James Van Riemsdyk Has Found His Groove For The Flyers

The Philadelphia Flyers winger is starting to put himself on the scoresheet more often than not as of late.

One can’t deny that James van Riemsdyk was one of, if not the most snakebitten player on the Philadelphia Flyers a quarter of the way through 2019-20. Though he was generating scoring chances at a high rate, the 30-year-old forward began the season riding a seven-game pointless skid and didn’t find his first goal until the latter part of October. JvR went on to post two different three-game point streaks after obtaining goal number one of the year, but would once again find himself in another drought, posting goose eggs on the scoresheet from November 10th to the 25th.

This has been said before, and it’ll probably be said again, but van Riemsdyk is a goal-scorer. As we saw with players like Wayne Simmonds and Scott Hartnell in the past, goal-scorers are widely known for being streaky, as there’ll be occasions where they’ll score with relative ease and times where they can’t buy a tally to save their lives. While it might be a bit annoying at times given the amount of money he makes, that’s just the type of player van Riemsdyk is, and right now, we’re reaping the benefits of what a goal-scorer can bring to a team when they’re on their game.

JvR has found his groove with the Flyers as of late, breaking out of his previous eight-game slump in a substantial way. In his last 11 games, the former second overall draft selection has racked up ten points, which is one point more than he scored in his initial 24 contests of the year. Six of them have been goals, propelling him to second, or fourth if you look at it that way, on the team behind Claude Giroux, Travis Konecny, and Oskar Lindblom, who are all tied for the lead with 11.

Reemer is now on pace for 23 goals and 44 points if he plays in all 82 games this season. That’s undoubtedly better than the 15-goal pace he was on just one week ago, showing how quickly things can shift when it comes to an ever-changing NHL campaign. I wouldn’t be surprised to see his point-production grow or stabilize at this level as the year goes along, either, given how many chances he’s continued to create at 5-on-5 in Alain Vigneault‘s system.

Although I’ve been critical of JvR in the past, how could one be mad that the guy is finally receiving some puck luck and finding twine more often? All I wanted was a bit more offensive output from the veteran left-winger and he’s unquestionably brought that and then some for the Flyers recently.