MELTZER'S MUSINGS: NOVEMBER 16, 2015
1) With Ryan White out for two to four weeks with an apparent right shoulder injury sustained in the third period of Saturday's 3-2 overtime win in Carolina, it will be interesting to see whether the Flyers recall a forward from the Phantoms. It is not crucial to do so, because the team currently has 13 healthy forwards even with White sidelined and R.J. Umberger (suspected foot injury) on the injured reserve list.
If the Flyers do opt for an AHL recall, Nick Cousins and Petr Straka could be candidates based on strong starts to the season.
The hardest part with Cousins is to find an NHL role for him, because he has certain top-six forward tools but also some limitations. The area to watch with Cousins is whether he keeps his feet moving. When he does that, he's effective. When he doesn't, he struggles especially on the defensive side of the puck. During his callup to the Flyers late last year, Cousins had a few good games in a fourth-line role and then some not-so-good games over the latter portion of the 11 matches he played with the big club.
Straka, who is in the final year of his entry-level contract with the Flyers, actually played better during his brief NHL recall last year than over the bulk of the AHL season. He fell seriously out of favor, especially during the second half of the year. The change of coach in Allentown and playing for his North American career future seems to have been beneficial so far. He has good speed and good hands. The rest comes down to focus and execution.
2) Brayden Schenn may share the team goal-scoring lead with Claude Giroux but the decision to make Schenn a healthy scratch in Carolina did not come completely out of left field. Schenn's overall play was part of the problem during the team's stretch of losing eight of nine games.
Even in the game against Buffalo where Schenn helped rescue a point by scoring two goals in the third period, he was having perhaps his worst game of the season up to that point. It's not only about scoring goals, it's about attention to detail with and without the puck. During the team's disappointing five-game road trip, followed by back-to-back regulation losses at home, Schenn wasn't playing anything close to his best hockey, although he did chip in a power play goal in the team's 3-0 victory in Winnipeg.
On Friday, when reporters asked Flyers head coach Dave Hakstol after practice about the decision on whether to scratch Vincent Lecavalier or Sam Gagner with Pierre-Edouard Bellemare returning to the lineup, Hakstol said the decision didn't necessarily come down to those two players. We dismissed it at the time, because the coach had said the same thing numerous times previously and it had always been Lecavalier and/or Gagner who ended up out of the lineup come game night.
This time around, Hakstol meant it. Even with the callup of rookie Taylor Leier, Gagner remained in the lineup on Saturday night. Lecavalier's scratching was fully expected. The decision to sit Schenn was suprising because it hadn't happened before, but it was not a random decision.
Sitting Schenn out for one game isn't the end of the world. He played more effectively in the first six or seven games of the regular season, and now must climb back on the horse knowing that he is not immune from being pulled out of the lineup.
In some ways, Saturday's removal from the lineup was a continuation of the tough-love Schenn got from Ron Hextall and Hakstol during the preseason. Whether he needed it or it's an effective way to handle him in the long-run remains to be seen.
Some players respond to it, others don't. For instance, perhaps the best thing that ever happened to defenseman Chris Therien's career was Terry Murray benching him for a stretch of subpar play during the 1996-97 season and then placing him with Eric Desjardins on the top defensive pairing. Bundy played some of the best hockey of his career the rest of that season, and it wasn't just because he had an All-Star caliber partner.
On the flip side, a coach also runs the risk of "losing" a player when he's too much of a designated whipping boy. Hakstol said in response to a question on Friday about accountability that he'd leave the "tougher conversations behind closed doors."
That's fair, because it is detrimental in the long-run to call out individual players in public. A coach's actions speak louder than his than words, anyway, and nothing speaks louder about who is in the doghouse than playing time. A player who had been a game-in and game-out regular sitting out a game for non-injury reasons speaks pretty loud as to how the coach felt about his recent play.
Let's be clear: Schenn was far from the only Flyers player who needed to play a lot better than what was exhibited in most of the nine games leading up to his one-game removal from the lineup. Schenn may not even have individually been the biggest culprit. However, that does not make the coach's decision the wrong one (or the right one), because Schenn is capable of doing better. The effectiveness of the benching will be determined by how the player responds over the upcoming stretch of games.
3) With Mark Streit on the long-term injured reserve list, the Flyers temporarily got the daily prorated equivalent of his cap hit ($5.25 million) minus their available cap space (the prorated equivalent of approximately $670,000) to call up roster fill-ins. That is how they were able to call up both Shayne Gostisbehere to take Streit's roster spot and Taylor Leier to take Umberger's.
The decision to recall Shayne Gostisbehere rather than veteran Andrew MacDonald was strictly a hockey decision, because recalling Gostisbehere ($925,00) was only marginally less expensive ($950,000) than it would have been to recall MacDonald. The remainder of MacDonald's salary counts against the Flyers' cap regardless of whether he is playing in the NHL or AHL.
4) No one ever questioned whether Gostisbehere's puck skills, shot, and skating were NHL-ready. Those abilities have stood out for years and did not need further development in the minors. It was -- and still is -- the undersized defenseman's play away from the puck and his decision-making about when to take risks and when to make the safe play that was the basis of him being sent to AHL last year and at the start of this season.
If Gostisbehere had not gotten hurt early last November and missed the rest of the season with a partial ACL tear, the Flyers' opening night roster decision this year may have been different. After having lost a year (but having made use of the time off to add some much-needed muscle), he needed a little more development time in the AHL to get back on track.
Gostisbehere's early-season play with the Phantoms was just OK, on both sides of the puck. There was still some rust to shake off once the preseason gave way to regular-season pacing, which is more demanding even at the AHL level than typical preseason play. Before long, Gostisbehere started to click offensively and was at least moving in the right direction at an encouraging clip in terms of his defensive play. He wasn't all the way where the Flyers ideally would have liked him before his NHL recall but getting close enough to test his readiness.
During his two-game NHL callup last year, Gostisbehere was kept on a short leash and expected to keep things very simple. This time around, he has gotten a green light to play his style of hockey with an understanding that he is also expected to know when he shouldn't gamble.
Gostisbehere has good hockey sense, and he has the speed to recover from some of his mistakes. That happened a couple times in his season debut. The offensive creativity and the shooting ablity were evidenced by the play he made on the tying goal in the third period.
Moving ahead, there are going to be some times where he shines and probably some learning opportunities (AKA tough nights) where offensive-minded risks backfire or he struggles in his own zone. Playing at the NHL level means he can make a few more plays because he has more skill around him but it also means getting away with fewer mistakes. It's all part of the learning curve.
With Streit out for approximately six weeks, Gostisbehere will have an extended period of time in which to show he's getting his total game ready to be a full-time NHL player. If the Flyers had merely wanted a power play specialist, he would have been up with the big club a year ago.
5) It remains to be seen how long Leier will stick around with the big club this time around but there is a lot to like about his game. In fact, at some point in the not-too-distant future, Leier might be able to challenge Matt Read for the role that Read has played on the team since the 2011-12 season. Leier is a fine two-way player with very good speed, and can be used in a variety of different situations as a complementary player. He has good hockey sense to compensate for being a bit undersized and underrated hands, although he will probably not be a front-line offensive player.
Leier is a little bit more naturally aggressive than Read, although neither player has ever spent much time in the penalty box. Leier has PK-unit potential and is capable of developing into a double-digit goal scoring threat (although he may not become a 20-plus NHL goal player as Read accoplished twice and would also have prorated to do in the lockout- and injury-shortened 2012-13 season). Read's offensive game has largely disappeared over the last season-plus, at least in terms of more than sporadic outbursts.
Something else that suggests Leier could eventually become an NHL regular is his level of mental toughness. As a Phantoms rookie last year, Leier stoically played through the second half of last season with injuries to both shoulders and a wrist. He didn't play effectively -- at least not offensively, as his scoring pace dropped dramatically -- but he gave his all to at least help out the team with his blossoming two-way awareness. It was only after the season that Leier admitted he'd been playing hurt.
6) Scott Laughton and Leier are just two players of a group of forward prospects beginning to filter upwards in the organization. While 2015 first-round pick Travis Konecny has the highest upside in terms of potential for becoming an NHL offensive impact forward, some of the recent non-first rounders -- including Nicolas Aube-Kubel, Oskar Lindblom, Radel Fazleev and Cooper Marody -- have also shown promise at their respective current levels of play.
7) Marody, a freshman at the University of Michigan, could hardly have hoped for a better start to his collegiate career. The 18-year-old shares the team scorining lead with nine points (four goals, five assists) with another true freshman, Winnipeg Jets 2015 first-round pick Kyle Connor.
8) The Flyers will honor the recent retirement of Simon Gagne prior to the start of Tuesday's game against the Los Angeles Kings. Look for a special Gagne tribute on the Flyers' Alumni site and here at HockeyBuzz.
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PUCK TALKS IN PHILADELPHIA
On Nov. 18 at 7 p.m., I will be part of the hockey panel at the Puck & Pitch Talks event at Bourbon & Branch (705 N. 2nd St.) in Philadelphia. CSN Philly's Sarah Baicker will be the moderator and my fellow panelists will include Al Morganti (WIP & CSN Philly), Dave Isaac (Camden Courier Post) and Adam Kimelman (NHL.com).
Tickets can be purchased at
PuckTalksLive.com. Use promo code "Bullies" to get a $5 discount off the $20 ticket price. Further information and updates are available on the Puck Talks Twitter page (@PuckTalksLive) and on Facebook (Facebook.com/Pucktalks).
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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