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Quick Hits: September 7, 2022
1) Last night, the Flyers debuted on their Youtube channel a new preseason docuseries called "Beyond the Boards". Presented in similar fashion to the player feature segments on the "Behind the Glass" series that NHL Network did during the Flyers' 2019 training camp, each episode homes in one particular subject.
Episode One of "Beyond the Boards" focuses on right winger Wade Allison. The program follows along with the power forward Allison from his offseason living quarters in Mississauga, Ontario, to a workout session at a local rink facility as well as an outing on a golf course with his buddies from the rink.
Yesterday afternoon, I had the opportunity to interview Allison for an episode companion article for the PhliladelphiaFlyers.com website. Apart from the ground covered in the show, Wade and I discussed topics such as the boost that he got from being able to finally stay healthy for the final five weeks of the 2021-22 AHL season. We talked about the need to balance his aggressive style of play with the need to avoid excessive risk of injuries. Lastly, we talked about balancing his friendships with fellow young Flyers roster hopefuls with competing with them for one of limited number of available NHL jobs. We also delved deeper into the subject of making an impression on new head coach John Tortorella.
Allison said that he's not setting any particular goals in camp except to put his best foot forward and try to make the opening night roster. He can't worry about who is watching him from the balcony perch. He can't dwell on his lineup placement or whether he's getting power play time. Likewise, he can't worry about the fact that he is still waiver exempt while some competing players for roster spots are subject to waivers.
"My attitude is that, if I work hard enough, the rest will take care of itself," he said.
A writer can't use in an article everything collected from an interview. This tidbit is not in the article, but I wanted to pass it along in today's blog because it's reflective of Allison's playing style and personality.
At a typical Tortorella training camp, apart from systems work, the coach breaks out battle drills right from the get-go, and such segments of practice remain regular facets of camp. Battle drills are part of every NHL camp, of course, but Tortorella is particularly fond of them.
The new head coach has already said this summer than his Flyers players are going to do a lot of skating and they're going to engage in a lot of close-quarters battles throughout camp. This is part and parcel to the type of competitive drive he wants the entire team to exhibit more consistently than recent editions of the team.
Wade Allison is a player who doesn't need any prompting to use his 6-foot-2, 205-pound frame to compete for the puck and jostle for operating room. Tortorella's fondness for working in drills that emphasize physicality and hunger for the puck are tailor-made for him.
"I don't mind that a bit. Let's roll!" Allison said with a chuckle.
While is a cinch that Tortorella will be impressed by the gusto with which Allison approaches each day, it will be up to the player to show he can stay healthy enough to be relied up as an NHL lineup regular. There's no question that Allison is above-average in winning puck battles or any doubt about his pure shooting ability. It's all about staying healthy.
However, there are certain areas of Allison's game that could still use additional improvement. He tends to lose his balance and fall down quite a bit; not all that different from Scott Hartnell. There are times where Allison (like Hartnell before him) is emotion-driven on the ice rather than thinking situationally in the heat of the moment. These aren't fatal flaws but are related to the player's general need to pick his spots a little more selectively.
To read the article click here: Wade Allison: Beyond the Boards. The 13-minute Allison episode of "Beyond the Boards" is embedded below.
2) In addition to the Allison article, there are two other newly published features on the Flyers' website as we ramp up the content leading up to the start of Rookie Camp and NHL Camp.
* Getting a Head Start on Training Camp. Throughout the NHL, it's quite common for players to report to their team's training facility well ahead of the start of the camp. The article looks at the higher-than-average number of Flyers players that reported before Labor Day to prepare onsite at the FTC for a camp that starts on Sept. 14 for rookies and Sept. 21 for veterans.
3) I have told this story before, but it relates to the topic of battle drills. During Rookie Camp in 2019, if you recall, the trio of Joel Farabee, Morgan Frost and Isaac Ratcliffe had little difficulty standing out. When full NHL camp start, Alain Vigneault (then the Flyers' new head coach) wanted to send a message to the youngsters that competing against NHLers would be considerably more difficult.
During one of the early days of camp, Vigneault sent a line of Ratcliffe, Frost and veteran Jakub Voracek out to compete in a series of drills against a line of Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier and Farabee.
A 19-year-old Farabee held his own. He soared through the drills, including riding Robert Hägg right off the puck along the wall on the forecheck. Later that same rep, Farabee took a tape-to-tape pass from Giroux in the slot and tucked the puck just wide.
Frost held his own in some early reps, but then Couturier turned things up a half-notch and dominated rep after rep on both sides of the puck. Ratcliffe got schooled repeatedly by Giroux. On one particularly notable rep, Ratcliffe skated through the neutral zone with the puck and had his pocket picked cleanly by the Flyers captain.
With a half grin, Vigneault admitted after practice that he had put kids in the deep end of the pool by design.
Said Vigneault, "I mentioned it to Lappy [Ian Laperriere] when we were standing at the net, 'Those two kids are getting an education. They're learning the NHL pace there.'"
Frost was a little bit downbeat after practice. He knew the competition bar had been set as high as it could get in a practice. He was competing against a bigger, stronger, much more experienced Selke candidate who was also an NHL 30-goal scorer. It
"It was a little overwhelming, to be honest, to play against guys that caliber. I felt like I was just watching, chasing the puck all day. I'll try to learn from them, and do better the next time," Frost said.
Couturier is more a leader by example than by words. But he was eloquent in publicly offfering soothing words of encouragement for Frost. He reflected back on his own first NHL camp when Peter Laviolette put him out against NHL stars Giroux and Danny Briere and then had him go head-to-head with other teams' veterans in road exhibition games.
"It can be intimidating. You can be impressed and kind of shy almost to play. But you've gotta just play, be yourself. Push to make plays, be the player you are," Couturier said. "[Frost] was a high pick and he had a lot of success in junior. I think he's ready for the next level. He's got to go out, just play and show it."
I thought about that day late this past season when a line of Frost plus fellow young players Noah Cates and Owen Tippett were matched up against Sidney Crosby's line in a matinee game at the Penguins. Not only did Frost hold his own against the veteran superstar, he by far got the better of him on that day.
4) It will be up to Frost to carry over his strong finish from the final dozen games of last season into camp and build on it during the season. If he does that, Tortorella will give him some leeway. If not, Tortorella will be all over him and won't hesitate to yank him from the lineup.
Last season, Frost received plenty of tough-love coaching from Mike Yeo. It was drilled into Frost that he had to move his feet more consistently if he wanted more puck touches, that he needed to battle harder for pucks and that he had to make plays at his quickest pace. Yeo said many times that he wanted Frost to focus on process rather than point production per se. If the process straightened out, the points would eventually follow, too.
That was the No. 1 reason why Frost spent so much time playing with the likes of Max Willman and Gerry Mayhew and why he his power play time was pretty sparing until quite late in the season. Yeo said that he was fully aware that, if Frost played regularly with playmaking great Giroux and someone like Konecny, his point production would increase. But his goal for Frost was to focus on the process and not the outcome.
"I believe in this young man, maybe more than he believes in himself," Yeo said, adding that he was actually happy with how Frost was progressing from a defensive hockey standpoiint but that he wanted him to keep working on doing things that would ultimately lead to more offense at the NHL level, too. He realized that scoring had never been an issue for Frost in junior hockey or the AHL but he needed to make adjustments if he wanted to score more regularly in the NHL.
I never disagreed with Yeo's basic message to Frost: Attack the ice, and believe the puck is yours. Be responsible in your own end of the ice but don't fall into the trap of trying to be too safe. Even as things slowly starting to fall in place for Frost, Yeo pushed when he saw fit.
"One thing I'd like to see from Morgan -- and all of our young players -- is to do more than just fit in. When things are going well for the team, there's more confidence to make plays. That's a good thing. But when things are going against us, don't just blend in. Have confidence that you can be a difference maker to turn the tide back our way. I think that's the next step for Frosty and for Tippett and the other young guys," Yeo said.
Personally, I felt that the same basic message could have been delivered while playing Frost with other high-skill players: the carrot being the chance to stay up with them. I don't think it's coincidence that Frost's latter-season partial breakthrough last season started in the two games where he played on a line with Giroux and Konecny (the final two games before Giroux was traded to Florida) and later when he was placed with Tippett and either Noah Cates or Farabee.
I will add, however, that while Yeo could be quite blunt about the areas he felt Frost had to improve, he was equally effusive with praise when things started to fall in place. In what turned out to be his final press conference as Flyers head coach, Yeo singled out Frost's improvements as one of his most hopeful signs for the team moving forward. He also said that, if Frost carried over both the smaller details and his late-season offensive confidence surge, the offensive numbers would come along in the near future.
On Exit Day, Frost said that he'd developed a strong relationship with Yeo, and was grateful for the time they spent working together through the ups and downs on the ice.
"He was really great with me. I think he really helped me a lot, and he kind of knew when to challenge me and when to help bring my confidence up. I think a lot of it was just for me learning to play more of an NHL style, like using my body more. Like I said, moving my feet because sometimes I think I was kind of relying on instinct or hands before and a lot of
it is more reactive. Using my body was the big thing. I watched a lot of video with him and also the other coaches. They helped me a lot so I’m thankful for that," Frost said.
Now there's a new coaching staff in place. Frost's time with Yeo as head coach was actually good preparation for playing under Tortorella as head coach and Rocky Thompson as the assistant coach in charge of forwards. They're intense and they push hard. They certainly won't coddle Frost nor will they want endlessly for him to consistently display what they will want from him. They'll want the same things that Yeo did.
If Frost does well, there may not be the same degree of praise from Tortorella that there was from Yeo. But that's not a necessity. The acknowledgement would come through staying in the lineup. getting regular 5-on-5 ice time and being rewarded with a bump in power play time, too.
5) Today in Flyers History: Eleven years ago today, on Sept. 7, 2011, a plane carrying the KHL's Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team to its regular season opening game in Minsk, Belarus. crashed shortly after takeoff from the airport in Yaroslavl. The entire team and the coaching staff on board perished.
Among the deceased was Flyers alum defenseman Brad "the Beast" McCrimmon. He had recently been hired as Lokomotiv's head coach; his first pro hockey head coaching opportunity after years as an assistant coach. He was 52 years old. McCrimmon was survived by wife Maureen, daughter Carlin and son Liam.
On the day of the tragic plane crash, after news of the tragedy was confirmed, I spoke by phone with Flyers Hall of Fame left winger Brian Propp. He had been teammates with McCrimmon both in junior hockey with the Brandon Wheat Kings and in the NHL with the Flyers. I also communicated that day via text with Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman Mark Howe, McCrimmon's close friend and longtime defense partner with the Flyers. Understandably, both Propp and Howe were devastated by the sudden loss of McCrimmon as well as the weight of the tragedy as a whole on the hockey world.
“I found out about it from the Detroit office,” Howe wrote via text. “Brad was one of my three closest friends. A man of his word. [He was] the best partner I ever had on the ice, but a better husband, friend and father off the ice. It’s a very sad day for the hockey world. My prayers go out to his family.”
The memorial article that I wrote that day for the Flyers site -- one of the emotionally toughest pieces I've ever had to write, as someone to whom the Flyers' teams of the mid-80s were the clubs closest to my heart to this very day -- is archived on the Flyers' official website. I tried to keep the article as factual and biographical as possible because the particulars of what caused the plane crash were not yet known.
6) Many years later, when I was traveling with the Flyers Alumni Team to cover their tour of Russia in Feb. 2017, we flew one of the domestic airlines when we were en route from Kazan to St. Petersburg.
It was a harrowing flight under adverse weather conditions, and all I could think about was Brad McCrimmon and Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. Thank goodness we made it safely. That flight was, far and away, the lowlight of an otherwise amazing week that is unlikely to be repeated given today's political climate.
The flight was so nerve-racking that even Al Secord got worried during the first half of the flight. Secord, a longtime NHL power forward who had a short late-career stint with the Flyers, became a commercial airline pilot for American Airlines after his playing days. He asked a flight attendant upon landing if the pilot spoke English. She said he did.
We found afterwards that Secord wanted to ask his fellow pilot what happened and why he had made certain in-flight decisions. The situation was that serious.
7) Sept. 7 Flyers Alumni birthdays: Andrew MacDonald (1986), Gino Odjick (1970), Rob Zepp (1981).
8) Schedule note: I will post a Quick Hits blog tomorrow morning. After tomorrow, the blog will resume on Sunday. My wife surprised me with a two-night getaway trip to Galveston Island as an end-of-summer family excursion and a pre-birthday (Sept. 11) gift to me. Next Wednesday, I return to Philadelphia to get ready to cover Rookie Camp. I've learned over the years to travel a day ahead whenever possible.
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