Flyers still have to learn how good Couturier can be | Mike Sielski
I kind of made a statement, the young center said. He needs to make a louder one to help his team improve.
Sean Couturier has an idea of the kind of player he wants to be, and when it comes to seeking models to emulate, no one can accuse him of aiming low. The Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews, the Boston Bruins' Patrice Bergeron, the Los Angeles Kings' Anze Kopitar - these are three of the best two-way forwards in the NHL, perhaps the three best, and Couturier aspires to achieve the same measure of respect around the league that they enjoy.
This is heady stuff. At first suggestion, it might sound a little ridiculous, too.
Each of them has won at least one Stanley Cup and reached the Finals at least twice. Since Couturier joined them in 2011, the Flyers have won one playoff series. Each of them has had at least two 30-goal seasons. Couturier has never scored more than 15 goals in any of his six seasons. But each of them is also at least four years older than Couturier. Although it feels as if he has been a Flyer forever, he is just 24, and he said that he looks at Kopitar in particular and sees a template for the player he might yet become. Kopitar is the same height as Couturier, 6-foot-3. He has won the Selke Trophy as the NHL's best defensive forward and the Lady Byng Trophy as its most gentlemanly player. In each of the two postseasons when the Kings won the Stanley Cup, 2012 and 2014, he led all players in scoring. Again, heady stuff.
"He's the closest to me, with the size and set of skills he has," Couturier said Tuesday during the Flyers' clean-out day at the Skate Zone in Voorhees. "That being said, you have to be put in different situations to succeed offensively, and hopefully I can get some more opportunities next year."
Welcome to the conundrum at the heart of Sean Couturier's career: We know what kind of player he wants to be, but what kind of player should he be and can he be? If the trade-deadline acquisition of Valtteri Filppula showed that the Flyers were content to keep Couturier in the role he's known his whole career - the primary shadow of an opponent's top-scoring center - the measure of depth that Filppula added to the lineup seemed to unleash something new within Couturier.
On a line with Brayden Schenn and Dale Weise, having recovered from a left knee sprain that forced him to miss a month of the season, Couturier had 17 points and was a plus-18 over his final 19 games.
"I kind of made a statement," he said. "As a player, I think I'm getting better. I'm still young, though, so there's still a lot to improve and mature in my game. I feel pretty good about my game, pretty confident, and showed it late in the year."
Still, 19 games is a relatively small sample size, and if it's natural for the Flyers to hope that, when he's healthy, Couturier can be a 70-point player over an 82-game season, it's just as natural to be skeptical. It's a chicken-or-egg question, really. For instance, one could argue that it's unfair to expect Couturier to be as productive offensively as Kopitar, Toews, or Bergeron because the Flyers haven't afforded him the same opportunity to be that kind of scorer or playmaker. Of all the faceoffs for which he's been on the ice in his career, Couturier has started in the Flyers' defensive zone 59.4 percent of the time. That figure well exceeds Toews' (40.4), Kopitar's (47.4), and even Bergeron's (53.5). It's harder to score when you have to skate the length of the rink first.
So if the Flyers use Couturier more in situations that are more offensively favorable to him, will he necessarily become more effective? Will his productivity track more closely with the likes of those other centers? As long as Weise (or a player of similarly modest skill) is one of his wingmen, it would seem a steep challenge, and that truth strikes at the uncertainty about Couturier's future, and the Flyers'.
They signed him through the 2021-22 season at a reasonable salary-cap cost of $4.33 million. If he does keep developing, if he does emerge as the equal of those players he admires so much, the Flyers will have a franchise centerpiece for a relative bargain. But injuries have marred each of Couturier's last two seasons - he has missed 35 regular-season games and five of the Flyers' six postseason games - and it's also possible that there will be no major leap forward ahead for him. He may be merely an excellent defensive center whose greatest value would be as a potential trade chip - value that the likes of Claude Giroux and Jake Voracek, because of age and expense, lack.
"That success I had at the end of the year, I've got to bring that consistently every night," he said. "It's a long season, but I've got to be more consistent over 82 games. Injuries are tough and part of the game, but hopefully I can stay healthy over the next few years and show what I'm made of."
If Sean Couturier really wants to make a statement, that would be the one to make.
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