The 2023-24 season have been a rough one for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. They’re 20-18-5-2 after their All-Star break and currently sit seventh in the Atlantic division, which means they’re on the outside of the playoff picture looking in. While there’s still time to sneak their way back in, the team has struggled to gain any real momentum this season and a search for answers as to why it all went wrong has already begun.
A few weeks ago, we looked at the possibility of firing head coach Ian laperriere, since he’s naturally the guy the heat is going to get placed on. But does getting rid of the coach actually make any difference?
Well… sorta.
The Phantoms are in a strange catch 22 scenario under Lappy. He carried them back to the playoffs in 2022-23 for the first time in five years, and vast majority of the prospects with potential NHL futures continue to excel. Yet the team as a whole doesn’t have the talent, mainly in the form of forward depth and goaltending, and struggles to remain competitive most nights.
That being said, other than deploying the talented youth a ton (which should be an obvious strategy) there doesn’t appear to be much unique he brings to the table that any other coach wouldn’t. If they got rid of him and replaced him with a dime-a-dozen guy, there’s probably not much difference to be had. But if they hunt down a veteran coach with a proven track record of development and winning at the AHL level, it’s a huge improvement.
And when it comes to their young guys, if the Flyers actually lived up to their “rebuilding” status and gave their prospects main roster opportunities, meaning players like Olle Lycksell, Bobby Brink, Ronnie Attard and Emil Andrae weren’t trapped in the minors, the AHL squad would be an unmitigated disaster.
And even if the prospects are making the best of it and having individual success, the team on the whole is not exactly the winning environment you’d want your young guys developing in.
Which leads to the roster construction, which is a bit shoddy to say the least.
They ran into the season with underwhelming veteran Cal Petersen and ECHL journeyman Parker Gahagen as their tandem after the organization decided to keep both Felix Sandstrom and Sam Ersson on the main roster. Six weeks into the campaign, Sandstrom was finally demoted after playing exactly zero NHL minutes during his stint with the Flyers. After the long stretch of inactivity and a battle with a minor injury, he’s struggled to regain consistency to his game, and Cal Petersen was abysmal during his time with the Phantoms. They’ve lost more than a couple games this season because of sub-par goaltending alone.
The offseason additions of Rhett Gardner and Victor Mete haven’t really moved the needle, and the flurry of random ECHL plugins and journeyman meatheads equate to practically no real depth to speak of. There’s only two veteran players on the team in their top tens scorers, that being Cooper Marody, who leads the team with 37 points, and captain Garrett Wilson, who sits tied for eighth with just 17. The rest of the top ten are either rookies or sophomores leading the way.
It basically falls on the shoulders of Samu Tuomaala, Lycksell (or Brink when Lycksell’s recalled) and Andrae to carry the team in a nightly basis. Any off-night or if the other team succeeds in shutting them down and it’s been a struggle for the rest of the roster to step up and win games without them.
So how do you fix the Phantoms? Well it’s a mix of signing better players and considering a net-positive coaching change. A lot of the responsibility falls on Danny Briere to bring in worthwhile AHL pieces and assistant GM Alyn McCauley, who’s in charge of the Phantoms, to convey the message to the rest of the front office that the team needs a serious overhaul in they want to build a successful prospect development system. If the organization isn’t taking a “rebuild” seriously at the NHL level, the least they can do is build their feeder team into a beast so their prospects can grown in a winning environment rather than drag their feet through miserable slog this season has become.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
brotherlypuck.com 