Donnellon: Maybe Flyers just aren't good enough to play Hakstol's system
EVERYONE'S MAD at Claude Giroux because he isn't scoring goals. Everyone's mad at Brayden Schenn because he doesn't seem interested enough in scoring them.
EVERYONE'S MAD at Claude Giroux because he isn't scoring goals.
Everyone's mad at Brayden Schenn because he doesn't seem interested enough in scoring them.
Everyone's mad at the second-year head coach because he won't throw things around the locker room, or throw players under his sputtering bus.
But here's the reality. Heading into Thursday night's game at Edmonton, only four players had scored more than 10 goals for the Flyers this season. Giroux and Schenn are two of them. Have they been dominant? Absolutely not. But part of that is that players who are supposed to be doing much more are doing much less.
The Flyers are seventh in shots taken per game (31.2).
They are eighth in shots allowed (28.5).
This implies that Dave Hakstol's system is working.
It also implies that he doesn't have much to work with.
Sean Couturier, Nick Cousins, Travis Konecny - players projected to be integral parts when general manager Ron Hextall's grand plan begins to take form - had a combined 22 goals heading into the Oilers game. Shayne Gostisbehere, last season's rookie of the year runner-up, had four to go with his minus-20.
That is a problem. Not just short term, but long term. Whether this team again dips its toes into the postseason, the production, or lack of it, by players projected to be key parts of this team's future is alarming.
Which is why you hear Hakstol, night after night, one practice after another, laud the effort but not the result. They're playing hard for him, despite what the output suggests. The other night against Calgary, Cousins was everywhere, in the middle of everything, had an array of chances and scored a goal.
The only Flyers goal.
It was his first in 10 games.
He once amassed 103 points in 64 games at the junior level. Only two seasons ago, he amassed 56 points in 64 games as a Phantom. He plays with an edge, but he is 5-10, and so far that edge has not nearly been enough.
The Flyers third-round pick from five drafts ago, he is 23. Couturier, whose status of "On the brink of stardom" is now in its third year, is 24. As Bill Parcells says, he is what his record says he is. At a minus-2 on this plus-starved team, Couturier skates well, checks well, hovers around the net well. He just doesn't finish his chances.
That's the working title for this year's Flyers video, Unfinished Chances.
Couturier is and remains a good defensive center. The Flyers just have too many of them, none of whom is playing in the second year of a six-year, $26 million contract.
The Flyers drafted seven forwards in last June's draft, several who came with the description "two-way." Couturier would seem expendable for even a hint of improved offense. The problem, of course, is that he's no cheap piece for another team. Same with Schenn, who had one goal over his previous 12 games, one goal over the previous month, and owns a minus-19. The four-year, $26.5 million deal he signed last summer was a profession of faith by Hextall that the inconsistency and defensive lapses that marked Schenn's first few seasons in the league were dissipating with maturity.
The minus-19 indicates that faith has not been rewarded.
So you're left with two disturbing camps. The one I'm in says the talent on this team is aging and/or overvalued. Giroux, whose output is likely to decline for the fourth season in a row, is part of this thinking. He is 29, coming off concussion issues and major surgery on his hip and groin, and he simply is not the player he once was. The Sam Hinkie-like move might even be to flip from buyers to sellers at the trade deadline, but I hear the screaming retort to that, even as I type this: They have a chance to be in the playoffs, man! Once the playoffs start, anything can happen. We were a seventh seed in 2010 when we went to the Finals . . .
It should be noted that team was not a seventh seed for a chunk of the season, until injuries began to mount up. And except for Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, its key components were well-traveled veterans nearing their expiration dates.
Hextall is trying to build something way different here. He preaches patience to a town he knows all too well doesn't do well with the concept.
The other camp pines for a coaching change. It is, after all, the tried and true method of jump-starting a team in the NHL, as the comical carousels in Boston and Montreal suggest. Hextall, though, went all-in when he handed a college coach a five-year deal, and a dismissal now would not reflect favorably on the GM's vision or operating acumen. And Hakstol, despite the up-and-down ride that has marked his tenure, has what still appears to be a cohesive room.
They like his tone, his patience and his system.
They just might not be talented enough, as constructed, to execute it.
@samdonnellon
Columns: ph.ly/Donnellon