PHILADELPHIA – Both Flyers’ players and coaches alike expressed appreciation for the naming of Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim and Rasmus Ristolainen to respective rosters for the upcoming 4 Nations Face-Off.
Konecny and Sanheim were selected for Team Canada and Ristolainen for his native Finland in announcements made on Wednesday for the tournament scheduled for Feb. 12-20 (at Montreal, Boston) in place of the annual NHL All-Star Game.
All three players have been key to the Flyers’ turnaround after a 1-5-1 start. Since then, the team has gone 11-5-2.
Joel Farabee acknowledged the trio has been instrumental in all aspects of the improvement.
“Those guys are super important here,” Farabee said after Thursday morning’s pre-game skate at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees, N.J. “They’ve been playing their butts off. ‘TK’ has been our best player for five years now.
“I felt it was pretty obvious he was going to make the team but for ‘Sanny’. . .just kind of everything he’s dealt with the last couple years. The media kind of gave it to him for a couple summers. So I’m really happy for him. ‘Risto’ gets his named dragged through the mud all the time. He just turned around and he’s having a great year. I’m really happy for those guys, they’re going to have a great tournament and represent their countries very well.”
Flyers assistant coach Rocky Thompson, filling in for head coach John Tortorella at the morning skate media session, voiced sentiments similar to Farabee’s.
“I’m really happy for both of them,” he said. “I think it’s really well-deserved. They’ve worked extremely hard.
“Quite frankly, if you look at our team right now, those two (Konecny, Sanheim) have really put the team on their backs in certain situations. The way that they play is going to be a complement in those (special team) situations. They’re very hard to play against (the Flyers have been third in NHL penalty kill with a success percentage hovering in the 86 percent range). Outstanding penalty killers.”
The Flyers led the league in shorthanded goals last year and figure to be among the leaders again by this season’s end.
“They bring offense in those situations,” Thompson said. “So we’re very excited for them. And proud of them.”
>Power play concerns
Speaking of special teams, after three seasons in the NHL power-play basement, the Flyers got off to a quick start this year and their rank reached as high as the mid-teens (with a success rate of better than 20 percent) among the 32 teams in the first few weeks of the season.
But since then it’s been a steady decline. They entered Thursday night’s game against Florida having dropped all the way to 26th at 16.0 percent.
Thompson, along with associate coach Brad Shaw and assistant Darryl Williams, have been searching for answers.
Thompson explained there have been a number of reasons for the dip.
For one, the Flyers haven’t been getting that many power-play chances so there’s been little chance to get some continuity and momentum going.
Plus, the compact schedule hasn’t helped either because practice time is limited. The Flyers had to play three games in four nights over the Thanksgiving holiday stretch and now they’re in another one, with Friday off, then back-to-back games starting at Boston and finishing at home to Utah over the weekend.
Then throw in the fact that some of the power-play unit’s quarterbacks have been unavailable. Jamie Drysdale went down with an injury and Egor Zamula has been in and out of the lineup. Rookie Emil Andrae spent some time there and then he was hurt for awhile.
All three circumstances have conspired to make a tough go of it.
The Flyers even brought ex-NHL players (now special advisors) John LeClair, Patrick Sharp and Dany Heatley onto the ice the other day to lend their expertise.
“These are guys who were specialists throughout their careers,” Thompson said. “They’re a great resource. I thought it was good for them to get on the ice, good for our players as well. Sometimes it’s position-specific stuff.
“That was the focus when we were out there, to help the guys. They (LeClair, et al) can spot something and say something right away during practice.”
Thompson admitted the power-play numbers have tailed off as of late.
“We had a good start to the year,” he said. “We’ve been a little bit snakebitten at times. Haven’t had a lot of power plays, haven’t had a lot of practice. And then we’re going into some games and we’re only getting one. We don’t take advantage of that one. So you don’t get any reps or momentum.
“We haven’t been getting much practice and when we do practice, we’re always doing power play. So I would say that’s been a little bit of a challenge in the last 10 games.”
>Fedotov gets the start
Ivan Fedotov is scheduled to start in goal for the Flyers against the Panthers. Regular starter Samuel Ersson, who’s been sidelined since the middle of last month due to injury, has been medically cleared to play but the Flyers appear to be taking a cautious approach with his return.
