait to see him come back next year and how he’s going to be. With Patty, I’ve been talking with him. Just excited to see where these two guys are at whenever we come back. I don’t think many changes need to be made with our group, but to have two of those younger guys to come back and play significant roles for our team, which they do, will be huge for us.
In regards to wing versus center, is there a spot that you feel more comfortable at in terms of where you can help the team the most moving forward?
I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked that here. It’s a tough one for me. There’s such a different game kind of within the game of playing wing and center. I’ve always been a centerman my whole life. That’s kind of what I knew, but these last couple of years, I’ve played more and more of wing. At the end of the day, the game’s kind of changed now to whoever’s coming down first in the zone is always playing low. I don’t know. I think both are okay for me. Whatever they need me to do.
Both AV and Chuck said that one of the disappointments was in the breakdown of the defense and some of that was caused by the offense pressing the other way. Would you agree with that?
I think a little bit for sure. I think when you’re not scoring goals, you are trying to press. Maybe gripping it a little too tight. You are trying to go the other way a little quicker. I didn’t think we were fast enough in our defense in our own zone. I thought we probably gave the Islanders a little too much time and space with the puck, especially in Game 7 where they could move around and make some plays. This one definitely stings a little bit more than in the past. You are always trying to push for offense, score goals and things like that, but it definitely takes a little bit of the defensive game.
In your first year, you played for Peter Laviolette briefly and he was named Washington’s head coach today. What does he bring to the East now that he is back in the division?
Yeah, I was with him for five games, so those two weeks. I didn’t know him a whole lot. I just remember how intense he was and really focused on offensive zone movement. That’s what I remember coming from juniors. Those are the two main things that I probably remember the most about him. Veteran coach, who’s been there before and knows how to push his team. Good for him to get back and we’ll see what happens.
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