Competitive NHL hockey has finally returned to the Philadelphia area! Well, it has if you count an intrasquad scrimmage involving 33 players at Philadelphia Flyers training camp in Voorhees, N.J.
The Flyers simulated game action for the first time during Phase 3 camp with a formal, five-on-five scrimmage Saturday morning. Over two 30-minute halves with a rolling clock, Team A in orange jerseys faced off against Team B in black, with Team B/Black securing a meaningless 3-2 victory. Connor Bunnaman, Shayne Gostisbehere and Travis Konecny scored for the winners, while Justin Braun and James van Riemsdyk lit the nonexistent lamp for the losers.
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Of course, the “winner” of an intrasquad scrimmage is of little importance beyond bragging rights in the locker room. Still, there were enough noteworthy storylines from the scrimmage — from a key player’s absence to assistant coaches wearing different hats for a day to the ongoing lineup battles the Flyers must resolve during the two-week camp — to warrant the return of the “10 Things” column.
1. Voracek’s absence the big story
About 30 minutes before the scheduled start of the scrimmage, the Flyers revealed rosters for both teams, and there were no surprises. Each team had three lines of forwards and three pairs of defensemen, all based on the lines head coach Alain Vigneault had run through the first four on-ice days of camp. Not a single player was missing from the official roster list.
But when the puck dropped for the scrimmage, Team A/Orange was one player short, and it was a big name: Jakub Voracek was not on the ice.
Unfortunately, that’s all the information the Flyers made available.
Some background: During the return-to-play negotiations between the NHL and NHLPA, it was important to the players that individual COVID-19 test results be kept private. However, to ensure that the absences teams didn’t explicitly state were injury-related weren’t assumed to be the result of coronavirus protocols, the league decided not to reveal reasons for any player absences. The result: Lots of “unfit to play” explanations for missed practices and games. That’s what the Flyers announced for Voracek on Saturday morning.
“Philadelphia Flyers forward Jakub Voracek is unable to participate in today’s scrimmage,” read the statement from general manager Chuck Fletcher. Vigneault, understandably, wasn’t willing to provide clarification on Voracek’s status. “Can’t give you more than what Chuck sent out in the memo there,” he said.
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Obviously, if Voracek misses an extended period of camp or even games, it would be a huge loss. After all, he’s skated as the top-line right wing at camp for a reason, and he didn’t luck into 56 points in 69 games this season. But his status is unknown. It’s possible Voracek has a minor ailment that kept him out of practice for precautionary reasons. It’s also possible he’s in the coronavirus protocols. He was the only Flyers player absent, which implies the team isn’t in the midst of a known outbreak of the virus. Teammate Scott Laughton, for what it’s worth, didn’t seem terribly worried about the situation.
“No concern,” he said. “We’ve got lots of time until Toronto. We’ve got a week coming up. We’ll be all good to go.”
2. Farabee-Hayes-Konecny line excels
With Voracek unavailable, the “top” line from this week’s practices able to hit the ice intact for the scrimmage was that of Joel Farabee, Kevin Hayes and Konecny. The trio justified its lofty status, helping to create two goals (one by Konecny, one by Gostisbehere).
Obviously, scrimmage results are meaningless in the grand scheme of the return to play. But the success of this line was especially important for Farabee, who was given the first crack at an attractive second-line left wing spot that many forwards in the lineup (Laughton, van Riemsdyk) could plausibly fill. The competition is especially important for Farabee; unlike those of Laughton and van Riemsdyk, his spot in the 12-forward lineup isn’t a stone-cold lock. When the Flyers used Derek Grant and Nate Thompson as their two bottom-six centers in February and early March before van Riemsdyk’s finger injury, it pushed Farabee out of the regular rotation. Locking down the 2LW spot is the ideal way for Farabee to ensure that history does not repeat itself for the start of the playoffs.
Consider Vigneault and his staff impressed with the 20-year-old thus far. Even though Vigneault confirmed that he’d likely implement some lineup tweaks Sunday, Farabee appears to have solidified his place as the clubhouse leader for the final spot in the top six.
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“It’s funny, I didn’t come in at the same time as the coaches into the coaching room there (after the scrimmage), and they were talking about him,” Vigneault said of Farabee. “There’s no doubt he’s got some jump. He made some good plays on the ice with the puck. He’s always in good position when he doesn’t have it. He’s come ready for this camp here, and he’s working extremely hard. For a first scrimmage today, I was happy with what I saw from him.”
3. Laperriere, Ricci as stand-in officials
The Flyers have been careful to restrict access to the team facilities to guard against possible coronavirus infections. So how does a team adhere to those standards despite needing officials to lay down the law for a structured five-on-five scrimmage?
Ask assistant coach Ian Laperriere and skills coach Angelo Ricci to don the black-and-white garb for a day, of course. Laperriere served as a referee, while Ricci assumed linesman duties.
“Some guys called Lappy ‘Justin St. Pierre’ on ice,” Vigneault said, laughing, a reference to the veteran French-Canadian NHL referee. “Angelo, I thought, looked small compared to the big linesmen we have on a regular basis.”
The two coaches were able to largely stay out of deciding the game, though they did call one penalty shot for van Riemsdyk and had to make quite a few tight offside decisions. In a real game, would Team Orange have been a bit less forgiving after a couple of key calls didn’t go its way? Laughton hinted as much with a smile.
“We thought their second goal was offside, but we didn’t say anything about it,” he joked. “Couple tough icing calls. I think Lappy was putting on the cape a little bit with the icing calls.”
4. Sanheim’s eventful sequence
Through most of the game, Team Black’s duo of Travis Sanheim and Philippe Myers was rock-solid, consistently engineering crisp breakouts and disrupting Team Orange’s treks through the neutral zone. But in the sequence that led up to van Riemsdyk’s penalty shot, Sanheim was involved in two of the more amusing plays of the day.
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As Sanheim attempted to carry the puck through the neutral zone, Claude Giroux wedged him off his route and kept him from chasing down the puck. Seconds later, Team Orange went back on the attack, springing van Riemsdyk for a breakaway with Sanheim out of position. The 24-year-old blueliner had little choice but to dive to try to stop van Riemsdyk’s rush, which led the assistant coaches/officials to whistle him for a penalty and award van Riemsdyk a penalty shot. Brian Elliott came up big to bail out Sanheim, but the young defenseman did some lighthearted griping about the sequence after the game, arguing he got something of a raw deal — twice.
It all went back to Giroux’s hyper-competitiveness that kicked off the sequence, inspiring jeers from the bench and a shared smirk between Giroux and Sanheim after the latter dislodged himself from the back of the net in the wake of his takedown of van Riemsdyk.
“Oh, just right before that, G had held me up and I was going to take a step by him,” Sanheim recalled with a smile, before launching into his version of events. “He kind of interfered with me. Coming back (and seeing van Riemsdyk on a breakaway), I saw the chance to get the puck. I actually got the puck first. Nowadays, obviously, you trip him at any point, you get a penalty.”
5. Raffl traded midgame, lines jumbled accordingly
Michael Raffl has spent his entire career in a Flyers jersey. But Saturday, he lived through the devastating, life-altering experience of being traded to another club … in the middle of a game!
OK, maybe it wasn’t that devastating. But with Team Orange one forward short with Voracek absent, Raffl (who started the scrimmage on Team Black) switched jerseys during the brief midgame cleaning of the ice and joined Team Orange to give it a full complement of nine forwards for the second half.
Team Black was then short-handed, and it responded by juggling its lines, even giving defenseman Andy Welinski time at forward to “replace” Raffl. Team Black still held on for the win, as Raffl suffered the ignominy of being traded midgame from the winning team to the losing team. Tough break.
6. Hart and Elliott receive lion’s share of workload
With the scrimmage divided into two 30-minute halves and each team dressing two goalies, it was easy to assume the Flyers would split netminding minutes evenly among Carter Hart and Alex Lyon (Team Orange) and Elliott and Kirill Ustimenko (Team Black). Instead, the coaches prioritized getting Hart and Elliott into game shape.
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It was little surprise to see Hart and Elliott start the scrimmage. But when the teams returned to the ice for the second half, the Flyers’ top two goalies were back between the pipes. In fact, it wasn’t until less than nine minutes remained in the scrimmage before Lyon and Ustimenko left the bench and got some work in.
So how did the two main goalies perform? Elliott faced little pressure in the first half as his team largely controlled possession, and he made a big save on van Riemsdyk’s penalty shot. Hart allowed three goals but faced far more difficult shots and generally looked sharp.
7. Aubé-Kubel continues tenacious forechecking
Nicolas Aubé-Kubel quickly made it clear that four months away from competitive hockey hadn’t erased his ability to forecheck. On Team Orange’s very first dump-in entry, Aubé-Kubel took the lead as the first-man-in forechecker (F1) and regained possession of the puck for his team.
For anyone following The Athletic’s Flyers forechecking tracking project, this should come as little surprise. Aubé-Kubel graded out as probably the team’s most efficient all-around lead forechecker this season, a finding further supported by Corey Sznajder’s public tracking data. Aubé-Kubel was always around the puck in 2019-20, and that held true Saturday. While line combinations were jumbled on Team Orange, it was easy to see why Aubé-Kubel began Phase 3 with a “promotion” to Line 3 with Laughton and van Riemsdyk. He’s without question been effective this season.
Might Aubé-Kubel’s straightforward, north-south style be well-suited for the early games, when teams are still trying to find the consistent chemistry necessary to regularly pull off high-skill plays? “Hopefully,” he said after the scrimmage. “During the exhibition game and round robin, it’s probably going to help.”
8. Couturier just a little off
Along with Aubé-Kubel, the other player on Team Orange most involved in the play was Selke Trophy favorite Sean Couturier. Even without Voracek on his line, Couturier was hard to miss. In the early stages of the first half, he set up Giroux for a prime scoring chance with a slick move immediately after entering the offensive zone; then, after the initial shot missed the net, he quickly won a puck battle to help Team Orange retain possession. Early impressions: Somehow, “midseason Couturier” was in Voorhees after just one week of practices.
The rest of the scrimmage, however, was more of a mixed bag. Couturier still won battles and made plays. But his passes tended to be a tick off or a fraction of a second behind the pace of play. Couturier remained involved, and he looked more than ready to go physically. But it’s apparently going to take him more than a few practices and a single scrimmage to regain his form.
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9. Experimenting with a van Riemsdyk-Couturier-Giroux line
Couturier’s ever-shifting linemates surely didn’t help his attempts to find consistency. With Voracek out, Couturier cycled through numerous combinations in the first half. The second half brought stability after Raffl moved over to Team Orange, but Couturier’s new line — with Giroux and van Riemsdyk — didn’t exactly fire on all cylinders, either.
In theory, the trio would seem to have potential: a playmaker (Giroux), a goal-scorer (van Riemsdyk) and a do-everything-else forward in Couturier. But all too often on the rush and at the top of the offensive zone, the three couldn’t seem to get out of each other’s way. Don’t expect to see this trio frequently in the playoffs.
10. Vigneault satisfied with Gostisbehere
Gostisbehere remained on what looks like a “fourth” pair with Mark Friedman during the scrimmage. But “Ghost” was active throughout the day, scoring a goal and breaking up quite a few rushes as he flashed his aggressive instincts. Vigneault apparently noticed — to the point that in response to a question about Robert Hägg, Gostisbehere’s primary competition for the No. 6 defenseman spot, the head coach tossed some unprompted praise Gostisbehere’s way.
“Also, so far in these first six days, I’ve really liked Ghost on the ice,” Vigneault said. “He’s got more jump than I expected coming back from that second surgery. He’s got a lot of pop, a lot of jump on the ice. That’s very good for us as a team.”
Keep an eye on whether Gostisbehere earns a shot further up the lineup Sunday, when Vigneault does his first round of promised tweaks to the lines and tandems.
(Top photo of Nicolas Aubé-Kubel: Zack Hill / Flyers)