Can Michael Raffl Continue To Improve?
As Michael Raffl entered his 2nd season with the Philadelphia Flyers there was some hype surrounding the Austrian winger after finding some unexpected success in his first year after being signed as an international free agent. He led the Flyers in even-strength goals (14) and Corsi For% (55.3) in a season in which he only played in 67 games and at the discounted price of $1.1 million AAV. But at the age of 26, have we seen peak Michael Raffl?
The Stats
[table id=39 /]
As you can see in the above table, Raffl was able to improve upon his even strength goals and his CF%. So, as well as being able to finish, he was able to drive play into the offensive end of the ice. Both are solid indications that Raffl’s offensive game could still be evolving. While it certainly helped that he played almost exclusively with Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek during the season, you’d be hard pressed to find many people who don’t think very highly of Raffl’s individual skill.
A two-way player who can play on any line and produce? Can’t imagine there would be any teams that wouldn’t welcome his production.
What baffles me though is why Michael Raffl isn’t seeing an increased role on the powerplay. For a guy who led the team in even-strength goals, an area the Flyers placed 24th in, it seems bizarre that you wouldn’t try to find this kid some minutes on the powerplay to continue his offensive contribution. How can you possibly justify giving R.J. Umberger, Vincent Lecavalier, and Steve Downie(!) more power play minutes. I could maybe understand not inserting him into any of the powerplay units in his first year, but come on, 27 minutes this year?
But I digress, Raffl seems to have found his offensive game. So what’s to stop him from potentially scoring 20 even-strength goals? It’d be impressive considering the last Flyers’ winger to carry out this was Scott Hartnell back in 2008/09. But, to answer my question, the only thing standing in the way of Raffl hitting that mark could be his age.
What’s Age Got To Do With It?
Eric Tulsky, former writer at Broad Street Hockey, expounded on the work of Hawerchuck in regards to forward scoring peak. You can find each of these individual’s works via the hyperlinks associated with each author’s name.
The goal of each of these gentleman was to give a general idea when a forward’s points per game peaked. Hawerchuck’s calculations concluded that a forward’s peak points per game production came around the age of 25. Eric thought he could improve upon Hawerchuck’s work by including some more data.
"I’ve previously described and explained the method I recommend. I included every year from 2007-08 to 2013-14, the period for which we have easy access to 5-on-5 scoring rates. I looked at every forward who played two years in a row during that period, and noted their year-over-year change (accounting for variance).For each age, I could then calculate the average change, and can chain those yearly changes together to produce a typical aging curve.– Eric Tulsky via Outnumbered"
Using these new data sets Eric concluded that a forward’s peak points per game production rate came at around 24 and that a forward was able to maintain about 90% of their scoring thru the age of 29. After that, the production cliff comes into play.
I implore you to please read Eric and Hawerchuk’s articles. They are phenomenal and informative.
In Conclusion
Seeing the improvement in Michael Raffl’s game has been incredibly fun to watch. At his bargain bin price tag, he’s an incredibly valuable asset for the Flyers. A two-way player who can play on any line and produce? Can’t imagine there would be any teams that wouldn’t welcome his production. Now while it’s more than likely we’ll see his shooting percentage drop from 15.7%, I can still see Raffl becoming a 30 goal-scorer, especially if he is given a significant role on the powerplay and can finish a full 82 game season. There are a lot of ifs in there, and accounting for the work by Tulsky and Hawerchuck gives me pause, but this graph I put together at War-On-Ice gives me reason to remain optimistic that Michael Raffl has the ability to be that scoring wing the Flyers currently covet.
Pavel Datsyuk,
Eric Staal,
James Neal,
Zach Parise……and Michael Raffl. via
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Stats Provided by Stats.Hockeyanalysis / War-On-Ice
Big thanks to @NHLEricT and @Hawerchuck for their contributions in writing this article.