Philadelphia Flyers: Bounce-Back Seasons Will Be Huge In 2019-20

The Philadelphia Flyers will need a couple of players to have bounce-back seasons in order for their 2019-20 campaign to truly be a success.

I don’t need to tell you that the 2018-19 season didn’t go as planned for the Philadelphia Flyers. Their special teams unit struggled, the team as a whole gave inconsistent efforts, and they set an NHL record for having eight different goaltenders start in-net during the year. Some of the players on the roster, more specifically two defensemen, didn’t live up to preseason expectations, either, and they’ll need to bounce back from their disappointing campaigns to help get the Flyers back into the Stanley Cup Playoffs next year.

Ivan Provorov is one of them. Provorov hardly looked like the same player that scored 17 goals and 41 points in 2017-18, netting just 26 points last season. Furthermore, there was no sugar-coating his disastrous play in the defensive zone, continually turning the puck over following questionable passes and decisions with the biscuit on his stick. His statistics on defense at even-strength weren’t far off from his career averages, outside of a low 45.98 Goals-For percentage which was geared more towards the turmoil between the pipes, but again, the giveaways were what plagued him. Philadelphia has to have its Number One defenseman return to form and be the elite two-way defender he’s shown he can be during his three year NHL career because, without him, they could find themselves struggling yet again unless others step up.

The Flyers will rely on Shayne Gostsibehere getting back on track, as well. A lot of Ghost’s hardships were due to the lack of production by the power-play unit as a whole. No matter how many chances they created, how many shots they got on the net or where they came from, the team just couldn’t find the back of it for whatever reason. Gostisbehere scored around the same amount of points while play was even, but still netted the lowest point total of his career with 37 with the man advantage production not being there. While this was more of a power-play problem than anything, Gostisbehere along with Claude Giroux are the quarterbacks of the unit and have to take matters into their own hands when the time calls for it to right the ship.

Provorov and Ghost bouncing back, the young talent stepping up, and receiving stability in-net will all be keys to the Flyers success next year. If two of those three aspects don’t come through, Philadelphia could miss the postseason for the second straight season.