Photo Credit: Our very own Jill Rice
It’s no secret the Flyers Power Play is struggling mightily, so predictability should go out the window. The problem here in lies, just shoot the puck, keep it simple, get pucks down low. Better yet, just dump the puck in and chase it, since the Flyers are having problems with zone entries with the man advantage. It appears the orange and black are overthinking things a bit too much with the man advantage. The Power Play is that bad that Lou Nolan (Address announcer) should no longer announce “And the Flyers are headed to the P-e-e-e-e-e-co Power Play.” Instead, Nolan should say “And the Flyers are headed to the P-e-e-e-e-e-co Power Outage.”
Just imagine if the Flyers had a functioning Power Play, they could be sitting comfortably in a playoff position, at the very least third place in the Metropolitan Division with a magic number of four. Instead their playoff hopes are on life support at the moment.
One major problem is that the Flyers have trouble getting set up. They haven’t given the forecheck enough credit, thus they’re trying to take the puck up the gut and it’s not working. This has been one major problem for the Flyers for the past few seasons. The Flyers may not have the creativity to enter the zone cleanly, thus they should be relegated to a dump and chase system on the power play. Too many this season, the orange and black tried using a give and go system to enter the opponents zone with the man advantage. It’s not working, and it sheds 20 to 30 seconds off the power play time to try to re-enter the zone.
The Flyers cycle the puck well at times, but other times not so much. That is when the Power Play becomes predictable. Teams are sensing the extra pass, thus picking off the pass and clearing the puck out of the zone with no problem. The Flyers Power Play is dead last in the NHL with a 12.92% success rate. This is simply not good enough, and it is an area of concern as this team hopefully endures an extended playoff run. As the playoffs wear on it becomes tougher to score goals, so they have to take advantage of these Golden opportunities to score.
It’s becoming a bit redundant asking the same old questions such as, what gives? What improvements need to be made? Will the Flyers change the personnel? “He’s one of the better ones at creating,” John Tortorella spoke of Bobby Brink before the season started. That’s just it, they don’t have enough players outside of Morgan Frost or Jamie Drysdale that have enough creativity in their game to enter zones cleanly, to use backhanded passes, or other unpredictable ways on entering the zone. This makes their power play too predictable, and by the time a unit sets up it’s now on the second unit.
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Unfortunately, the struggling power play will dictate the Flyers success in the standings. They have struggled time and time again with the man advantage for the past few seasons, as stated above, so it’s a bit redundant to keep printing one of these articles. This will not win you many games in the NHL, especially in crunch time, and it’s not due to lack of practice. The Flyers practice their power play each and every practice. Flyers associate coach Rocky Thompson needs to identify who should 100% play on the top and second units. There shouldn’t be any tweaking. The only tweaking that should be done right now is slotting in Tyson Forester or Bobby Brink, or vice versa in those particular spots, due to one of them not playing in every game at the moment.
Rocky Thompson called out the struggling Power Play a few weeks ago, and explained why he placed newly acquired Denis Gurianov on the unit, “Our Power Play stinks, and he was a good Power Play guy at one point in his career.”
The Flyers have to hit the net. Foerster has a great one timer, and he hits the net more often than not. He needs to shoot more, and he did say that following a game against Ottawa a few weeks ago. They need more consistency, there is just too much passing on top of the umbrella or perimeter. Keep it simple, take a shot, get the puck down low. Maybe there is too much communication, as opposed to one person taking over the power play like Claude Giroux used to do. I mean anyone can sit here and speculate as to what is transpiring on the ice, I can only give you what I know by seeing and watching. All I see is a lot of perimeter passing, and the Flyers troubles to get the puck down below the hash marks. They could use their big bodies to deflect the puck home or screening the goalie.
I am not a coach, nor do I preach to be one, but the Flyers can ill afford to let their struggling power play dictate the fate of their season. They need to reactivate the power surge of the PP, sooner rather than later.
