VOORHEES, N.J. – The $64,000 question for the Flyers’ woebegone power play is: How do you fix it?
Five years of staggering through the wilderness, four of them last in the NHL and one year – hold your applause – next to last.
It’s nothing short of a miracle how the Flyers managed to make the playoffs this season with such a paltry success rate (15.7 percent)
Things did not get much better in the playoffs. Sixteen teams and the Flyers currently rank 14th among those at 8.3 percent.
Ugh.
At Wednesday’s end-of-season media session with coach Rick Tocchet, the main topic of discussion was whether the coach believes he can fix this problem internally or do the Flyers have to go look elsewhere for outside help?
“So walking in (last summer), the staff together we knew this was a five-, six-year problem,” Tocchet said at the Flyers Training Center. “It’s a talking point every year here. So right away for us was we didn’t want to make it such a focal point that it took away from other parts. But it is a focal point.”
There’s been an ongoing search to find a defenseman with a quick, accurate shot from the point over the past few years but so far no one has grabbed that position by the horns.
“It’s a mental thing, it’s a physical thing for me,” Tocchet said.
Tocchet pointed out the Flyers incorporated a number of young players into the man advantage situations, so you really can’t hold them accountable for some of the struggles over the past few years.
“They’re coming in fresh which is great,” Tocchet said. “We get fresh ideas from those young guys. I just felt that some guys were never — as soon as we hit the ice – I could feel tension from some guys.
“We’ve got to release the tension. And that’s my job, to release that tension. Diving into it this summer, different way of scheming, different way of practicing. Maybe less information, sometimes giving too much information makes guys tighter.”
The Flyers did get off to a pretty good start last season. On Nov. 12, after 16 games, they were ranked 14th in the NHL at 20.4 percent.
But things went quickly downhill from there.
As for next season, the Flyers will make it a point to either improve through strategy with personnel they already have or look at players on other teams, either through trades or, free agency.
“We’re going to dive deep into it,” Tocchet vowed. “I’ll be honest with you, I felt some guys went out there and you could just see it, they were clenching their stick.”
Tocchet wants his players to perform the way Carolina’s did. The Hurricanes were methodical. They didn’t try to make perfect plays. They tried to create havoc and fool the defense with misdirection.
“Carolina is the litmus test for me,” Tocchet said. “They just go ‘balls to the wall.’ They just go hard.
“There’s tension (with the Flyers). Talking about power plays, I didn’t like our retrievals. A lot of time we had three against their two and somehow we never came out with those pucks. There’s got to be improvement. And that’s something we’re really going to focus on.”
Be the first to comment