Nic Deslauriers may not be safe from seeing reduced ice time this season.
It's the dead of summer, but the Philadelphia Flyers will be gearing up for training camp before we know it. In preparation for the preseason, we've created the Summer Sampler series, in which we'll be analyzing every key player on the Flyers roster. We'll assess where each player stands ahead of the 2023-24 season and project what their respective roles will be for the upcoming campaign. Stay tuned throughout the summer for each Flyer's individual evaluation in the lead-up to training camp.
Fighting is quickly dying off in hockey. In fact, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, one of the top junior hockey leagues in North America, has already flat-out banned fighting for the 2023-24 season.
Don't tell the Flyers that, though.
Nic Deslauriers, one of the top fighters in the NHL, has three more years remaining on his contract with the Flyers, and the 32-year-old is likely to continue serving as the club's de facto enforcer for the foreseeable future.
How did Deslauriers perform in 2022-23? Deslauriers was pretty much exactly what fans expected in 2022-23. He played his signature, physical brand of hockey, ranking third in the entire NHL with 306 hits on the season, and got into a whole lot of fights — he led the league in fighting majors and ranked second in the league with 136 total penalty minutes.
But when he wasn't smashing people's faces in, he was actually a pretty clean player, if you can believe it.
Of the 31 penalties he was assessed last season, only 13 of them were minor penalties. So, if you take away his 14 fighting majors and four 10-minute misconducts (which you can't do, but just play along), Deslauriers would have finished the regular season with fewer penalty minutes than former Lady Byng Memorial Trophy-winner Nathan MacKinnon.
Pretty impressive for someone who plays as physically as Deslauriers does, eh?
While the physicality Deslauriers brought to the lineup did have some value, his play-driving inefficiency often made him a liability at 5-on-5. Of all 19 Flyers to log at least 300 minutes of 5-on-5 ice time last season, Deslauriers ranked last in Corsi For percentage (44.92) and Expected Goals For per 60 (1.96).
Not great.
Overall, he logged six goals and 12 total points in 80 games. Even for a fourth-line winger, you'd optimally like to see more.
You can read more on Deslauriers' 2022-23 season here.
What should fans expect from Deslauriers in 2023-24? Deslauriers will play the exact same role he played during the 2022-23 season. He'll continue to dish out hits ad nauseam and fight opposing teams' top tough guys, and he may even net a goal every now and then.
This year, though, there will be a little more competition for playing time in the bottom six.
The Flyers brought in Garnet Hathaway and Ryan Poehling in free agency — the former of whom has never shied away from dropping the mitts. And with other young forwards gunning for more ice time, it may not be totally out of the realm of possibility that Deslauriers could find himself relinquishing some minutes during the season. Is it likely? Not necessarily, given how much the Flyers value the physical dimension of his game. But he's far from impervious to being usurped by players with superior talent, especially if he isn't playing his best hockey.
What does Deslauriers need to prove? At this point, Deslauriers really doesn't have much of anything to prove. He just is what he is — a tough, gritty, checking-line forward who serves as a veteran leader in the locker room. However, with the return of veteran forwards Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson, players who slotted in on the second or even first line last season may be playing further down in the lineup in 2023-24. And because of that trickle-down effect, Deslauriers may not see as many minutes as he did during the 2022-23 campaign.
Statistics courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and NHL.com.