Broad Street Hockey

NHL CBA Officially Expires Sept. 15; Negotiations Likely To Begin In Late June

2012-05-16T18:37:25Z

(SB Nation) - It was a foregone conclusion, but as required by the current collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and the NHL Players' Association, the league has informed the union that it wishes to "terminate or modify" the current deal, according to a report from Sports Business Journal. It officially expires on Sept. 15, 2012.

Either the league or the NHLPA had to notify the other side of their desire to renegotiate the deal by May 15, 2012, or 120 days before the scheduled expiration. Had neither party taken that action, the current CBA would have been extended for another season.

It's just a formality, really. We've known for some time that the NHL and its players had planned on negotiating a new deal, and the league has said it's been ready to begin those talks for months. The Players' Association, meanwhile, has been busy getting organized under new director Donald Fehr, and it appears as though talks will finally begin after the current season ends in late June.

Philadelphia Flyers Season Review: The best individual Corsi performances of 2011-12

2012-05-16T16:09:23Z

I had an idea recently to look at the advanced stats for some best and worst games of 2011-12. I thought it'd be fun to remind everyone of some particularly dominating performances the Flyers had this year.

When I actually produced the list, however, I realized that score effects were a real problem. Teams tend to go into a defensive shell when they're ahead and concede the neutral zone, allowing the other team to outshoot them; I didn't want to argue that a couple of losses to Tampa Bay were among the Flyers' most dominating performances of the year.

Instead, we will look at individual performances, looking for the games where a player's presence on the ice had the biggest impact. In this article, we start with the best individual performances of the year from a possession standpoint.

#1: James van Riemsdyk vs the Capitals, December 13, 2011

He wasn't named one of the game's three stars, he wasn't mentioned at all in the BSH game recap and only at the very end of the NHL.com recap, but as PursuitOfLappyness noted, van Riemsdyk had an outstanding game when it came to pushing play forwards. In their first game without Claude Giroux after his concussion, the Flyers handled the Capitals 5-1. van Riemsdyk had a good-but-not-spectacular night on the conventional box score, with two assists and two shots on goal in his 14:32 of ice time.

And yet the non-traditional metrics told a different story.

The Flyers outshot the Capitals 14-1 when van Riemsdyk was on the ice. That wasn't because the Flyers were just dominating that night -- they got outshot 28-15 when he was off the ice. Whenever he was in the game, the ice tilted in the Flyers' favor, and as soon as he headed back to the bench, the play went the other way.

He finished the game with a relative Corsi (a measure of his impact on the shot differential) of +46, the highest of the year and earning him this year's Corsi gold medal.

Making it particularly impressive is that this outstanding game wasn't the product of being spoonfed easy situations. Sometimes a player can appear to have a positive impact on shot differential just because they get the easy shifts -- in the offensive zone against weak opponents -- and their opponents take on the tough minutes. But in this case, van Riemsdyk started in the defensive zone as often as the offensive zone, and he played primarily against the Caps' strong top line of Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, and Alexander Semin.

He may not have scored a goal that night, but winning the shot battle decisively against that line goes a long way towards helping the team win, and he should wear his Corsi gold medal with pride.

#2: Scott Hartnell vs the Islanders, March 15, 2012

The last game of Ilya Bryzgalov's shutout streak was a 3-2 victory over the Islanders, one that unquestionably would not have happened without Hartnell's performance.

Their performances mirrored their personalities; while van Riemsdyk's possession dominance flew under the radar, Hartnell's was an in-your-face performance that earned him second star of the night, with a goal land an assist.

With Hartnell on the ice, the shot attempts were 23-8 in the Flyers' favor; when he was off the ice it was 42-22 against, giving him a Corsi Rel of +35. The one time the Islanders had the gall to try to keep the puck in the Flyers' end with Hartnell on the ice, he did this:

For this performance, Hartnell earned the Corsi silver medal.

#3: Brayden Schenn vs the Senators, January 8, 2012

The Flyers led this game 4-2 headed into the third period. Unfortunately a soft goal tied the game, and with just over a minute left, a slapshot by Filip Kuba put Ottawa ahead as they went on to win.

How different would things have been if the shot below had made it 5-2 late in the second? We'll never know for sure, but my hunch is that the Flyers would have won and Schenn would have gotten a star of the game nod.

He may have been robbed there, but Schenn still drove the play for the Flyers in this game and put them in position to win. The Flyers had 19 shot attempts to Ottawa's 9 with Schenn on the ice at even strength, compared to a 54-32 shot deficit when he was off the ice. That gives him a Corsi Rel of +32 and the Corsi bronze medal.

Wednesday Morning Fly By: Welcome to the Playoffs, Jeffie

2012-05-16T10:00:16Z

Today's open discussion thread, complete with your daily dose of Philadelphia Flyers-related news and notes...

A great look at the Flyers defensive scheme, sent to us in response to our article yesterday: [D-Zone Hockey]
Examining college (potential) free agent defenseman Justin Schultz: [The Checking Line]
Bill Meltzer on former Flyer Patrick Thoresen leading all skaters in points at the Worlds: [NHL.com]
A breakdown of the Flyers' season and why it was not a failure: [The Hockey Writers]
A special trading card set celebrating the Flyers' history: [the700level]
The NHL once again got less air time on SportsCenter than the NFL: [Deadspin]
A great look behind the L.A. Kings twitter feed: [Puck Daddy]
Ten crazy numbers out of the first two rounds of the playoffs: [Arctic Ice Hockey]
Attempting to create an OPS for hockey. It's pretty raw and quite technical, but some may find it fascinating: [Fear the Fin]
Hidden playoff injuries revealed: [Down Goes Brown]
Happy Birthday to both Hintzy and DragonGirl!

Claude Giroux wins local award you've never heard of

2012-05-15T22:03:28Z

It's not the Hart Trophy. It's not the Stanley Cup. But hey, Claude Giroux's taking home at least a little bit of hardware this season. He's been named the winner of the 2012 John Wanamaker Athletic Award, presented annually by the Philadelphia Sports Congress (PSC), a division of the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau.

What is this award? Since 1961, the Wanamaker Award has been presented to the athlete, team or organization that has done the most to reflect credit upon Philadelphia and to the team or sport in which they excel, according to a press release.

Sounds about right. This was a generally awful year in Philly sports, and Giroux was one of the few bright spots.

On Peter Laviolette's System and the Call For Change

2012-05-15T14:00:16Z

There has been a lot of talk lately about Peter Laviolette's system and whether or not it is to blame for, well, everything. From turnovers to Bryzgalov's season to the playoff exit to many other things we've surely missed.

Part of that is because GM Paul Holmgren, in answering a question about the number of goals allowed by the Flyers this season, said "It is related a little bit to how we play."

That one little sentence has sparked a discussion on Peter Laviolette's system, perhaps best covered by Bill Meltzer on Sunday. First, it is important to mention that this is a great conversation to have. I am fully on board with discussing Laviolette's system, evidenced by my... writing about Laviolette's system.

The problem, however, is maintaining intelligent discussion about it. That's a very complicated thing to do when talking about such a complex issue that almost every observer only gathers bits and pieces of evidence. As someone who is not an expert on Laviolette's system - and very few people are - any discussion should start with the specifics.

Rather than immediately blame the system for the Flyers' second round exit, we should start identifying what we know, what we think we know, what we hope to learn, and what we are unlikely to ever know.

If you have continued reading without yet reading Meltzer's column, do so now. It really is a good look at the positives and negatives to the Flyers traits under Laviolette.

Before discussing Laviolette's system, let's just point out the difficulty that comes with separating out how much blame should be assigned to individual factors, such as the poor play of Ilya Bryzgalov, Chris Pronger missing most of the season, trading away elite shutdown centers in Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, Peter Laviolette's system, or any other contributing factor.

If anybody is able to properly assign blame for the Flyers' rise in goals against across those multiple factors, they should be working in the team's front office. However, the fact that there are multiple factors that could reasonably be blamed for more goals against should, by itself, be enough to absolve Laviolette's system of blame.

Unfortunately, that's not how things work.

What We Know

So let's get right to the discussion: Below are some of the Flyers' relevant defensive statistics, followed by League rank:

	Goals Against/Game	PK%	Shots Against/Game	Shots Against/60 Score Close	Shots Against/60 4-on-5
Flyers	2.74	81.8%	28.4	26.17	40.2
League Rank	20th	17th	7th	7th	3rd

The Flyers were in the top 75 percent of the NHL in terms of shot suppression, whether it be total shots against, shots against with the score close, or shots against on the penalty kill.

The problem was not preventing shots. It was preventing goals.

Ilya Bryzgalov

It is no secret that the goals against problem starts with Ilya Bryzgalov. Holmgren said so himself the sentence prior during his press conference.

Afterall, the Flyers had the worst save percentage while on the penalty kill of every team outside of the Steve Mason-led Blue Jackets. They were tied with those same Blue Jackets for 22nd overall in 5-on-5 save percentage. Surely not all of that falls on Ilya Bryzgalov, but different people - including our own Eric T. - have shown that team effects on save percentage are negligible.

While we don't know how much of the problem is Bryzgalov, we know a good portion of it was.

What We Think We Know
Scoring Chances

If the issue was not solely the number of shots, that leaves either the quality of shots or the quality of goaltending. We already know the goaltending was poor, even if we don't know just how poor. We can't be sure about the scoring chances due to a lack of readily available resources, but through 41 games, Todd had the Flyers giving up 13.66 scoring chances per game whereas George Ays had the Rangers giving up 11.73 per game and Josh Lile had the Stars giving up 11.69 per game.

Maybe some of that two per game differential is the result of how Todd tracks scoring chances, maybe the it is not reflective of the Flyers second half performance, or maybe the Flyers just gave up a lot of chances.

It certainly seems that the defense may be allowing too many scoring chances, at least on half a season's worth of data. We don't know this to be true, though, due to the lack of League-wide data or even an entire season worth of data. Even then, where would the blame fall for those chances against? On Peter Laviolette's system, the absence of Chris Pronger, individual player mistakes, too much time spent on the penalty kill, or more are all viable answers.

Ilya Bryzgalov

Once we receive more scoring chance information, we might be able to conclude that Ilya Bryzgalov is expected to give up slightly more goals per year than the Stars or Rangers. Until then, however, we are left with the conclusion that team effects played a small role in Bryzgalov's struggles this year, but that goaltending is more of an issue than Laviolette's system.

In the Blueshirt Banter article linked above, you see that the Rangers have told their goalies that they are expected to stop six out of every seven scoring chances. If the Flyers have a similar criteria, I would guess - and rely on Todd to back this up - that Ilya Bryzgalov failed to stop 85.7 percent of scoring chances this season based purely on his save percentage for the season and the Flyers' propensity to be a man down that.

Laviolette's System

Most observers talk about Laviolette's system as an offense-heavy, attack-style system, which certainly seems accurate. But we would have to explain the flaw in his system that causes goals against.

The defensive zone coverage seems to be a style that emphasizes one-on-one matchups along the boards - including defensemen following the puck carrier to the point if need be - with a lot of rotation among forwards and defensemen. We see mistakes, especially turnovers and slow reactions, but those don't appear to be systemic issues.

What We Hope to Learn

After we compile all the zone entry and scoring chance data from the season, we hope to learn just how many odd-man rushes the Flyers gave up - and how that compared to how many they generated. We also hope to learn just how many scoring chances they gave up and then compare it to other teams who tracked such information.

What is Laviolette's system in the defensive zone, and how does that result in goals against? For someone who primarily watches on TV, it is difficult to see enough off-the-puck play to analyze the defensive system employed, let alone how it differs from other coaches.

Do the wingers play the point men more closely, opening up the middle of the ice? Does Laviolette play more of a one-on-one style of defending than most?

What We Are Unlikely to Ever Know
Laviolette's System

Are the goals against caused by Laviolette's system, or are they errors in judgment by the players? Those two are almost certainly related, if not causal, which would render this question almost unanswerable. The same is true of whether forwards break from their assignments early, the result of anticipating a breakout sooner? Does the weak-side defender worry more about the puck than his assignment, as Meltzer suggested?

Conclusion

Near the end of Meltzer's discussion of Laviolette's system comes this quote from the coach himself:

"When we make changes, they are minor changes, where somebody is positioned, where somebody goes to, maybe a set break out, maybe something to look for to try and get away from D-zone coverage, maybe an option that might be open or putting the puck in a certain area but they're not drastic changes to what we do."

If Laviolette's system is a problem, I want to know why. Yes, we can all see that the Flyers' defensemen are aggressive in attempting to keep the puck in the offensive zone. Absolutely this creates a likelihood of odd-man rushes against, but through the middle of December, odd-man rushes weren't a problem.

We know the Flyers were very good at suppressing shots but bad at stopping pucks. We think we know the Flyers give up more scoring chances than most teams, but we don't know why or if it excuses Ilya Bryzgalov's poor play. We hope to learn how Laviolette's system is run in the defensive zone and how that system is connected to the goals against, but we are unlikely to ever know for sure whether the goals were the result of a systemic flaw or human error.

Further, unless there was a different system last year, the evidence would point to a personnel problem and not a systemic problem.

Before calling on the system to change, I'd like to know what about the system needs to change. Everybody is in favor of fewer goals against, but before demanding something be different, we need to better pinpoint the problem.

Tuesday Morning Fly By: The Wolf's Season Is Over Too

2012-05-15T10:00:21Z

Today's open discussion thread, complete with your daily dose of Philadelphia Flyers-related news and notes...

On the acquisition of Pavel Kubina: [Daily News]
Wondering where Brayden Schenn will play next year: [Bill Meltzer]
Part one of three parts, this one focusing on goaltenders and what to expect next year: [CSNPhilly]
Bill Meltzer on Sean Couturier: [Bill Meltzer]
Claude Giroux steadily improved his faceoffs this year: [Flyers Faithful]
Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the bench clearing brawl between the Flyers and Canadiens: [The Globe and Mail]
Mic'd up during the Flyers/Devils series: [the700level]
Illustrated guide to the second round: [Puck Daddy]
Is there a book on Henrik Lundqvist? [Backhand Shelf]
John Tortorella used 31 words in an entire press conference. Seriously: [SBNation.com]
Dale Hunter stepped down as head coach of the Capitals: [SBNation.com] [Backhand Shelf] [Puck Daddy] [Washington Times]
Staples Center will undergo six changes in four days as they have the Kings, Lakers, and Clippers all playing two games this weekend: [Puck Daddy]
Latvia was eliminated yesterday after losing to Denmark: [IIHF]
A great look at Alexander Mogilny and the defection that changed the NHL: [Arctic Ice Hockey]
Looking at the goalies left in the playoffs and their crazy numbers: [Hockey Prospectus]
Examining the secret to the Kings success: [NHLNumbers.com]

ECF GAME 1, DISCUSSION THREAD: DEVILS AT RANGERS Can't they just pummel each other into submission...

2012-05-14T23:54:19Z

ECF GAME 1, DISCUSSION THREAD: DEVILS AT RANGERS

Can't they just pummel each other into submission and let the Flyers play the Caps for a berth in the Final?

photo via Getty

Simon Gagne Cleared For Contact, But Not Ready To Join Kings

2012-05-14T17:52:03Z

(SB Nation) - Simon Gagne received some good news Monday. The long-time Philadelphia Flyer and current Los Angeles Kings forward has been cleared for contact by the team, according to reports. Unfortunately, he is still a ways away from game action, according to Kings GM Dean Lombardi.

Gagne has been out since Dec. 26 after suffering a concussion. He has been skating with Kings' prospects in recent days, but won't join the team for Game 2 against the Phoenix Coyotes in Arizona on Tuesday. Gagne is still a long shot to actually return to game action this season.

Gagne appeared in 34 games this season, scoring seven goals with 17 assists. He signed with the Kings last summer in a deal worth $7 million over two years.

For more on Gagne and the Kings, head over to the Kings blog Jewels From The Crown. Be sure to stay tuned to SB Nation's NHL Hub for more news and analysis from the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs.