PHILADELPHIA, Pa – The Philadelphia Flyers will head into the Thanksgiving break in a better position overall from where they ended last season but still sit on the outside looking in of the NHL playoff race by only one point. Still, the Flyers look like a different team defensively from last season but their offensive is still a ways away from being competitive.
Travis Konecny #11 reacts to the goal scored by Noah Cates #27 of the Philadelphia Flyers Photo credit – Jack.SMart@prohockeynews.com
The Flyers power play have gotten better since the start of the season when they dreadful 7.7%. Now they are 21st overall, while their penalty killing is 4th best at 85.5%. The offense overall all is 31st. Only Nashville is worse, but Philly is 4th in goals against tied with Winnipeg with 59. More good news for Philly is they are also 23rd in face-off percentage. Christian Dvorak leads the team at 55.8%.
The goal the Samuel Errsaon experiment is slowing coming to a head. His goals against average is still over 3 goals and game, while his save percentage is 85%. Daniel Vlader has clearly won the starters job for now with a more than solid .912 save percentage and a 2.42 GAA.
Trevor Zegras leads the team in all offensive catagories with 21 points, 7 goals, and 14 assists. Tyson Foerster also has 7 goals. Fourteen players have scored goals which sounds like a good thing but Owen Tippett needs to be more consistent. Matvei Michkov is still finding his groove back from last season and is making progress. Bobby Brink and Noah Cates have been solid as well.
On defense Cam York leads the defensemen with 9 assists. Only two others on the blueline have goals including York. Egor Zamula leads in plus/minus with a +5. Only 3 defensemen have a plus rating. There’s a reason why the rumor mill has the Flyers going over another defenseman before the trade deadline. Rasmus Ristolainen is still making progress from an injury. His health will go a long way from to determining what they do to fix the blueline.
Brian Jennings covers the Philadelphia Flyers for prohockeynews.com and can be found on twitter at @Flyersfan22.
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