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Tag: Scott Laughton

  • Flyers 2024-25 Season Preview: Bottom 6 Forwards – Philadelphia Sports Nation

    Flyers 2024-25 Season Preview: Bottom 6 Forwards – Philadelphia Sports Nation

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    PHILADELPHIA, PA – MARCH 31: Scott Laughton #21 of the Philadelphia Flyers warms up against the New York Rangers on March 31, 2019 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Len Redkoles/NHLI via Getty Images)

    With only a few weeks remaining before regular season hockey, let’s take a look at the Flyers, likely bottom 6 forwards to start , in no particular order.

    Matvei Michkov

    Let’s start with the biggest story of the Flyers offseason.  The Flyers were about to ice likely the same roster from last year, then word began to circulate that Michkov would be released from his KHL contract in order to come to the NHL.  Michkov was selected # 7 overall by the Flyers in the 2023 draft, with perhaps some teams shying away simply with the uncertainty of his ability to be allowed to play in North America.   We recently reviewed the challenges his countryman, Ivan Fedotov, had to endure to make it to the Flyers.

    Last year, Michkov posted 19 goals and 22 assists for 41 points in 47 games. During the 2023-24 season, Michkov flirted with breaking the KHL record for points by a teenaged rookie.

    Despite his youth, Expectations will be high for the talented young player; with possible early Calder talk.

    Brent Flahr, Flyers assistant GM, had this to say at the timing of his signing:

    “Matvei’s been a world class player since he came on the scene a number of years ago. He wants to be the best. We are excited for him to be a Flyer”

    The big question is not how talented, rather, how will the Flyers use him.  Torts is well known to be a disciplinarian that historically has some difficulties with young players, or any players for that matter, i.e. Sean Courtier.  Talented players need ice time and opportunities.   I included Michkov on the bottom 6 list as it seemed unfair to immediately rank him above some of the experienced and talented veterans.   It would not be surprising to see the Michkov get significant power play and top 6 minutes this year.

    Who knows, Michkov could be so impactful he forces the Flyers to start a young top line of Foerster, Frost and Michkov.  All we do know is we should be in for a few more flashy thrills compared with the team the Flyers iced last year.

    Nic Deslauriers

    (Last Season: 60GP   1G   3A   4P   89PIM   -7 +/-   8:09TOI)

    At the Michkov press conference announcing Michkov, Flyers GM Briere joked:

    “On that, we also showed him the video of the fight of Nic in the Rangers game last year,” Brière quipped. “We told him he’s his [Michkov’s] new best friend.”

    Toughness and being a good teammate are never things that are questioned with Delauriers game.  Last year, Delauriers played in 60 games for the Flyers putting up 1 goal and 3 assists to go along with 89 PIMs.  Delauriers could find it a bit harder to crack the lineup once Michkov gets going.  With the Flyers icing essentially the same team with the addition of Michkov and younger players needing time, will we see Delaurier crack 60 games again in a season for the Flyers?  Deslauriers has 2 years remaining on this deal with a $1.75MM cap hit.

    Garnet Hathaway

    (Last Season: 82GP   7G   10A   17PTS   132PIM   -7 +/-   12:29TOI)

    Garnet Hathaway, along with Delauriers, will be vital in helping Michkov learn the locker room and with learning how to be a pro in the NHL.

    Hathaway played all 82 games for the Flyers last year notching 7 goals and 10 assists to go along with 132 PIMs.  Like Delauriers, Hathaway is a guy who might get squeezed for ice time as the season rolls along, especially if some of the Flyers youth starts pushing for ice time with the big club.  Hathaway in on the last year of his deal carrying a $2.4MM cap hit.

    Ryan Poehling

    (Last Season: 77GP   11G   17A   28P   6PIM   -11 +/-   15:00 TOI)

    Poehling signed a two-year extension with the Flyers in January 2024 which kicks in this season pays him $1.9MM AAV, a 500k pay increase from his one-year $1.4MM contract he signed in July 2023.

    At the time of his extension signing, Briere said

    “Torts has really enjoyed him, likes that he can use him on the PK, for faceoffs. His speed and size combination helps us because of having a few smaller-sized wingers.

    Poehling’s 28 points was a slight increase in his points per game average from earlier in his career.  The 25-year-old will look to build upon last year and continue to grow and thrive with the Flyers.

    Noah Cates

    (Last Season:  59GP   6G   12A   18P   0PIM   -8 +/-   13:48 TOI)

    Frankly, it was impressive to see Cates play 59 games averaging 13:48 TOI and he took zero penalties.  I needed to double check that stat, and it was correct, and I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I for one find that impressive.   I mean, not once do you misplace your stick and a guy accidentally trips over it.  Kudos to Cates.  Looking deeper, Cates has only 16 PIM in 157 games with the Flyers, contributing 65 points in his parts of 3 years with the Flyers.   That might be a particular skill on a team with Delauriers and Hathaway.

    Cates, who will turn 26 in February, is on year 2 of his bridge deal carrying a $2.7MM cap hit.  Unfortunately, Cates will have to turn around his slumping points-per-game average which currently sits at 0.3 points per game compared to his 0.5 points per game average in his first 98 games with the Orange & Black.  This would be the right year for Cates to get back on track if he wants to be in the Flyers long-term future or if he wants to secure a nice deal in free agency.

    Scott Laughton

    (Last Season:  82GP   13G    26A    39P     69PIM   -9 +/-     15:39 TOI)

    Laughton was a likely trade candidate last year and not much is expected to change, as Laughton should remain a top trade target this year.

    Laughton, now entering, parts of his 11th NHL season, all with the Flyers.  in 2012-13 he played 5 games and in 2016-17 he played 2 games.  In his career to date, Laughton has 95 goals and 143 points in 601 games.

    As a veteran leader who can play up and down the line-up and offer secondary scoring to go along with a modest $3MM cap hit, he’s a valuable player for the Flyers or a number of other teams.  As we saw last season, it will likely take the right offer for the Flyers to move on, especially with two years remaining on this deal.

    Tyson Foerster

    (Last Season: 77 GP   20G   13A   33P   32PIM   0 +/-   17:16 TOI)

    Foerster set new career highs in goals (20), assists (13) and points (33) last year.  Now, his goal will be to build off his breakout year in 2024-25. 

    Foerster’s a guy who, like Michkov could end up playing top 6 minutes.  In addition to having already eclipsed the famed NHL 20-goal mark, Foerster’s got a wicked shot and surprisingly put up 102 hits last year, showing he can handle the physicality of the NHL, a concern as a prospect.    With Foerster on year 3 of his ELC, the Flyers are going to want to figure out if he is complimentary to their long-term plans and Foerster will want to perform to get paid on his next deal.

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    JR Martin

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  • The Flyers can battle anyone, but the final stretch needs to have results

    The Flyers can battle anyone, but the final stretch needs to have results

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    On Saturday, the Flyers conquered one of this season’s greatest demons. They came into the Wells Fargo Center for the home matinee, fought tooth and nail for a crucial two points in the playoff race, and actually got them. They finally beat the Boston Bruins, something they hadn’t been able to do all season. 

    Then on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, with another major two points on the line, they nearly toppled another. The game was a rollercoaster, the seven-goal third period especially, and here the Flyers were matching a high-powered and Metro Division-leading New York Rangers team shot for shot. 

    They fell behind three times during that last regulation frame, and answered three times to force overtime and claim at least a point, but their fortune stopped there. Against the Rangers’ offensive killers in Atermi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck, and Adam Fox, head coach John Tortorella opted to try and match that with a more preventative measure in Ryan Poehling, Noah Cates, and Travis Sanheim.

    It backfired immediately. The Flyers never touched the puck in OT, Fox found the back of the net in 36 seconds, the Rangers remained as the juggernaut rival left unbeaten, and while Philly still left the night holding on to third in the Metro, the Washington Capitals had also beaten the Detroit Red Wings simultaneously to pull within just a single point behind them and with two games in hand. 

    The Flyers are finally out of the gauntlet phase of this final stretch in their schedule, but there aren’t necessarily any more breaks or much room to breathe. 

    Take that point from Tuesday night, for sure, but they could’ve really used the whole two there and are going to need a lot more if they’re going to survive this last push to make the bid into the postseason.

    The race is a full-on sprint now, a close one too, and while the Flyers have shown that they can and will skate with anyone, the silver linings are only going to mean less and less with each passing and increasingly crucial game. They need results. 

    “I liked the game for the most part,” Scott Laughton said postgame Tuesday night. “Again, I thought we played pretty well, but like I said before, this time of year, the moral victories don’t really do it. We need to pick up some points here. We got one, but I thought we were in control of it and should’ve gotten two.”

    “We knew this was coming up on the schedule and what we were facing,” Laughton continued. “Handled it pretty well, I thought, but yeah, you don’t get the result. We’re all in this game to win and we didn’t get on the right side of it tonight, so go to Montreal tomorrow and we gotta play a good road game there and get back at it.”

    Beginning on March 7 in Florida, the Flyers’ schedule consisted almost wholly of playoff contenders between the Panthers (twice), Lightning, Maple Leafs (twice), Bruins (twice), Hurricanes, and Rangers. Their lone breather in that slate was against the NHL-worst Sharks, a 3-2 win at home, but otherwise, the Flyers were near required to be on the top of their game every single night to have a chance. 

    Overall, they left that 10-game endurance run 4-4-2, with a few big wins if not impressive performances put up throughout, but with a couple of outright clunkers and some questionable decisions thrown in there as well – the most curious and scrutinized of them right now being the team’s overtime deployment. 

    Tuesday night in New York, the Flyers played it conservative and it bit them. They also took that same approach just shy of a week before on the road against Carolina, sending Poehling out there with Sanheim and Tyson Foerster to start, and while there was some trade off in that contest, it also ended with the Flyers only taking one after Brent Burns and Seth Jarvis took a 2-on-1 the other way. 

    Tortorella didn’t make himself available for any questions about it after the overtime loss to the Rangers, instead sending associate coach Brad Shaw out to offer the explanation. 

    “Poehls has been one of our best two-way players for the last probably 2-3 months, so he’s got a chance to win the faceoff and plus he’s responsible at both ends of the rink,” Shaw said. “He’s played well offensively and defensively, so he’s earned the right to get out there. It obviously didn’t end the way we wanted. I think he’s the right guy to put out there. They’ve got two of their best offensive guys and one of the best offensive defensemen in the league in Fox out there as well, so we have guys that we feel can play both ends of the rink really well. It didn’t work out.”

    And stopped a stellar and relentless effort short. 

    Now you just have to hope the team can shrug that part off and keep building on it going into their final nine games and a relatively easier stretch coming up that begins with the Canadiens in Montreal on Thursday night. 

    Still, it’s a race, a close one, and this late into the game, one that will hardly offer any breaks. 

    “It’s hard,” Shaw said. “We have to respect every team we’re playing. Once you do that, you tend to buy into how we have to play, the discipline, the puck management type game that has given us a ton of success lately against really good opponents. That works against everybody. We have to realize that and stick to that gameplan as often as we can.”

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    Nick Tricome

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  • The Flyers’ marathon will become a playoff sprint with Stadium Series

    The Flyers’ marathon will become a playoff sprint with Stadium Series

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    EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ – John Tortorella took the podium from the ground floor of MetLife Stadium on Friday while his players were outside getting ice time with their families.

    The Flyers head coach knows an important two points in the standings are going to be at stake Saturday night against the New Jersey Devils, but against the backdrop and late-winter spectacle of playing in an 80,000-plus seat football stadium for the NHL’s annual Stadium Series, he knows that he needs to let his team enjoy this too.

    He also knows, at this point, that when it is finally time for puck drop, they’ll be ready to go.

    “I’ll leave ’em alone,” Tortorella said of his preparations for Saturday night’s outdoor game. “We had our practice. There probably won’t be [a morning skate] tomorrow. I’m thankful that we were able to get them out there for a half hour with their families to let them enjoy it, but it’s as I’ve said all year long: I trust our team.

    “I want them to enjoy the experience. They’ll be ready to play. I don’t have to worry about that.”

    Because he’s been given little reason to.

    For the better part of a season now more than two-thirds of the way complete, the Philadelphia Flyers have shown up and gotten results, much to the surprise of many around hockey, but not all that much to themselves.

    Even as an organization in an openly-stated rebuild, the team on the ice now has played overall solid hockey, some of the best in the NHL even at certain stretches, which all added up to put them at 29-19-7 (65 points) on the year and third in the Metro division entering Saturday night – a playoff spot, and one that the Flyers have a 79.9 percent shot at clinching after 55 of 82 games, per MoneyPuck.

    They looked decent out of the gate in October, but at the time, that could’ve easily been chalked up to early-season juice. Then November got shaky with a loss to a league-worst and at that point winless San Jose Sharks club, which could’ve easily been where a team in the Flyers’ position leveled out into its typical trajectory of a couple of lean years of losing before fully stocking up on young talent.

    But none of that happened. The Flyers rung off five straight wins after that defeat and just kept going, even with more bumps in the road that followed. In fact, ever since that November 7 game in San Jose, they’ve gone 24-12-6 for 54 points, the seventh-best output in the league during that span and tied with the rival New York Rangers for the second-best rate in the Eastern Conference.

    And the reasons why are numerous.

    Travis Sanheim, who was one “yes” away from getting shipped to St. Louis in the summer, regrouped and came back as a much sharper defenseman; Joel Farabee developed into a much more complete forward and leader amongst the team; Owen Tippett continually unlocks more as a goal-scoring power forward; Sean Walker has been a revelation on the blue line after originally being a throw-in from LA for the Ivan Provorov trade; Samuel Ersson keeps stepping up in goal with the more starts he gets; Morgan Frost finally looks like he is emerging as the top-six center the Flyers need; Travis Konecny has taken the leap into a high-flying All-Star and face of the team; Sean Couturier, after nearly two years away from back issues, returned to the lineup healthy and as skilled as he was before, all finally earning him the captaincy; and the list goes on.

    For the Flyers themselves, there wasn’t any one specific moment this season where it all clicked of how good they could be, but they knew in training camp that they had something different, and knew just as well what was thought of them outside of the building.

    “It was pretty funny, like everyone had us, bottom three, bottom five, whatever it was, and I think it just fueled a little bit of a fire,” Farabee said from the New York Jets locker room the Flyers are borrowing for the weekend. “Obviously we’ve got some guys that came back healthy this year. I think we just kinda came in with that ‘F you’ attitude the whole year, and obviously we’ve put ourselves in a pretty good spot here. So we’ll just try and keep things going.”

    “I think we had that inner belief before the start of the year,” added veteran Scott Laughton. “We didn’t really need to say it. Guys just knew where people had us projected and what they thought of our team, and we kinda let it roll out that way. We had the belief in this room, so we need to keep it going here. It’s a lot of games left in a short period of time and we need to keep it rolling, but guys have really come together here and bought into this.”

    It’s carried them this far – through a lot, too – and might just a little bit further if the play can keep matching.

    “You win a few games early on, you get off on the right foot, that helps,” Tortorella said. “We’ve had some stretches here where we’ve struggled. I watched how they handled it then, and you just saw it build.

    “The word ‘belief’ is used for us. We’re not a team full of stars and we certainly don’t have things figured out yet at the beginning of our process of rebuilding this, but belief brings in a lot of good things. If you have the effort and you have the mindset that we’re gonna do this together, you can stay competitive in this league. That’s how we’re going about it and we’re gonna continue.”

    Which leads onto the big stage and into the bright lights of Saturday night’s Stadium Series game up here in the Meadowlands. It was always going to be a show – it’s the nature of the league’s outdoor games, after all – but now the Flyers arrive to it knowing they’re fully in the playoff race and needing these two points over a Devils team that isn’t all that far behind in what could now stand as a potentially pivotal divisional matchup.

    There are 27 games left. The Flyers have come this far and have shown how good they can really be, much to the surprise of many. But the road only gets tougher from here as they move to try and close this last stretch out. 

    The 82-game marathon is becoming a sprint, and it could very well shift into high gear for the Flyers on Saturday under the cold night sky of MetLife.

    “I haven’t followed where the guys were in the standings in the other games, but this one is right in front of us here,” Tortorella said after Friday’s practice. “Twenty-plus games left for each team, you can see where the East is. That’s what I try to balance. I do not want to disrespect our team or their families, so let them enjoy this. But when that puck is dropped, I know we’ll be ready to play. I think they’re zeroed in on how important it is.”

    “I think we’ve stayed pretty even keel throughout the year,” Laughton said. “Even when we get down in games and things like that, guys know on the bench what to expect out of each other and have kinda gone about it that way. I don’t think this really changes for us. I think we’ll handle the situation pretty well and go out there and have some fun.”

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    Nick Tricome

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  • DeAngelo caps Flyers rally for 4-3 OT win over Sharks

    DeAngelo caps Flyers rally for 4-3 OT win over Sharks

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    SAN JOSE, Calif. — Tony DeAngelo scored 1:10 into overtime to complete Philadelphia’s rally from two goals down in the third period as the Flyers beat the San Jose Sharks 4-3 on Thursday night.

    The Flyers tied the game with 2:05 to play in regulation after pulling the goalie when Travis Konecny’s shot deflected off a San Jose defenseman and into the net for his second goal of the game.

    Philadelphia won it when Ivan Provorov set up DeAngelo in transition for the tap-in goal.

    Owen Tippett also scored for the Flyers in their first game of a three-game California swing. Samuel Ersson made 25 saves to earn his first win in his second career start.

    Tomas Hertl scored twice for San Jose, and Erik Karlsson had two assists to become the fastest defenseman to 50 points in more than 30 years. Kevin Labanc also scored.

    Karlsson assisted on the first goal by Hertl and Labanc’s goal to extend his points streak to 11 games and give him 50 points in San Jose’s 37th game of the season — the fastest for a defenseman since Al MacInnis did it in 35 games for Calgary in 1990-91.

    Kaapo Kahkonen made 22 saves and is winless in his last four starts since shutting out Montreal on Nov. 29.

    The teams traded goals within a 47-second span midway through the first period, with Karlsson setting up Hertl in the slot to open the scoring for San Jose.

    Karlsson is now one game shy of the franchise record 12-game point streak held by Rob Gaudreau (1992-93) and Jonathan Cheechoo (2005-06).

    The Flyers answered quickly when Konecny deflected a point shot from DeAngelo for his 16th goal after Philadelphia won an offensive zone faceoff.

    Hertl got the lead back for San Jose in the second when he took a pass on the power play from Timo Meier and redirected it for his 13th goal of the season.

    Labanc provided some insurance with his goal early in the third before Tippett answered for the Flyers.

    INJURY REPORT

    Flyers goalie Carter Hart made the trip after being placed on IR with a concussion. He is expected to play later on the road trip.

    Sharks defenseman Matt Benning was scratched after blocking a shot with his skate while killing a penalty on Tuesday night. Radim Simek returned to the lineup after being a healthy scratch the past two games.

    UP NEXT

    Flyers: Visit Los Angeles on Saturday.

    Sharks: Visit Dallas on Saturday night.

    ———

    AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

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