Flyers focused on year-round development
Development coaches work with Flyers prospects during the summer and the season, even those back in junior hockey or overseas.
THERE IS a good possibility sometime in the near future that the Flyers have a roster loaded with homegrown talent.
The team has a stockpile of defensive prospects after adding seventh overall draft pick Ivan Provorov to the equation. He joins the likes of Travis Sanheim, Samuel Morin, Robert Hagg and Shayne Gostisbehere as the future on the team's blue line.
The Flyers added a forward with a second first-round pick last month in Travis Konecny, selected 24th overall. Their captain, Claude Giroux, a first-round pick in 2006, is locked into a contract through 2022. Sean Couturier, a first-round pick in 2011, is entering his fifth season in the NHL.
Add to that the possibility that forwards Nick Cousins and Scott Laughton, who made their NHL debuts within the last two seasons, could become fixtures in the lineup in the next few years, and it has the makings of a relatively homegrown group - something rare in the current landscape of professional sports.
But none of those homegrown fantasies is possible if the skills and habits taught during the last six days at the team's annual prospect development camp - which wrapped up yesterday - go by the wayside, general manager Ron Hextall says.
"The summer is a time to teach, whether it's a player or a goalie, whatever," Hextall said. "Because players during the season are stubborn. They don't want to change, they want to win the next game, they want to score the next goal, they want to help their team win. So this is the time to do it. Then they have to just keep these habits going.''
That is only possible if you have a strong development team. A lot of the prospects in development camp will not be playing in the Flyers' organization once the season starts, heading back to juniors or overseas. So it's up to player development coaches Kjell Samuelsson and John Riley to help make sure those habits and skills the Flyers want drilled into their prospects stay consistent throughout the season, even as some prospects get coaching elsewhere.
Samuelsson and Riley routinely travel and check up with prospects. They also call, email, text and do whatever it takes to be in contact on a somewhat regular basis.
Hextall indicated last week that an assistant to newly hired goaltending coach Kim Dillabaugh will be added soon and will be in charge of developing goalie prospects at Lehigh Valley, Reading, in juniors and internationally.
"Those guys are constantly going all winter," Hextall said, "to be with the kids and to make sure the things that they hit on in the summer are still habits and good habits, and they're playing the game the right way.
"Essentially what you're trying to do is make them become pros sooner. I know in my day, you'd say by the time a guy was 24 or 25 he was a pro. Why let the two, three, four years go by where they're pros at a younger age? The lessons that they learn from these guys, they're huge.''
Now that the Flyers brought in Dillabaugh, who was formerly the goalie development coach in Los Angeles, there's also an added emphasis on nurturing a netminder. The team drafted three goalies last month after not taking one last year and only taking one, sixth-rounder Merrick Madsen, in 2013.
The Flyers haven't had a homegrown goalie see regular time since Roman Cechmanek, who was selected in the sixth round of the 2000 draft. In fact, only two of the 17 goalies taken from 2001-2014 have played for the Flyers, and both Jeremy Duchesne and Martin Houle played less than a period in just one NHL game.
The Flyers had five goalies in camp this week with two of the three draftees joining Madsen, 2012 second-round pick Anthony Stolarz and free-agent signee Martin Ouellette.
It will be on Dillabaugh and the future development coach - not Samuelsson and Riley - to help usher in a new era of Flyers goaltending.
"Until you're stopping every puck that comes your way, there's work to be done," Dillabaugh said.
"It's a position that's of the utmost importance, no doubt about it," Hextall said. "I think us drafting goalies and developing them the right way is critical.''
The same can be said for defensemen and forwards, too.