Joel Farabee, who celebrates his 21st birthday today, has had a very strong start to the season this year for the Flyers and has found his scoring touch early. The young Flyers winger has been excellent to start the year, and has gotten better each game. It took Farabee 52 games last year to notch 8 goals, where he ended the year with 21 points and was +6. Joel has taken a huge stride in my eyes. You may have expected a young rookie like him to have a “Sophmore Slump”, but it’s been the complete opposite.
Farabee had a great outing on opening night where he potted a goal and three assists en route to a four point night in a 6-3 win against the Pens at home, but after that he didn’t record many points until recently. He went five games without a point until he scored the game-clinching goal to put the Flyers up by two with minutes remaining against New Jersey. That seemed to get his confidence going again, a few games later he had a few lasers against the Islanders, 3 of them actually for the 3rd Flyers hat trick this year (TK and Laughton have the other 2) in a 4-3 OT win at Wells Fargo Center. That was one thing we heard a lot about Farabee when drafted, he has an unbelievable shot and it was put on display that night.
In his last nine games played he has 10 points (6G-4A) and is on a four game point streak. Farabee has looked very good all year with whoever he has played with. In his last five games he’s had two or more shots on goal, recently being with James van Riemsdyk and Sean Couturier. He has looked very good, and just makes those little plays that go a long way. He doesn’t look like a rookie even though he is, I raved last year about him looking like a center at wing and that hasn’t changed. You can tell he is turning into a great young player in this league. It’s not just the goal scoring though, he has been very good defensively and has made great plays to exit the zone and lead the Flyers the other way.
That 2018 Draft Class has some unbelievable talent and Farabee is right there with some of the best, guys like Quinn Hughes and Andrei Svechnikov. He leads that Draft Class in Points-Per-Game this year with 0.94 PPG while only playing 16 games.
Farabee has gotten better as the games have gone on, and is turning into that young, smart, playmaker we have been raving about. Happy Birthday, Joel, aka Young Beezer!
When will that album drop again…?
