With the holidays upon us, it’s fun to get into the season. We looked at what Flyers fans should be thankful for. Now, it’s time to look at what we should ask Santa for. What things can we ask the Big Guy for this year?
Continued Good Health
Santa, the first thing on our list is the continued good health of our players. The Flyers have had some minor ailments so far this season. Marc Staal missed some time earlier on as did Rasmus Ristolainen. Carter Hart missed a handful of games. In both cases, the team did fine enough. Noah Cates has recently been the biggest name that’s been down.
This is not like last year. At one point, this team was down Scott Laughton, Travis Konecny, Sean Couturier, and Cam Atkinson. That’s a lot of firepower gone.
This year, Atkinson and Couturier have rebounded nicely. Konecny and Laughton have been able to avoid the injury bug so far. All four are playing very well and are a big reason this team has been successful.
Good teams can rebound from an injury or two. They can’t survive when four or five players they are counting on to be key cogs are down. So far, so good. But if this team is supposed to be successful, we’ll need the continued health of the players. This is not just for this year but for the long term as well.
Continued Development of Young Stars
Likewise, Santa, we need our young players to keep growing. Joel Farabee is on pace for another career year (50-60 points is not out of reach). So far this year, Owen Tippett is showing that last year was not a fluke. Cam York is starting to turn things around and Bobby Brink has been contributing for most of this year. Tyson Foerster is also showing that he belongs on the NHL roster.
The future of this team is dependent on how our young guys are improving. Danny Briere, and the rest of the Flyers admin, need to know which of the youngsters are worth holding onto and which ones may need to find a new home. The better they are playing this year, the better the future of this team looks. So, Santa, keep helping them progress at this level.
No Team Drama
Lastly, Santa, there was one thing that really harmed this team last year. With a new head coach, there were a few players who did not quite meet up to his expectations. There was some clubhouse drama and it didn’t bode well for the team.
Team chemistry is important. Seeing guys actively going against what the coach wants is extremely detrimental to the team; especially a team with so many young players. Those players have all been removed from the Flyers this past offseason.
So far this year, there has been (mostly) harmony. Yes, there is the situation with Morgan Frost being scratched a lot early on and there was a situation with Farabee being scratched for most of a game. In both cases, Flyers’ coach John Tortorella has insisted that nothing is wrong and that it is not an issue. Since it hasn’t seemed to affect the play of the team so far, I would tend to agree with him here.
Hopefully that’s all the drama we have this season. Team chemistry is vital to the success of a team. We’ve seen that with the Phillies and Eagles recently. It’d be great to see the Flyers rally around each other in a similar fashion. They already seem to be playing for each other and share plenty of respect in the room.
So, Santa, that’s our list for this year. I hesitate to ask for a playoff berth now, but we’ll see how we do in the spring. Although, if you could keep making the Devils lose and could start working on the Rangers, that would be alright by me.