Jan 19, 2016; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia Flyers assistant head coach Ian Laperriere (left) and head coach Dave Hakstol against the Toronto Maple Leafs during the third period at Wells Fargo Center. The Maple Leafs defeated the Flyers, 3-2. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 19, 2016; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia Flyers assistant head coach Ian Laperriere (left) and head coach Dave Hakstol against the Toronto Maple Leafs during the third period at Wells Fargo Center. The Maple Leafs defeated the Flyers, 3-2. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports /
As the Philadelphia Flyers kick off their season in LA, we go around the table for how our writers think the team will fare this season.
Last year was certainly an up and down season for the Philadelphia Flyers. Specifically, in November the Flyers looked like a sinking ship, closer to the draft lottery than the playoffs. Thankfully the season was saved by the dramatic arrival of Shayne Gostisbehere.
Even then, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. It took a furious finish for the Flyers to grab the final playoff spot. Furthermore, the Flyers trip to the playoffs was a quick one. They were eliminated in 6 games, only mustering 6 goals the entire series.
So what can we expect this year from the Flyboys? We go around the table to hear a few different opinions for this season.
Ryan Quiqley
The Philadelphia Flyers have a ton of questions to answer this season. Can Dave Hakstol continue to bring the best out of his players? Can Shayne Gostisbehere continue to perform the way he did in his historic rookie campaign? Will Jakub Voracek rebound after the down season he had last year?
Now for the million dollar question: Will this year’s team look the squad that started last season as one of the worst teams in the Metropolitan Division or will they look like the team that fought its way into the playoffs?
As of right now, I’ll take the latter.
One month ago, it was looking like the Flyers would be entering the 2016-17 season with a roster nearly identical to last year’s, which is neither good or bad. At times, last season’s team looked like one of the top teams in the NHL. At other times, it looked like a lottery team.
However, help has arrived. Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny, two of the Flyers’ top prospects, fought their way onto the opening night roster after completely stealing the show in the preseason. With the addition of new young talent to an already above average team, there is no reason to believe the Flyers can’t reach the playoffs once again in Hakstol’s second year as Philadelphia’s bench boss.
Season Prediction: The Flyers still have a long way to go before they can be considered legitimate contenders, but they’ve certainly taken a step in the right direction. Expect the Flyers to finish, at worst, fourth in the Metropolitan Division this season.
Fearless prediction: Travis Konecny will be nominated for the Calder Memorial Trophy.
Steven Principi
This is probably the most optimistic that I’ve been for a Flyers season since 2010-2011. Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny are going to be an absolute blast to watch, just as Gostisbehere was last season. Also Jakub Voracek looks primed for a big bounce back season, and Claude Giroux and Wayne Simmonds remain awesome. There’s a lot to like about this team.
Ron Hextall has restocked the Flyers with young talent for the future and Dave Hakstol seems to know how to work with what he has in the present. For me, this season feels like the start of a new phase in Hextall’s process. This team has some expectations attached to it, more so than any of the last three seasons.
With that said, I don’t know if I’m ready to believe that the championship window is open yet. The bottom six could still use some upgrades (I’m not remotely sold on Boyd Gordon) and one of either Andrew MacDonald or Nick Schultz are still going to be in the lineups more often than not. The problem areas on the roster have diminished greatly over the past few seasons but there are still a few issues out there. Over the course of a long season, that’s the difference between where the Flyers are and where a team with fewer glaring problems like St. Louis has been. Everything Hextall has shown in his tenure as GM should inspire confidence, but there is still work to be done.
Season Prediction: 101 Points
I like this year’s opening night Flyers team far more than I did last season. There is a lot more talent in the lineup and a number of the issues that were facing them last year have been diluted, if not fully removed. I don’t think they’ve overtaken either Pittsburgh or Washington yet, but I do like them to take the third seed in the Metropolitan Division this season, jumping the Rangers and just edging out the Islanders. I’ll even give them a series win too. No Cup for the Flyers this year, but a successful season that gets them one step closer to their ultimate goal.
Fearless Prediction: Playing most of the season with Jakub Voracek and Travis Konecny, Sean Couturier not only posts his first 50 point season, but blows it out and hits the 60 point mark.
Michael Appel
Before the start of training camp, I thought the Flyers would take a step back this year and would fall short of the playoffs. The Philadelphia Flyers were going in to this upcoming season with basically the same team as last year, while teams that finished behind them in the Eastern Conference like the Buffalo Sabres, Carolina Hurricanes and Montreal Canadians made additions to their respective rosters to close the gap between them and the Flyers.
After watching Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny through training camp and seeing that they are NHL ready, my outlook on the Flyers has changed. They have filled two of their biggest holes; secondary scoring and another puck moving defenseman. This willkeep teams from keying on Claude Giroux and Shayne Gostisbehere.
Konecny is a dynamic forward with speed and skill who will play on the second line with Jake Voracek and Sean Courtier. Teams will no longer be able to put all of their focus on shutting down Claude Giroux’s line. The Flyers also now have two legitimate scoring threats on their second line with Konecny and Jake Voracek. With only six goals in six games in last year’s playoff series loss to the Washington Capitals, it was clearly evident that the Flyers needed more scoring from their second line to take some of the heat off of Claude Giroux. The Flyers have done that by adding Konecny.
Ivan Provorov will do for Shayne Gostisbehere what Konecny will do for Giroux. He will give the Flyers another scoring threat on their back line. At the end of the regular season and in the playoffs, NHL teams knew if they shut down Ghost, they eliminated the Flyers offense on their back line. With the addition of Ivan Provorov, another puck moving defenseman who averaged more than a point per game in junior hockey last year, teams will no longer be able to focus in on just Gostisbehere. And with Provorov and Konecny being only 19 years old, the injection of youth should give the Flyers an added spark like it did with the Penguins on their run to a Stanley Cup last year.
Season Prediction: With the additions of Provorov and Konecny to an already good core of young players and with teams in the Flyers division losing key players, the Rangers losing Keith Yandle and the Islanders losing Kyle Okposo, I see the Flyers overtaking these two teams in their division and finishing third in the Metropolitan Division behind the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins.
Being that the third place team in the division plays the second place team in the division, that would pit the Flyers against the Penguins in the first round of the playoffs. The Penguins are the defending Stanley Cup champs but, no team has repeated as Stanley Cup champions since the Detroit Red Wings accomplished the feat in 1998. I predict this is the year the Flyers win their first playoff round since 2012. The Penguins will be suffering from their Stanley Cup hangover while the Flyers will be young and hungry. The Flyers season comes to an end in Round 2 but it will have been a successful season.
Fearless Prediction: For the first time in his career, Sean Courtier tops 20 goals and 50 points. Playing on a line with Jake Voracek and Travis Konecny should go a long way towards helping him achieve that goal.
Marc Naples
The Flyers didn’t really do much in the offseason. Their only moves were to sign Boyd Gordon and Dale Weise, which don’t exactly qualify as blockbuster maneuvers.
What is happening is a deliberate building process, while the team continues to shed bad contracts. Remember the Flyers are committing just over $14 million in cap dollars this season to Mark Streit, Andrew MacDonald, Nick Schultz, and RJ Umberger.
The real improvements came from within. Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny demanded their inclusion on the roster with their performances in training camp, and the Flyers feel like a much deeper team this year. Furthermore, I fully expect each of Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek, and Steve Mason to have better season this year than last.
They will need that improvement, because I’m not convinced the Flyers are as good as their hot regular season finish last year suggests. More likely, their true baseline quality is somewhere between the team that finished so strong and the team that looked overmatched in the first round of the playoffs.
Working in their favor is wide open competition for the 3rd spot in the Metropolitan division. Aside from powerhouses in Pittsburgh and Washington, the Flyers’ real competition is a declining Rangers team and a curiously stagnate Islanders team.
Season Prediction: I don’t expect the Philadelphia Flyers to take a leap forward this year. Instead, it’s more like one step sideways to take 2 steps forward in the future. Short of everything going right (which it never does), look for them to be between 95-100 points, and in the midst the race for lower playoff seeds. But don’t get greedy and expect too much more.
