The Most Shocking Stats From a Disastrous 2021 Season

The Philadelphia Flyers 2021 season was…strange… to put it delicately. They played a schedule that was both significantly shortened and extremely condensed, leaving almost no time for practice. They played in front of empty buildings half the year, and had several of their games postponed because they caught some kinda virus that’s going around.

In such a–dare I say– unprecedented season, it should come as little surprise that the Flyers put up some REALLY odd numbers. Like, statistical anomaly, couldn’t put up numbers this bad if you tried type of stuff. Let’s a take a look at some of those numbers, and see what they tell us about our beloved Broad Street Bullies.

Slow Starts

The Flyers had a very strange habit this year of digging themselves early holes, and then either finding a way to pull off a miraculous late-game comeback, or completely folding the tents and losing by five or more goals.

It actually didn’t start this way though, as throughout their hot start to the season in January and February, the Flyers were enjoying hot starts in games fairly often. Throughout their first 23 contests, the Flyers actually managed to grab the first goal 15 times.

From there, however, their trend of giving up the first goal started, and really kicked into another gear in April, where they surrendered the first goal in a remarkable 10 STRAIGHT GAMES. Given the rate at which they scored first for the season (41%), the statistical chances of them giving up the first goal in 10 straight? 0.51%

When all was said and done, the Orange and Black managed to score first in 23 games, of which they managed to win 14 and lose 9. They gave up the first goal 33 times, and in those games they tallied 11 wins and 22 losses.

Their slow starts didn’t start and stop with the first goal though, the team really struggled in first periods on the whole. Through their first 18 games, the Flyers actually managed to end the first period with a lead eight times and trailed after one in only four. Again, that trend completely turned around at the beginning of March though, and by the end of the month, the Flyers had managed to put themselves in a hole at the first intermission a whopping 16 times and entered the break leading just 10 times for the season.

All told, in their 56 contests, the Flyers led just 13 times at the break, but trailed just over double that, at 27 times. Their goal differential in first periods was a cool -22, which is a real shame, because when leading after one, they were an impressive 10-2-1, as opposed to a dismal 7-17-3 when trailing.

God-Awful Goaltending

Early on in the season, the Flyers were getting pinned down in their own zone, getting outchanced, outshot and generally outplayed. Yet they were still piling up wins in large part due to excellent goaltending. Carter Hart and Brian Elliott combined for a solid .910 save percentage in January, but things once again turned sour in March, when their percentage plummeted to a mind-numbingly bad .834.

For the season, Alex Lyon posted the best save percentage on the team with a less than ideal .893. Elliott was right behind him at .889 and Hart brought up the rear with a putrid .877, giving the team a cumulative .880; the worst mark in the league by .011.

Goals against average numbers weren’t much prettier for the Flyers. Elliott led the charge at 3.06, followed by Lyon (3.33) and Hart (3.67). Amongst all goalies who started at least half of the 56 games, Elliott’s GAA would rank 3rd from the bottom, ahead of only Joonas Korpisalo (3.30) and Martin Jones (3.28). Lyon and Hart would be second to last and dead last respectively if they had played enough games to qualify. Unsurprisingly, these goalies combined to allow the most scoring of any team with 201 goals allowed.

While some acknowledgment of the Flyers’ poor blueline play needs to be made, at a certain point the goaltenders need to step up and put out the fire, but the Flyers’ goalies routinely poured gasoline on it instead. Not even in the similarly shortened 2013 campaign did we see team goaltending numbers this bad. In fact, the last time we saw a team finish with a lower save percentage, was in 1999-2000, when the Tampa Bay Lightning and the dearly-departed Atlanta Thrashers posted save percentages of .876 and .877 respectively.

There’s simply no excuse for numbers this poor in today’s NHL.

Disastrous Differential

Perhaps what made this year’s rendition of the Flyers especially frustrating to watch, was the way every loss seemed to deteriorate into a rout and every win came in a nail biter. In fact, after their back-to-back 3-0 shutouts in Buffalo the last two days of February (noticing a trend here?), the Flyers went an incredible 33 games (nearly 60% of their entire season) without winning by more than one goal. The Orange and Black managed to win 11 of those 33 games, and their combined differential from those victories was +8 (not counting the extra “goal” from their three shootout wins). In their 22 losses however, the Flyers were outscored by a whopping 57 goals (not counting three from shootouts) highlighted by a 9-0 schellacking at MSG and four separate five-goal losses. After that stretch, it’s pretty impressive that their season-total goal differential was as good as it was, although their -38 mark is still fifth worst among all the teams who have finished their season at this time.

Of all the anomalous stats the Flyers put up this year, this one is by far the most embarassing. While their goal differential is impressively bad, teams have had cumulatively worse stretches, but even the all-time bad teams luck into a big win every now and then. For instance, even though this year’s Buffalo Sabres team endured a record tying 17-game losing streak, they still managed to bookend it with a 4-1 victory over New Jersey and a 6-1 drubbing of the Flyers. To go as long as the Flyers did without a multi-goal victory is simply unheard of.