When things are going well for a hockey team, it finds different ways to win. One night, it might be the goaltending that carries the day. Another night, it might be a couple of role players who provide the offense in a game where the top line is held quiet.
All along, however, a winning team has to have a central identity. Is it a team that often grinds out low-scoring wins through superior board work? Is it a puck possession team? It is a club loaded with speed? The specifics don't really matter as much as the construction of the roster to execute that style and the level of team-wide commitment to sticking with the program.
When a team is going well, it can face different sorts of adversity and still find their way to victory. It can win 6-4 or 2-1 if it needs to. The ride may not always be smooth, but they have faith in the process of getting to their destination.
The opposite is also true.
When a team struggles, it finds different ways to lose. Last night, the Philadelphia Flyers fell to 1-5-0 on the 2013-14 regular season because the club took too many penalties, could not kill them off and got a subpar goaltending performance from Ray Emery. The Flyers lost 5-2 to the Detroit Red Wings.
The penalty killing and goaltending have generally been team strengths in the early going of this season. However, the underlying problems that led to the game outcome were issues that have been all too familiar.
The Flyers do not skate well enough as a team. When a team does not skate well enough, it takes too many minor penalties. When a team is not quick enough, either on its feet or in terms of its decision-making, critical puck battles are generally lost instead of won.
New coach Craig Berube inherited a team that lacked an identity and lacked both physical and mental quickness. Former coach Peter Laviolette had a system -- an identity --- he wanted for his team but for a variety of reasons, that identity (an up-tempo, attacking team) got misplaced and was never recovered.
Without a doubt, some of the root cause of the issue lay in not having the right personnel to be able to win by attacking aggressively on forechecks, breakouts and counter-rushes yet also being fast and alert enough to provide backchecking support.
The other part of the equation was that the players had tuned him out and there was no cohesion anymore. The Flyers of Laviolette's last days were about as far from an up-tempo team as you could get. They couldn't score a goal to save their lives and it wasn't like they'd suddenly become a defensive brick wall, either.
That was NOT all the coach's fault by any means. That blame was also shared by the players themselves and by general manager Paul Holmgren as well.
There is often a tendency among fans to rip and tear at individual players when things are going poorly (or, in the hotbed of negativity that is Philadelphia, even when the team wins). I see it wasted energy and an exercise in futility. The Flyers are NOT losing because so-and-so is or is not in the lineup or because X player is being misused or because the team really ought to trade/waive whomever the Roman Chorus is currently displeased.
The team was -- and still is -- suffering from an all-encompassing lack of identity and confidence. It did not get that way overnight nor will it be magically fixed overnight. That's not to say that Holmgren doesn't need to make improvements to the roster mix, but it does mean that Berube and company can't be worried about that. Teams have gotten to the playoffs with lesser on-paper personnel than the current Flyers have.
Let's be honest here: The Flyers are already behind the eight ball this season. Training camp and the preseason were a mess. The team is already four games below .500 and Berube and company are trying to play catch-up with some very difficult opponents coming up on the schedule.
Berube has spent much of his first week as head coach emphasizing improved skating, team defense and puck support. Although the team has made small steps in that direction -- the five-on-five play and overall team defense has been better this past week, and the club is generating a higher volume of scoring chances.
Last night, there were some hopeful chance-generating signs from the likes of Claude Giroux and Matt Read. The team got a goal from Erik Gustafsson (playing in place of healthy scratch Andrej Meszaros) and from Tye McGinn in their first appearances of the 2013-14 regular season. Michael Raffl showed off some speed in his NHL debut.
It's progress but it's still not enough to win.
A team isn't going to win when it scores eight goals in six games --- which remains the worst offensive start in franchise history through the equivalent number of games. It isn't going to win when it puts itself shorthanded the most times in the league.
Last night, Emery looked bad on two of the four goals he yielded. You knew the Red Wings, who entered the game 0-for-the-season on the power play with just 10 opportunities, were bound to start getting more power plays and start scoring on a few. However, allowing the Red Wings to explode for a 3-for-7 night on the man advantage is a guaranteed recipe for losing to them.
Additionally, the Red Wings two deadliest players -- Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk -- were able to get themselves a little bit of time and operating room. That often means the next faceoff is as center ice. Maintaining tight checking on those two players for a full game is easier said than done, but they need to at least be contained a little better defensively.
When Berube took over as coach, things were such a mess that Flyers needed a Bob Beamon-like leap in team identity, execution and confidence to get to a place where they could be expected to win on a regular basis. They've taken some toddler steps in that direction but, in the meantime, there are two more losses on the ledger.
All Berube and his staff can do at this point is prepare the team to play the Canucks and Penguins this week and at least continue to try and make this Flyers squad a tougher team to beat than they've been through most of the first six games.
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PHANTOMS GET SWEPT IN HOME-AND-HOME WITH HARTFORD
The Adirondack Phantoms fell to 1-1-0-1 on the regular season, dropping their home opener to the Hartford Wolf Pack by a 3-2 score. On Friday in Hartford, the Wolf Pack downed the Phantoms, 5-4, via shootout.
Mark Alt and Ben Holmstrom scored for Terry Murray's club last night, while Petr Straka and Nick Cousins picked up an assist apiece. In his first start of the regular season, Cal Heeter stopped 27 of 30 shots.
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DINEEN AND SLANEY HONORED WITH AHL HALL OF FAME INDUCTION
On Friday, the American Hockey League announced that longtime Phantoms/Flyers defenseman John Slaney and former Flyers head coach Bill Dineen are among the four honorees in the AHL's Hall of Fame induction class of 2014. Al MacNeil and Bob Perreault are the other two inductees.
Former Flyers captain and current Florida Panthers head coach Kevin Dineen was understandably thrilled by the news of his 81-year-old father's selection for the honor.
"This is a great honor for him and the family," he wrote via e-mail. "We have deep roots with the AHL with 4 of 5 boys playing there as well as Dad. We can track what cities my dad played for by the birth cities of the six kids! He was an excellent player and a well respected coach. He still keeps in touch with many of his former players from his Adirondack days and there is not a rink my brothers and I go to that we will have someone come up to us and ask how is dad doing."
As a coach, Bill Dineen enjoyed championship winning success with the WHA's Houston Aeros as well as the AHL's Adirondack Red Wings. He took on the head coaching job for Adirondack1983-84, where he remained for six seasons.
Under Bill Dineen’s patient tutelage, Adirondack won two Calder Cup championships before he stepped down in 1989 in favor of the much younger Barry Melrose. During his tenure, "the Fox" also gained the nickname "Lt. Columbo", in honor of the television detective who feigned ineptitude but was actually supremely skilled.
Later, Bill Dineen went on to be a scout and head coach in the NHL with the Flyers. Among the players he coached were son Kevin, Mark Howe (a reunion from their days in the WHA) and a rookie Eric Lindros. For more on the Philadelphia father-son journey of Bill and Kevin Dineen, see my Great Moments article on Flyers.nhl.com.
Slaney, 41, was one of the most prolific offensive defensemen in the AHL during the mid-1990s to mid-2000s. He spent seven seasons with the Phantoms from 2000-01 to 2006-07, playing a leading role on the blueline of the 2004-05 Calder Cup champions. He also played 268 games in the NHL, including five with the Flyers, but it was at the American League level where he stood out as a top point-producing defenseman.
Slaney won a pair of Eddie Shore Awards (the AHL's version of the Norris Trophy) during his stint with the Phantoms. His best statistical season in Philadelphia came in 2001-02 when he won the Shore on the strength of a 20-goal, 59-point campaign. Slaney has moved on to coaching after his retirement as an active player in 2011.
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Listen to Metro Buzz(with Flyers blogger Bill Meltzer, Rangers blogger Jan Levine and Islanders blogger Dan Petriw) Recorded 10/13/13
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