Flyers Mailbag: Most surprising and disappointing Flyer, Zamula's decline

Yep, there’s time for one more Flyers Mailbag before the conclusion of the 2023-24 season.

As always, Part 1 will consist of questions from Twitter, and is accessible to all readers. Part 2, which will be published later this week, will be filled with questions exclusively from Diehard members from our Discord server, who all are guaranteed to have their questions answered.

@jacob_boyer1: As the season is coming to an end, who has been your most surprising player and most disappointing player?

For most surprising player, I’ll go with Tyson Foerster. His scoring totals meet reasonable expectations — 20 goals and 33 points is a solid but not spectacular rookie season — but his two-way play has been truly outstanding.

I was not expecting Foerster to grade out in the 82nd percentile among NHL forwards in impact on overall even strength expected goal differential, and I really did not peg him as a 99th percentile player in terms of defensive impact. It’s not just the numbers, either — John Tortorella raves about Foerster’s two-way play, from his heavy stick to his work along the boards to his overall instincts.

It’s raised my view of Foerster’s potential ceiling as a player. Previously, I saw his best case scenario to be a 30-ish goal scorer who was more of a break-even player at even strength; basically, someone who needs to score in order to provide value, and would need a true play-driver on his line to get him into the offensive zone to score those goals. Now, I have hopes he can be a goal-scoring, two-way demon of a winger — basically the new Mark Stone. It remains to be seen if he gets there, but that’s a really exciting plausible outcome.

As for most disappointing? There are a few candidates. I certainly was hoping for more from Cam Atkinson, especially in the second half, but he was coming back from missing a full season at age 34, so it’s not quite fair to call him a disappointment — just getting back in the first place was a victory onto itself. Scott Laughton’s two-way results dropped off significantly this season, but the scoring did ultimately come around in the second half, so he avoids the tag as well.

Ultimately, I’ll go with Noah Cates. His underlying even strength metrics actually are great (97th percentile in xG impact) so it’s not like he hasn’t provided the Flyers value. But I entered the season expecting Cates to take at least a minor step forward offensively after a promising rookie campaign. Instead, he has just 16 points in 55 games, and a 1.29 Points/60 rate at 5-on-5 that puts him in high-end fourth-liner territory relative to the other forwards in the league.

This version of Cates is still a quality play-driving bottom-sixer. But I wanted more from him.

@Alex_borowick: Do you have any insight into why Farabee is no longer in the PK rotation this year? He was one of their top PK forwards last year, and I remember a few years ago Farabee said he excepted to be a better player on the PK than the PP.

When I interviewed Brad Shaw back in December for my feature on the penalty kill, I asked him a variation of this question. His answer was simple: it’s basically a numbers game.

The Flyers’ PK — like most penalty kills — largely uses a six-man forward rotation. Travis Konecny and Scott Laughton are locks. Ryan Poehling and Garnet Hathaway are as well. And then your final two have been some mix of Sean Couturier, Cam Atkinson and Noah Cates.

So who does Farabee jump? In retrospect, he probably should have been above Atkinson, but being ahead of him on the PK depth still wouldn’t allow Farabee to break into the “top-six” of the penalty kill units, as the last few weeks proved when Atkinson was a regular healthy scratch. Cates has graded out as one of the league’s best defensive forwards, so removing him doesn’t make a ton of sense, and Couturier is still a past Selke Trophy winner with hundreds of games of PK experience.

Farabee will get back into the rotation at some point in the coming years, I suspect. Hathaway won’t be here forever, and Laughton could be a trade candidate this summer too. But this season, Farabee hasn’t been on the PK for a simple, understandable reason: there are just better options than him.

@JMUFAN: Is there anything specific you feel has led to Zamula’s performance decrease in recent weeks?

I mentioned this on the Monday episode of PHLY Flyers — Zamula has been rough recently.

It’s really gone off the rails for him over his past ten games. Since March 14, the Flyers have an ugly 38.46 percent expected goals share at 5-on-5 with Zamula on the ice, and they’ve been outscored 12 – 4. Now, part of this is due to the fact that his partnership with new acquisition Erik Johnson has largely flopped, but at least by the eye test, Zamula looks to me to be the weaker side of the pair, not Johnson, who is at least delivering one or two strong defensive plays in his own zone per night. Zamula, on the other hand, has been increasingly error-prone, especially with the puck.

Now, onto the actual question: why has Zamula’s play declined? It could just be a slump, of course. This is his first full NHL season, so perhaps he’s a bit worn down as well. But I do worry that he’s struggling at least in part because his style of play doesn’t fit the increased intensity of an end-of-season playoff race. Zamula doesn’t play at a high pace — he’s deliberate almost to the point of looking casual at times. My concern is that it’s a style that can be exposed, especially in faster games — like those in the playoffs.

It’s just a theory, and perhaps Zamula’s recent struggles are just an ill-timed slump. But I was hoping that Zamula would steadily improve over the course of his rookie season — not tail off dramatically at the end of it.

@sn3vik: How does having all of these call-ups in the building work, logistically? Are they constantly replacing name plates in the locker room?

It’s an interesting question, but a straightforward one to answer. Yes, they’re changing nameplates in the locker room a lot — but the nameplates are just fancy magnets, so it’s easily for the equipment staff to adjust on the fly. In fact, on a few occasions, I’ve seen the players prank each other by mixing up the nameplates after practice. It’s as easy as taking a decorative magnet off a refrigerator.

@DaveInfamous: If you could build a team for this year’s playoffs by merging the current roster with the 2010 Stanley Cup run team (at the time of their run) what would your lineup be?

Oh, this is a fun one.

To start, I think most would agree that our lineup should be heavier on the 2009-10 team, because that team was simply a lot better — they made the Cup Final, while this year’s Flyers club might not even end up in the postseason. But the former team still had two big weaknesses, and the first — depth — can be addressed by scouring this year’s club.

The 2009-10 team provides the top-of-the-lineup forward talent. Mike Richards, Simon Gagne and Jeff Carter all join our combined team, as do Daniel Briere and Scott Hartnell. I thought long and hard about replacing Ville Leino, but DaveInfamous specifically says “at the time of their run,” and Leino was undeniably a difference maker in the 2010 playoffs and even the following season for the Flyers. Players like Owen Tippett and Joel Farabee will almost certainly have better NHL careers than Leino, but for this exercise, Leino stays. Plus, I can’t bring myself to break up the LBH line, which had such exceptional offensive chemistry.

Line 3 is where the 2023-24 forwards start coming in. Early-career Claude Giroux centers the line (obviously), but to replace rookie James van Riemsdyk, we’re going to slot in Travis Konecny, giving the emerging playmaker Giroux an in-prime 30+ goal scorer. Slotting in for Arron Asham is Scott Laughton, who brings everything to the table that Asham did, except in a much more talented package. Stylistically, I want Laughton on this playoff team — I believe he’d bring at least a few clutch goals to the table, just like Asham did in closing out the Montreal series.

I’m also completely remaking Line 4 with 2023-24 Flyers. Ryan Poehling checks in for Darroll Powe, going with the same thinking as Laughton-for-Asham — a better version of the same type of player. Garnet Hathaway replaces Ian Laperriere. And finally, despite his second half swoon, I’m putting Sean Couturier at 4C in place of Blair Betts. Even a limited Couturier should be able to win faceoffs, kill penalties, and drive play a lot better than Betts did.

The defense is straightforward, at least at the top. Chris Pronger, Kimmo Timonen, Matt Carle and Braydon Coburn all return. I understand the case for swapping in, say, Cam York for Carle or Travis Sanheim for Coburn, but the chemistry of those 2010 pairs is the deciding factor for me. Also, Carle and Coburn were no slouches as players — it’s far from a slam-dunk that either member of the Flyers’ current top pair is better than the 2010 support duo. The third pair is where we make a big upgrade, and I’m putting the Nick Seeler/Sean Walker duo right there. They were the Flyers’ best pair all season long prior to the Walker trade, they have existing chemistry that should allow them to thrive even in limited minutes, and Seeler’s shot blocking prowess replaces what was lost by swapping out Laperriere for Hathaway. Except hopefully, Seeler doesn’t break his face in the process.

Unfortunately, this exercise doesn’t do much to address the biggest weakness of the 2009-10 Flyers, what was ultimately their fatal flaw: goaltending. Due to the circumstances behind Carter Hart’s leave of absence, I’m deeming him ineligible here, which leaves our combined team in a netminding bind. Personally, I’m going with Brian Boucher — who I do believe was the better true-talent goalie in 2010 despite Michael Leighton’s strong numbers that season — and Sam Ersson, who I’ll bank on performing much better if he isn’t run into the ground like he has been over the past month.

Final lineup:

Gagne – Richards – Carter

Hartnell – Briere – Leino

Laughton – Giroux – Konecny

Poehling – Couturier – Hathaway

Carle – Pronger

Timonen – Coburn

Seeler – Walker

Boucher

Ersson

@Fortunaught1: In lambasting his team for their second period against the Isles last week, Torts said that some guys just don’t get it. Do you think that those are the players most likely to be jettisoned in the offseason, as not factoring into the rebuild?

That statement from Tortorella did jump out at me at the time — it was very reminiscent of his “we’re going to need to make some subtractions” mantra from the 2022-23 season.

But two days later, Tortorella subtly amended his charge. He made sure to note that he does believe that learning how to up one’s game for the more meaningful parts of the season can be taught, and that it’s on him as coach to do so. In this framing, a player can struggle to rise to this particular challenge and not necessarily be deemed as incapable of rising to future ones — he can learn over time how to better handle it.

With Tortorella’s help, of course.

I do think there will be a few subtractions this summer, whether via buyout or trade. And perhaps the players who struggled over the final few weeks of the season are no longer quite as untouchable as they were in February, especially if an intriguing player-for-player trade falls into Briere’s lap. But I don’t get the sense that Tortorella is going to march into Briere’s office at the end of the season and proclaim that “I simply can’t win with this guy,” the way I suspect he did with players like Kevin Hayes and Tony DeAngelo last year.

@jfdemarini: Which pending RFAs (Brink, Ginning, Zamula) get a contract extension, and for how much/how long? Do any of the pending UFAs (Staal, Johnson, Gurianov) extend?

The specific contract lengths and prices are a subject for another day, because they’ll warrant full articles rather than just an answer in a mailbag. But I imagine all of Brink, Ginning and Zamula will be issued qualifying offers and all will be re-signed. The only caveat is if either Ginning or Zamula choose to return to their home countries. There was some talk a few months back that Ginning was at least exploring the possibility, though his late-season audition at the NHL level seems to have scuttled that chatter. Zamula has flirted with the idea of heading back home too, but after a full NHL season, I imagine he’ll want to stay as well to try and build on it.

As for the pending UFAs? Gurianov is a maybe — it really depends on both Briere and the coaching staff’s view of his work since the trade deadline. If they think they can squeeze more out of him, maybe they offer him an extension. It’s not like he’ll be expensive. Staal and Johnson I imagine will both be allowed to leave; both have been positive influences in the locker room, but neither have been especially effective on the ice. If the Flyers want a veteran No. 7 on defense, there should be others available in free agency or on the trade market with higher upsides.

@THEGR8126: Could you see a Flyers/Sabres trade this off season? Sabres need an adult in the room (Laughton maybe) and they have a ton of prospect/young centers which the Flyers could use. Maybe something like Laughton, a 2nd, and a B-prospect for Jiri Kulich.

Sure, it’s an option. Anthony San Filippo reported a few months back that the Flyers have continued interest in Peyton Krebs, and he certainly fits the bill as a player with pedigree who could perhaps benefit from a change of scenery. It wouldn’t be as low-cost since the Flyers would have to trade for him, but it would be along the same lines as their Ryan Poehling add from last summer — a first round pick whose offensive game has yet to blossom.

Buffalo, as you note, does make sense as a trade partner because of the leaguewide perception that they have talent but lack the necessary culture to take full advantage of it. Briere made it very clear at the deadline that the Flyers would only trade Scott Laughton if another club overpaid for him. A team that feels like it needs Laughton’s intangibles would be an obvious candidate to commit to such an overpay. So yes, there could be a fit here. But Briere will be talking to a lot of teams this summer, about a lot of players, so don’t get too attached to this particular possibility.

@btc_stackatoshi: Who’s your early pick for a Brink-like surprise to make the team next year?

When Brink entered training camp, he was in the mix for a roster spot, but very much viewed as being on the outside looking in. He missed a not-insignificant portion of the previous season due to hip surgery, and even upon his return with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, he was obviously hampered. The understandable assumption was that he would need to excel at the AHL level for at least a month or two in 2023-24 in order to get an NHL look. Instead, Brink got rolling over the second half of the preseason, and made it impossible for the Flyers to keep him off the roster.

His camp story was a unique one, in other words, and not easily replicable. But one player who I could plausibly see riding a strong September to a roster spot despite an underwhelming developmental season the previous year is Elliot Desnoyers. 2023-24 has been an undeniable disappointment for Desnoyers, especially offensively (20 points in 59 games). But the Flyers still believe in his NHL upside, and if he stands out in camp, he could leapfrog other bubble players and nab a bottom-six role.

@jmiller678: Does the Ivan Fedotov arrival move the needle on Matvei Michkov coming over early?

Not really. But it does speak to the ability of Briere and the Flyers front office to navigate difficult Russia-related situations.

I don’t traffic in conspiracy theories here. So the idea that the machinations that led to Fedotov successfully moving to North America to play for the Flyers are related to future maneuvers involving Michkov is a bit much for me. However, it certainly wasn’t easy to get Fedotov over here, and the Flyers found a way to pull it off. They were able to navigate the complicated geopolitical situation between Russia and the United States, the internal politics of the KHL, and the sanctions from the IIHF. And this was for a player who is far from a sure thing to be a long-term solution in goal for the club.

They’re obviously going to be even more motivated to ensure that Michkov successfully makes it over here, given the impact that he is expected to have on the organization as a whole. The fact that they successfully brought Fedotov to Philly hints that when the time comes, they can be trusted to jump through all of the necessary hoops to get Michkov here as well. And if an opportunity presents itself for Michkov to become a Flyers before his KHL contract’s official conclusion? I’m sure they’d jump at the chance — and now they have an established track record of pulling such a move off successfully.