Labor Day's Philadelphia Flyers news.
Rookie camp is now just around the corner for the Philadelphia Flyers, and there's one area we are all going to be watching much more intently than the others.
That is, of course, the defense, which was ironically the Flyers' biggest area of strength last season as they reached the postseason for the first time in six years.
The Flyers were ninth-best in the NHL last season, allowing only 2.91 goals per game, and they allowed the fifth-fewest 5-on-5 goals, according to Natural Stat Trick, conceding only 149 times.
As for 5-on-5 scoring chances, the Flyers allowed the eighth-fewest at 1,694, which is remarkable considering they produced the fourth-fewest for themselves (1634), ahead of only the likes of Seattle, Chicago, and Vancouver. Woof.
But, my overarching point with all of this is, yes, you should believe in the defense. The Flyers achieved all of that last year in spite of spotty backup goaltending from Sam Ersson and Aleksei Kolosov. Dan Vladar was great, and even he didn't record a shutout last season, which makes you think.
The next step for the Flyers is going to be figuring out how they can produce a similar defensive result while drastically improving the offensive output, which was far from good enough.
That showed in the playoffs, too, as they cooled off after the first three games against Pittsburgh, and were no-shows against a suffocating Carolina that went on to win it all.
This season, the Flyers will inherently start with more talent on defense, with one of Oliver Bonk and David Jiricek replacing the departed Noah Juulsen, who left in free agency after one year in Philadelphia.
Veterans like Nick Seeler and Simon Benoit aren't the best puck-movers, and someone like Ty Murchison could prove to be an upgrade.
In the pipeline, there really isn't much on the left side, though Maksim Sokolovskii is an alien on skates and could easily outperform his draft position if he cleans up some of the uglier warts in his game.
On the right, you all probably know how excited I am about Spencer Gill, even with the injuries over the last two years. He was great in preseason last year, and I suspect he'll get more preseason run this year now that he's turning pro.
The Flyers have been far from perfect in the draft over the years; that goes without saying. But they are starting to build a cohesive, young, talented defense, and it's their biggest strength going forward.
