The Flyers just finished one of their best November’s in team history, where they tailed an NHL Leading 24 points. Saying the team treated fans to some exciting hockey during the jammed packed month of games would be an understatement. In this past month alone, the Flyers fought it out, forcing seven games into a shoot-out, and two more that required and an overtime period in order to find a victor. Most of which ended with the Flyers gaining at least one point.
Some may take that as the team can’t finish a game, but if you look at it another way the team was resilient enough, to not give up on a game and continue fighting for every possible point they could get. All of which helped to add points on to the teams total. The reward of such hard work is evident by way of the current Metropolitan Division standings where you will find the team currently sitting in third place, with 35 points on the year.
All of which, could not have happened without the tremendous play of the teams Goaltenders. The young twenty-one-year-old phenom, Carter Hart has turned his season around from some early struggles, where in two games he had to be pulled and replaced by the well-versed Veteran backup Brian Elliott. Moving past those two rocky starts, Hart now has 17 games under his belt on the season. In which, he has a record 8-5-3, with a 2.43 GAA , a .906 Save Percentage, and a shutout to his credit. Not bad for a kid, who is the next franchise Goaltender for some time to come. It’s nice to think that he is accomplishing all this, and only making $863,333 a year on a rookie contract that runs through the end of next season.
Not to be out done, the 34-year-old battle scarred Veteran, Brian Elliott is rocking and rolling. In recent years, he has had trouble staying healthy, which has not been the case this year (Knock on wood). Elliott, a.k.a. “Moose” has found himself with ample playing time as of late, with all the back to back games the Flyers had to play this past month. Sometimes they played three or four games in a single week. So far, Elliott has posted a 7-2-2 record, with a 2.70 GAA, and a .916 Save Percentage. All the while, managing to mentor the skillful young Carter Hart. Elliott is helping to groom Hart, hopefully, into a staple on Broad Street for some time to come. However, hopefully Moose can continue to stay healthy for the remainder of the season, so the team can continue to have some kind of consistency in goal like they have had this year, rather than the carousel of goalies like the team was forced to play last season. It goes without saying that Elliott’s play so far this season has made Chuck Fletcher look very cunning, for his decision to bring back the wisely old Veteran, on a fairly cheap one-year, two million dollar deal.
Carter Hart’s idol, Montreal’s very own Carey Price, has a record of 10-8-3, with a 3.19 GAA, and a .897 Save Percentage. He only gets paid a league high $10.5 Million a season. Moreover, a name we all remember Sergei Bobrovsky has a record of 9-6-4, while posting a 3.48 GAA, with a .894 Save Percentage. With Bob raking in a cool $10 Million a season in Florida now. Lastly, Henrik Lundqvist a long-time guardian of the net for the New York Rangers this season has a 3.16 GAA, and a .912 Save Percentage in 16 games played. Lundqvist has a record of 7-5-2, while making a measly $8.5 Million a year. One can see all those Vezina trophies, and other NHL award winning hardware between the likes of these three well renown netminders. Their numbers this year just can’t compare to the boys playing in South Philly, and even more so the duo of Hart and Elliott combined salary is a cheap $2.863 million dollars.
Though deserving of such praise, Hart and Moose does not deserve all the credit. Overall, Goaltenders coach Kim Dillabaugh has done a good job, but under the leadership of Coach Alain Vigneault, the team is playing an overall better system then in years prior. Vigneault’s system is more defensive minded at its core, where in previous years under Coach Dave Hakstol, the Flyers played more of a run and gun style offense. One with long stretch passes as a norm, that left the team open to massive amounts of turnovers. With the turnovers, then came a countless number of breakaways on the goalies. Hakstol’s system wreaked havoc on the Flyers goalie’s psyche, not to mention their overall stats.
Moving forward with Vigneault’s new system in place, and the massive amounts of experience behind the bench for this team. These two Flyers netminders will hopefully take their team well into the Stanley Cup Playoffs this year, thus making Fletcher’s frugal spending at the Goaltender’s position this off-season seem like a wise one.
Photo Credit: Eric Hartline @hartlinepix
JVR out to New Jersey along with ghost and two first rounders for hall get it done