The 2012 1st round pick is coming into his own and starting to find his niche for the Philadelphia Flyers.
Not every player a team drafts develops the same. It can take time for some to get adjusted to not only the play in the NHL if they make it there at all, but the AHL too. The speed of the game is much quicker than the play in junior leagues, and some aren’t able to pick it up from the start.
Scott Laughton is one of those players. Laughton is still just 24 years-old after being drafted by the Philadelphia Flyers six years ago. He’s jumped from AHL-to-NHL throughout the years since becoming professional in 2015-16, but finally found a consistent role with the team last season as fourth-line center.
Laughton posted solid numbers at the position. In 81 games, he scored 20 points (10 Goals, 10 Assists) in just 11:07 average time-on-ice minutes. His possession metrics at even-strength were also good across the board with a 51.0 Corsi-For percentage (CF%) and a 52.6 Fenwick-For percentage (FF%). The team controlled play more with him on-the-ice, a quality a coach would love to have in their fourth line center in today’s NHL game.
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Moving ahead to this season, Laughton was moved to the wing position during the preseason and has has begun to thrive there. He has three goals in four games and scored two of them in the Flyers 7-4 victory over the Ottawa Senators last game. It’s not just the offensive side of the puck he’s improved on, either. Laughton has been one of the few bright spots on the Flyers penalty-kill, and his aggressiveness while playing short-handed is a much needed breath of fresh air.
Head coach Dave Hakstol has also been playing him more on the ice this season. Laughton has yet to have a game where he’s played under 13 minutes of ice-time. Some of the reasoning behind this is the Flyers have found themselves on the penalty-kill a good amount of times, ranking fifth in the NHL in Power-Play Opportunities Against (PPOA) with 19 this year. In Wednesday’s win against Ottawa, Laughton played on the penalty-kill for 3:51 minutes, which was third on the team among forwards. He has become one of Hakstol’s main penalty-killing forwards along with Sean Couturier and Michael Raffl this year, showing that the coach trusts in his abilities more as a player than he did last season.
Statistically, one of Laughton’s few regressions this year is his CF% at even-strength which is at a below-average 48.6%. This would be slightly concerning if the Flyers didn’t rank tenth worst among NHL teams in the same statistic at 46.46% according to Naturalstattrick.com. If the entire team is struggling to keep possession of the puck, some of the fault has to rely on the coach and their tactics.
During his young NHL career, Laughton has never started a season scoring at least three points in the first four games. Though his current production likely won’t keep up at this pace, the hot start he’s on will only help Laughton grow his confidence at the NHL level and further his development as a player.