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QUICK HITS: MAY 17, 2017
1) The preliminary round-robin portion of the 2017 IIHF World Championships wrapped up on Tuesday. After an off day today, the single-elimination medal round begins on Thursday. Nine of the 10 Flyers participating in the tournament this year will be in the medal round.
Among the national teams that include Philadelphia players, only Team France did not advance. Although France won four of seven games in the preliminary round, two wins were in overtime/shootout, which can be costly in the 3-2-1-0 point format. Alternate captain Pierre-Edouard Bellemare shouldered a heavy load for the French side, and finished the tournament with four points (two goals, two assists) and a plus-four rating in seven games.
Below is the schedule for the quarterfinal games on Thursday:
10:15 a.m. EDT -- Russia (Ivan Provorov) vs. Czech Republic (Jakub Voracek and Radko Gudas), USA vs Finland (Valtteri Filppula).
2:15 p.m. EDT -- Canada (Claude Giroux, Travis Konecny, Wayne Simmonds, Sean Couturier, Brayden Schenn) vs. Germany, Sweden vs. Switzerland.
2) Over on the Flyers' official website, part two of my series on the top second overall draft picks in NHL history is now online. This segment looks at notable second overall picks of the 1980s and 1990s. Part three will look at the 2000s.
3) Watching games via streams or on television is not a good substitute for the work NHL scouts do in repeatedly viewing players in person and directly tracking him over the course of the season. However, the video below is a well-assembled facsimile of such work. It is a shift-to-shift compilation of prospective first-overall or second-overall 2017 draftee Nolan Patrick (Brandon Wheat Kings, Western Hockey League) over the course of six games from February 14 to March 17, 2017.
While imperfect and just a swatch of a season -- keep in mind, though, that Patrick missed the first half of the 2016-17 campaign -- it provides a more genuine way of approximating what scouts do than the "highlight reel" type of videos that admittedly make for more entertaining viewing. When you watch the footage, try to block out the announcers' banter and the camera work (assuming Patrick is on screen). Focus on Patrick with and without the puck, his positional awareness and feet, his anticipation, reads and engagement in the play, passing and shooting skills, use of teammates, back pressure, forechecking routes, etc.
That is not always easy to do, especially as a player swirls in and out of the camera frame (although the guys who always seem to be around the puck tend to be prominently in frame much of the time, which is also revealing in a subtle way). Also, don't get too concerned or too enthralled by one good or bad game or a particular good play or mistake. Keeping in mind that it is over a narrow time frame, look at the total picture of what you see.
When the Flyers and other teams have their predraft scout meetings to come up with their internal rankings list, they are going to apply the aforementioned criteria as well as other homework (such as interviewing the players, talking to coaches, discussing the player's injury history, etc) to determine their rankings. It's not about stats per se or whose highlight reel clips draw the most oohs and ahhs.
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