Philadelphia Flyers Rolling Three Pairs on Defense
By Marc Naples
Without any stars and Michael Del Zotto out injured, the Philadelphia Flyers are often turning to an evenly balanced defense.
Around the NHL, you constantly hear talk about “rolling 4 lines.” Fred Shero and his Broad Street Bullies were one of the first NHL teams to shorten up their shifts to keep fresh legs out on the ice more of the time. Since then, the direction of the league has clearly following this trend.
One reason for the importance of this strategy is that the game is faster than ever. The players are faster, but moreover forwards are expected to backcheck much harder 100% of the time. Forwards who are out for much more than 40 seconds can’t sprint back on defense with the same intensity.
This trend has not extended to the back end. Defensemen still take pretty long shifts, and if anything, the talk of the league is always centered around the ballyhooed “number one defenseman.” Last year in fact, the Chicago Blackhawks won the cup with essentially 4 defensemen.
Turning back to the Philadelphia Flyers, a whole lot of ink has been spilled talking about the shortcomings of their current blue line. To put it briefly, it’s generally considered not very good. GM Ron Hextall’s plan to address that problem is focused on youth. That future is very exciting, but those players aren’t here yet. Coach Dave Hakstol has to find other solutions for the now.
The Flyers defensemen are not all bums. Mark Streit is getting old, but he’s had some very good seasons. Shayne Gostisbehere is as exciting a young defenseman as there is the league today. And Radko Gudas is having a remarkable season. The real problem is that they don’t have the prototypical “top pair” guys. They’re all good players–so long as they’re on your second or third pair.
Early in the season, Dave Hakstol was groping for solutions. Eight or nine defensemen were constantly shuffling all over the lineup, and many of the combinations didn’t work out too well. Shayne Gostisbehere’s arrival in November nailed down one spot, but it took another month or so for Hakstol to find a solution on a top pair.
Eventually Michael Del Zotto emerged as the clear number on defenseman. Often paired with Radko Gudas, they played the big minutes against the top competition. Unfortunately that arrangement no longer works, when Del Zotto was lost for the season to injury.
The newest alternative for the Philadelphia Flyers can roughly be described as having 3 second pairs. In recent games, the pairs of Ghost-MacDonald, Schultz-Streit, and Manning-Gudas have shared the load equally. Last night versus the Avalanche was a perfect example. While the Avalanche had a clear top pair of Erik Johnson and François Beachemin to shadow Claude Giroux, every Flyers pair went against every Avalanche line. Andrew MacDonald ended up leading the team in total ice time, with barely more than 21 minutes played.
This kind of balance is rare, but it might work for the Flyers. Going back to the beginning of the season, there was talk of how Hakstol wanted to get his defense more involved and higher up the ice. In such a system, occasionally the Flyers defensemen will have to get back quickly, and exert more energy than a conservatively positioned defender. If the Flyers are willing to roll 3 defense pairs more than other teams, they can ask them to skate harder than teams who want a select few players playing big minutes.
None of this is a traditional way to utilize your defensemen in the NHL. The Philadelphia Flyers may actually prefer to have go-to, game controlling defensemen, but none are going to appear on the roster this spring. If the Hakstol sticks with his balanced usage of defensive pairs, this unique deployment could also create unique advantages.