The Lehigh Valley Phantoms 2023-24 season has come to an end in the second round of the playoffs, getting eliminated by the Hershey Bears in game four of their best-of-five series. It’s been a rollercoaster of a season for the AHL squad, so let’s take a look back and assess what happened during the Phantoms’ 2023-24 campaign.
Season Recap
The team didn’t get off on the right foot in October. There were quite a few unhappy campers that their NHL careers were put on ice by John Tortorella, and the disfunction was palpable early. Wade Allison and Ronnie Attard especially struggled out of the gate, but did eventually re-find their games as the season went on.
As the team got on track by the time December rolled around, the NHL recalls and AHL-level injuries threw the team more than a few curveballs. Their top line of Lycksell, Lacynski and Tuomaala was absolutely electric through the first half of the season. Then Lycksell got called up to spend the back half of the season in the Flyers’ press box, and Laczynksi missed seven weeks with an injury. It left Tuomaala as the team’s top forward and he didn’t find the success alone that he did when he was surrounded with talent. Then eventually both Ronnie Attard and Adam Ginning were recalled, Wade Allison got shipped out of town at the deadline, and Bobby Brink ended up spending most of the season on the main roster except for an 11-game stint in February.
Their offseason veteran additions didn’t exactly move the needle either. Rhett Gardner and Victor Mete were, on the whole, ineffective. New defenseman Helge Grans wasn’t the impact player they were hoping for, some of their rookies like Ethan Samson and J.R. Avon played a lot of games, but took most of the season to find their footing at the professional level, and their revolving cast of ECHL fill-ins failed to rise to the occasion.
They were constantly handicapped further by the inferior goaltending they received from Cal Petersen and Felix Sandstrom, so much so that Parker Gahagen, their ECHL journeyman backup, ended the season with (by far) the best stats of the three.
Their powerplay was top five in the AHL for a majority of the season, before a late-season slump dropped their numbers. The penalty kill was hot and cold throughout, but come playoff time, it was a key to keeping them afloat during both the Penguins’ and Bears’ series.
Despite the roster struggles, the team finished with a 32-31-6-3 record and clinched the sixth and final playoff spot in the Atlantic Division. It was the second consecutive season they made the playoffs, and first time they made it to the second round since 2018.
The Phantoms managed to sweep the Penguins in a best-of-three series which featured the first home playoff game in Lehigh Vally in six years. Then they went up against the best team in the AHL, the Hershey Bears, in the semifinals. They managed to steal game three at home, but lost the series in four games. Despite the elimination, it doesn’t tell the whole story of the series. They did give an honest effort against a much better team, and really the effort was there the entire postseason. There’s no shame in losing to a team as dominant as Hershey.
Coaching
Ian Laperriere is a polarizing figure to most Flyers and Phantoms fans, and there’s a vocal section of the base that isn’t patient with his decisions. But on the whole, he didn’t have a terrible year when context is added to the situation.
Between the injuries and call ups, he was left with a skeleton crew of a roster for the back half of the campaign with shoddy goaltending, and still managed to lead them into the playoff spot, having to overtake Springfield for the sixth seed near the end of the season to do so. When the band was largely back together for the playoff run, they swept the third seed Penguins and gave Hershey more of a battle than expected.
At the end of the day, the AHL is a developmental league. That means that the molding the prospects and giving them the best possible chance to succeed is paramount. And when looking back on the campaign, it was the young guys that stepped up to lead the way. Samu Tuomaala, Emil Andrae, Olle Lycksell, Adam Ginning and Ronnie Attard were critical pieces to the team.
Integrating players into the NHL has been the Flyers’ biggest failing, not how Lappy utilizes them in the AHL. Take Olle Lycksell for example. The coaching staff is deploying him as a top line winger with copious powerplay time and he has become a point-per-game player with the Phantoms, then he gets called up and used at 4C for three minutes a night by John Tortorella. That’s a development fault on the NHL side and their inability to work players into to the lineup in proper roles more than it is Laperriere’s usage of them.
What Comes Next
The Flyers’ front office needs to work hard this summer to find some producers in the AHL, especially with Cooper Marody and Tanner Laczynski (the team’s two top scorers) hitting unrestricted free agency.
There isn’t expected to be many prospects making the jump to the professional level and if guys like Brink, Lycksell and Attard end up in the NHL, then adding a few notable AHLers to the mix will be mission critical if the organization wants to continue to build a winning environment in Lehigh Valley.
For Laperriere, it’s about staying the course and continuing to keep the prospects at the forefront of his plans. Making sure that he’s giving everybody the best odds to succeed and keep the ball in Tortorella’s court when it comes to the development failings.
It wasn’t the most electrifying season of hockey ever played, but the 2023-24 Lehigh Valley Phantoms will be looked back on fondly as the group that finally broke the playoff dry spell at PPL Center and for overcoming the odds to lock down a playoff berth in the first place.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
brotherlypuck.com 