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Quick Hits: LA prep, York, Frost, Sandin, Phantoms |
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Quick Hits: January 28, 2022
1) The Flyers will hold an 11 a.m. practice at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees on Friday morning. On Saturday afternoon (1 p.m. ET), the team will try to end its 13-game winless streak when the Los Angeles Kings come to town. If the Flyers lose, they will have gone the entire month of January without a single win.
On Thursday evening, the Kings earned a 3-2 road victory over the New York Islanders. Quinton Byfield, the second overall pick of the 2020 NHL Draft, tallied his first career NHL goal. Adrian Kempe's empty-net goal ended up being the game-winner after Casey Cizikas scored for the Islanders in the final 20 seconds.
The Flyers' probable starting lineup for Saturday, based on Thursday's line combinations at practice is as follows:
23 Oskar Lindblom - 28 Claude Giroux - 89 Cam Atkinson
25 James van Riemsdyk - 21 Scott Laughton - 11 Travis Konecny
20 Gerry Mayhew - 48 Morgan Frost - 71 Max Willman
76 Isaac Ratcliffe - 82 Connor Bunnaman - 17 Zack MacEwen
9 Ivan Provorov - 61 Justin Braun
6 Travis Sanheim - 70 Rasmus Ristolainen
3 Keith Yandle - 45 Cam York
79 Carter Hart
35 Martin Jones
Interim Flyers head coach Mike Yeo confirmed after practice that Ratcliffe will make his NHL debut on Saturday.
"I got the call from [Ian Laperierre] yesterday. I've been working hard for a long time to get this opportunity. I'm pretty excited for Saturday. It's going to be a big day. I'm going to go out there and prove I deserve to be there. Bring a big, strong game," Ratcliffe said.
"We've got to outmuscle them. Pretty much play in the offensive zone as much as we can. Contribute some offense on top of that. That's going to help us stay out of the D zone, which also helps the defensive game. We've some success in LV playing that way, sticking to structure."
After Thursday's practice, Yeo discussed the play of Gerry Mayhew on a line with Morgan Frost and Max Willman, the team's issues with power play entries, Chuck Fletcher's observation that the club's defensive structure and neutral zone play have shown improvement, but the team overall has still been defending too often and not generating sufficient scoring opportunities, and other topics.
2) Recently the Flyers have been deploying rookie defenseman Cam York on the right side of the third pairing with Keith Yandle. He has rarely played his off-side as he's risen through the development rank. York played the left side almost exclusively with the University of Michigan, the Team USA under-20 national team and the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. At the start of York's post-practice media availability on Thursday, I asked him about his comfort level playing his off-side and what the main adjustments have been like for him.
Over the long term, York being able to be deployed on either side of a defense pairing would be beneficial both to the player and the team. Positional versatility is never a bad thing. For right now, however, it is not ideal. Tuesday's game against the Islanders is a case in point: The Islanders' fourth line manhandled both Yandle and York down low in the defensive zone on several shifts.
I'd rather see York playing on his natural side with a different partner such as Justin Braun. However, the Flyers have had to deploy Braun as Ivan Provorov's most frequent right-D partner for most of the season. Pairings of Provorov with either Travis Sanheim or Rasmus Ristolainen did not click in their brief looks. Meanwhile, the Flyers' third pair has been a sore spot since the sixth game of the season.
Ryan Ellis' season-long absence (minus the first three games of the regular season and a one-game return in November) has had a trickle-down effect over and above what the Flyers have missed with Ellis himself. It's forced Braun to be elevated from a third-pair and PK role to playing up top with Provorov in the 5-on-5 rotation. That, in turn, weakened the third pairing as well. Nick Seeler (27 GP) and Kevin Connauton (10 GP since being claimed off waivers from Florida) are serviceable as short-term fill-ins on a third but neither is well-rounded enough to be regular top-six players. Seeler was virtually an every-game starter for the first two-plus months of the season.
It's been nearly identical to the destabilizing effect that Matt Niskanen's retirement after the 2019-20 season had on the Flyers' blueline. While Ellis is a very good NHL defenseman, he's not a Norris Trophy level one. Neither was Niskanen. However, their presence served to balance the pairs and to help slot the top six as ideally as possible relative to the group of players available. Removing Niskanen or Ellis removed the equilibrium and also took away veteran players who had a calming effect even in chaotic situations.
The loss of one defenseman should NOT have such an all-encompassing effect on a blueline corps, five-man two-way play or a team's general resiliency. That has been the case twice over, in back-to-back years. To be that fragile on the blueline is really more a reflection of roster construction and depth than anything else.
There is also a development question here: To be provided the best possible chance to succeed, York really would be better off on his natural side with a veteran (preferably right-handed shooting) partner. It's not that Yeo is unaware of that, but he's trying to end the team's losing streak in the immediate term.
3) Mayhew provided the Flyers a shot in the arm in each of the last two games, albeit in a losing cause. Against both the Dallas Stars and Islanders, the trio of Mayhew, Frost and Max Willman has been the Flyers' best line on a shift-in and shift-out basis. Mayhew has been the catalyst. He's been playing high-speed, high-energy, relentless hockey. That, in turn, has gotten Frost to play at his own fastest pace (which is something the player himself realizes he needs to do consistently, along with using his body more and not being totally reliant on his hands).
However, there's a trade-off: The trade off is that, while Frost and Mayhew clicked together offensively in the AHL (Frost also clicked at times with Willman, especially as a penalty-killing duo), Frost's offensive skill level is better suited to playing with NHL-proven finishers. Frost will always be more of a playmaker than a finisher, and he's a player who will be judged more by the bottom line of point production than anything else; even as his coaches stress the underlying process to him.
If the goal here is for Frost to unlearn aspects of his junior-level game -- tendency to slow down the play, rely mainly on his stickhandling and quick hands -- and replace it with more consistent high-tempo pace and more physical involvement, the last few games have been a good prototype. If, however, the goal is for him to convert those adjustments into more points he'll need: a) to play with bonafide NHL top-six or top-nine players at 5-on-5, and b) to be part of a less patchwork PP unit than the Flyers current revolving door of a second unit.
On the one hand, Frost will have to EARN that role with the consistency of his play; not just in making a good pass here to find an open man in potential scoring position and a good game or two there where he has his feet moving and gets more puck touches. Specific to the power play, Frost still has to prove he can generate entries at the NHL level the way he has at lower levels. Too often on the PP, he's still getting the puck knocked away just before or just after he crosses the blueline. Unfortunately, the same can be said of most of the Flyers' forwards on the power play units. Entries and offensive zone possession with good puck movement have been elusive too often.
On the other, when Frost was actually putting up some points (and being rather unlucky on the assist side because there were at least 3-to-5 prime chances he set up that simply weren't getting finished off by the recipient) earlier in his recall, he was playing with the likes of Giroux, Atkinson or a then-struggling Konecny (in the midst of a 20-game goal drought). He also played some games with James van Riemsdyk, but JVR has been scuffling to score at 5-on-5 (12 of his 17 points including six of his 10 goals) this season pretty much with any linemates including Giroux.
Health-status dependent, when Joel Farabee and Wade Allison (the iffier of the two) return, I'd love to see them tried on a line with Frost. Both are high-motor players. Both are decent finishers, albeit by different means. Farabee has some two-way game and would be a second player on the line who can carry the puck. Allison is a tenacious forechecker, brings some physical game, is good in board battles, crashes the net and also is a threat to score from more distance on a one-timer. The line would have some defensive question marks -- but let's be real, the current Flyers are already suspect in that area -- but I could see it being a good combo with Frost's playkmaking ability and (when he sets his mind to using it) natural speed.
As an alternative, since both Farabee and the oft-injured Allison are out of the lineup, I wouldn't mind seeing Frost and Laughton switch line assigments at 5-on-5 once the Frost combo with Mayhew and Willman runs its course.
4) Linus Sandin played sparingly in his NHL debut on Tuesday. Yeo indicated that the main reason the player was quickly returned to the Phantoms was in order to get him some more playing time after missing much of the season due to a fractured orbital bone. Sandin was playing quite well in the two weeks leading to his NHL recall.
5) AHL: The Lehigh Valley Phantoms (12-13-8) return to action on Friday night when they visit the Springfield Thunderbirds (19-13-5); the St. Louis Blues' affiliate in the American League. Game time is 7:05 p.m. ET. The game will be streamed on AHLTV.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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