Going For the Kill

As the Philadelphia Flyers approach the NHL’s holiday break, pundits around the league have started to notice what the team’s been up to over the last five weeks. The Flyers have earned a 13-3-2 record (28 points) since November 10, which is the most in the league in that timeframe despite ranking 21^st in the league in goals scored during that stretch with 52. The key there is they’ve allowed just 40 goals, which is the third-fewest.

One of the reasons for that impressive stat is an even more impressive one – the team’s penalty kill rate. Over these 18 games since November 10, the Flyers are 89.7 percent on the penalty kill, which is the best in the league in that time. The Flyers have been shorthanded on 58 occasions and have killed off 52 of them. They’ve given up six power play goals, but have made up half of that by scoring three shorthanded goals.

None of this is much of a surprise to people who’ve been paying attention to how John Tortorella and his staff have built this team over the last 14 months. Most of the 2022-23 season was spent focusing on how the team played defensively. When all of last year’s returners arrived this year with that development time already put in, the defense quickly turned into a highlight of the team’s play. 

The penalty kill is an extension of the defense, but that too finds its roots in last season. Here’s a look at how this unit has now become a significant factor in the team’s current success.

PERSONNEL

A year ago, the Flyers didn’t have enough penalty killers. They were playing without Cam Atkinson and Sean Couturier, and a couple contributors from the previous season had moved on. Noah Cates saw his time on the kill increase exponentially as part of the role he took on in Couturier’s absence. But they needed more help.

Enter Travis Konecny, who had never been on a penalty killing unit. A year ago Thursday, Konecny scored his first career shorthanded goal.  It was off an assist from Scott Laughton, who knocked a puck to center that Konecny tracked down. He carried it into the zone, rendered Marcus Bjork ineffective, and beat Daniil Tarasov for the game’s first goal.

(It’s hard to believe that clip is only a year old. The other two Flyers on the ice were Ivan Provorov and Tony DeAngelo, Keith Jones is on the broadcast, and the 5-3 win the Flyers picked up that night lifted the team’s record to 11-15-7.) 

But something was starting there. That SHG was the second in a clump of five the Flyers would score in a six-game span from Dec. 17-31.  Four more would sprinkle in over the rest of the season and the club would finish with 11 shorties, the most they’d had in a season in over a decade.

Now, Laughton and Konency are mainstays on a unit that has also been bolstered by the arrivals of Sean Walker, Garnet Hathaway and Ryan Poehling.  Travis Sanheim’s minutes will likely move into the neighborhood of what Provorov had been playing, and Cam York’s PK time has increased exponentially into the area where Sanheim’s minutes were.  Atkinson and Couturier are back but don’t have to carry all the load, and Cates had continued to contribute before his injury. 

PHILOSOPHY

The overarching message that Tortorella has imposed on his team is that he wants them to be aggressive in creating offense. He wants defensemen jumping into the play and forwards pressing the issue in the neutral zone. If an aggressive offensive read doesn’t work out and the other team scores the other way, that’s acceptable. It’s a risk-reward scenario.  Sometimes that level of risk vs. reward changes depending on the game situation, but overall, it’s full speed ahead.

That applies to the penalty kill as well. The Flyers don’t want to just stop the other team from scoring; they want to try to force mistakes that lead to opportunities at the other end. 

Here’s an example from the Flyers’ stop in Dallas back in October where they scored three shorthanded goals in a 5-4 overtime defeat.

Walker gets a stick on the puck at the far wall, top of your screen.  As he does, watch Konecny. TK starts to accelerate as soon as he sees Walker chip the puck ahead because he sees the Stars forward pinching and that Laughton is going to be the first to this puck. By the time Laughton gains possession, Konecny is at full speed.  He actually beats Laughton out of the zone; if this is a read-and-react situation, Konecny is several steps behind Laughton at the blue line. But TK actually has to slow down to allow Laughton to catch up to him.

Then as the play moves up ice, Travis Sanheim jumps in. Sanheim recognizes that two Stars have been caught deep at the other end and his risk in this situation is minimal. Granted, if the pass from Laughton gets knocked down by a Stars defender, they’re moving it ahead to those forwards for a probable 2-on-1. But this is where situational awareness kicks in – the Flyers are down two goals with eight minutes left on the road, and it’s a time to take chances.  If the score is reversed, Sanheim probably shouldn’t jump in on this rush.  But he does in this case, and it creates the chaos necessary for Konecny to score.

EXECUTION

Past any of that, the penalty kill’s success essentially is based in relentless pressure created by hard work. Rarely are the Flyers standing and waiting for a pass. If an opponent has possession, a Flyer is quickly closing on him; in situations where the Flyers do want to defend a pass, they are typically closing on the opponent at least gradually as they do so. The key to forcing mistakes and turnovers on a power play is taking away time and space, and the Flyers are programmed to quickly descend upon puck carriers to force them into a decision perhaps before they are ready. This kind of effort is a hallmark of a John Tortorella team.

COMPARISONS

All of the above has resulted in the Flyers allowing just 112 shots on goal in shorthanded situations this year entering play on December 18, which was second-fewest in the league at that point. That’s despite being right in the middle of the pack in times shorthanded at 96. And then there’s the goaltending. When those shots get through, the team’s netminders have generally taken care of them. The Flyers have a collective shorthanded save percentage among their goaltenders of .884, which was 11^th best in the league at that time. Take away the Ottawa game on October 14 – routinely described as the Flyers’ only dud game of the season to this point – and the save percentage has been .911 over the other 29 contests. 

This overall philosophy has led to the nickname “power kill” for what the Flyers have been doing this season. It’s resulted in seven shorthanded goals in 30 games, with #7 coming on Dec. 7 in the Flyers’ 26^th game of the season. They haven’t done that since 2005-06, when they had four shorthanded goals in their first six games and reached seven on the season in game #18; that team finished with 19 SHGs on the year.

In franchise-record terms, the three teams at the top of the Flyers’ annals are all Stanley Cup Finalist teams. The 1986-87 club holds the record with 22, while the 1984-85 and 1973-74 teams each had 20. The 19 goals in 2005-06 ranked fourth in franchise history.

Certainly teams don’t try to play shorthanded, and doing so too often can backfire. But those situations happen, and at the moment, the Flyers are dealing with them as well as they have in recent memory.