Sunday Number: Can the Flyers sustain last year’s shootout success?

Shootouts were very kind to Philadelphia Flyers last season. Can the team figure out how to replicate that success?

The shootout has long been a nemesis of the Philadelphia Flyers, and for no real apparent reason.  Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek are both exceptionally skilled forwards, the kind who perform well in shootouts. The team has had a revolving door of goalies, but none have been so dreadful as to justify their pitiful 40-75 record in shootouts since their institution in 2005-06. It’s just something we Flyers fans have grown to accept as a fact of life. The Earth is round. The Process was always the right strategy. The Flyers are bad at shootouts.

Which makes last season’s shootout success all the more incredible.

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.583

The Flyers went 7-5 in shootouts last year, good for a .583 winning percentage. It was the first time the team had won more than half their shootouts since 2009-10, when they went 4-3.

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There are two obvious questions to be asked: how did the Flyers suddenly become good at shootouts, and can we count on them to stay good in the future?

Let’s start with the first. Shootouts, of course, only have two components- shooting, and stopping the other teams stops. The Flyers were only 13/46 (28.2%) on shootout attempts, a typically poor success rate. That means the Flyers’ goalies had to have been phenomenal in shootouts. Sure enough, Steve Mason, Michal Neuvirth and Anthony Stolarz held opposing teams to 10/45 (22.2%) shooting, easily the lowest numbers in the league. Mason made the bulk of those saves, stopping 28 of 36.

So what does this mean for the team in shootouts moving forward? Well, probably nothing good. It seems highly unlikely that Flyers goalies will be able to replicate their nearly 80% shootout save percentage, mostly because of simple regression, but also Mason’s departure. And with negligible improvement from Flyers shooters, odds are against the Flyers defying a decade’s worth of shootout futility for a second season in a row.

The Flyers’ shootout issues clearly run deeper than simple bad luck, and one great season from their goalies doesn’t change that. Dave Hakstol and the rest of the coaches cannot be content to sit on their laurels- they must try to identify those problems and correct them. For a team expected to be on the playoff bubble, a few shootout wins could be the difference between a playoff run and another appearance at the Draft Lottery.

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(Stats via Hockey Reference)