In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last… well… handful of years, the Flyers’ powerplay has been pretty bad. At the Christmas break, they sit dead last in the league with a measly 10.6% success rate. If this pace holds, it’ll be their third consecutive last place finish on the man advantage and worst by percent among those three, and worst percentage in the NHL since the Anaheim Ducks were firing at just a 8.6% rate in 2020-21.
It opens many questions as to the root of the continued struggle and how to fix arguably the biggest fault the current roster possess. But looking back on recent history, the lackluster powerplay is nothing new.
| Season | Powerplay |
| 2017-18 | 20.7% – 15th ranked |
| 2018-19 | 17.1% – 23rd ranked |
| 2019-20 | 20.8% – 14th ranked |
| 2020-21 | 19.5% – 18th ranked |
| 2021-22 | 12.5% – last ranked |
| 2022-23 | 15.6% – last ranked |
| 2023-24 (so far) | 10.6% – last ranked |
Previous to the 2017-18 season, the Flyers’ powerplay was in the top half of the league, mostly finishing in the top 10, including third place finishes in 2012-13 and again in 2015-16. And looking back on the player personnel on those teams, it’s not difficult to see why the trends are the way they are.
Pre-2017, the powerplay was led by Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek, Wayne Simmonds, Brayden Schenn, Kimmo Timonen, Mark Streit and later Shayne Gostisbehere. The 2017-18 season was the last effective season for Simmonds and Gostisbehere, with Voracek’s production dipping for the reminder of his tenure as well, and Ron Hextall and Chuck Fletcher each did nothing to genuinely address the man advantage struggles. Take away Giroux at the 2022 trade deadline and they’ve been more or less useless on the powerplay in the years since..
The talent level declined, the lack of chemistry is palpable and the absence of a true QB, sniper and net-front presence has left them dead in the water with no easy answer.
The other notable thing to point out since the start of the 2017-18 season- they’ve had five different head coaches and six incarnations of assistants in that time.
So attempting to turn things around is not quite as easy of a solution as just canning the special teams staff and hiring someone else to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. They’ve tried that. In fact, they’ve blown through three head coaches and three variations of assistants since 2021-22 alone, their first dead last ranked season.
Is there someone out there more effective than Rocky Thompson? Undoubtedly so. By no means is he an innocent bystander in all this, nor is this written in defense of him. Thompson has very little experience as an NHL coach, just one season with as an assistant in Edmonton and one with San Jose before his time with the Flyers, but with the roster as painfully under-equipped as it is today, it would take a Herculean effort to have any success without making major changes to the talent level of the roster.
There’s no legitimate defenseman running the show from the point, there’s no proven net front presence, and the lack of offensive talent throughout the team makes it difficult to even build an intimidating base to capitalize on the “just hope and pray” strategy.
It’ll be up to Danny Briere to address this problem from outside the organization with some kind of legitimacy. Acquiring a couple players that have a successful track record in various man advantage roles to spice up the options for the coaches to play with. It doesn’t necessarily mean hunting down the biggest and best free agents or emptying the asset bank on a big name (though it wouldn’t hurt either) it’s about finding players made available this coming summer that have a history of powerplay success, which should be able to be found relatively cheaply in some cases.
There is another avenue to consider is the one they haven’t explored yet, and that’s calling up players from the minor leagues. The Lehigh Valley Phantoms have one of the best powerplays in the AHL, featuring top prospects Emil Andrae, Ronnie Attard, Samu Tuomaala and Olle Lycksell running the show. That’s two offensively dynamic defenseman, a sniper and an all-around offensive threat.
The coaching staff in Lehigh isn’t doing anything innovative, they just have the player personnel to make it work.
When Lycksell was recalled by the Flyers in early December, he was top three in the AHL in goals, powerplay goals, powerplay points and shots on goal. When he arrived with the big club, he played six shifts as the fourth line center and spent the next two weeks in the press box. They had a guy succeeding where the big club was lacking and didn’t even give him a fighting chance at 5-on-5, let alone on the powerplay. Andrae had a similar experience when he was with the Flyers to start the season.
Maybe a combination of all three -firing the coach, adding outside talent and playing the prospects- is the best answer here. A fresh, clean slate, this time built to succeed. If the Flyers can sustain this level of play they’ve produced during the 2023-24 season, adding a powerplay that even comes in at even just a league average of 21% could make all the difference for a team on the playoff bubble. It’ll be Briere’s first major challenge during his second summer at the helm. The 2023-24 season has been much better than expected, but it puts more pressure on the front office to now go out and correct areas with the biggest struggle, and nothing is more of a struggle right now in Flyerland than the powerplay.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: ca.sports.yahoo.com
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