What can the Flyers count on from Philippe Myers going forward after a step-up season turned into a step back?

It all seemed to be falling into place for Philippe Myers.

His emergence from undrafted free agent to top prospect made him one of the most highly valued young assets in the Philadelphia Flyers organization. And even after it took him maybe a bit longer than expected to nab a full-time job with the big club, once he did in 2019-20, he quickly showed what he could do. By the second half of that season, he was locked into the team’s top four. That summer, he was given top-pair usage in a game that ultimately ended with the Flyers earning their first playoff series victory since 2012. And after general manager Chuck Fletcher proved unable to replace the retiring Matt Niskanen with a suitable candidate from the outside, suddenly Myers had a clear path to Philadelphia’s first-pair to start 2020-21.

He had the talent. He had the opportunity. He had momentum. What he didn’t have, unfortunately, was the needed quality of play.

With the Flyers depending on Myers more than ever in 2020-21, the young defenseman faltered. Over the course of a thoroughly disappointing campaign, Myers went from a potential top-of-the-lineup option to a recurring healthy scratch, and few in the fanbase argued that the demotion was undeserved. Now, Myers faces a crossroads, both in terms of his own career and his future with the Flyers. Can he rebound and put himself back on the trajectory that he appeared to be on as recently as last winter? And even if he can, will that re-emergence happen in Philadelphia?

There never really was a point during the 2020-21 season when Philippe Myers really got rolling.

Perhaps the fact that, despite all of the preseason speculation that he was the logical choice to replace Niskanen on the top pair, he began the season on Pair No. 2 with Travis Sanheim should have served as a sign that Myers’ season simply wasn’t going to play out as planned. If not that, then the fractured rib he suffered just four games into the season, which knocked him out of action for the next four, would have done nicely as well.

Upon his return, Myers had a couple of solid games, missed another due to injury, then was embarrassed on one particularly memorable play on national TV against Alexander Ovechkin (in fairness, he certainly wasn’t the first and won’t be the last), and finally watched his entire team’s season be paused due to their February COVID-19 outbreak. Fun start to the season.

Myers avoided the COVID-19 protocol list, and there was likely hope that for Myers at least, it could serve as something of a reset after a trying first month. Instead, Myers came back and struggled. On Feb. 27, he was a healthy scratch, though head coach Alain Vigneault stated publicly that the demanding schedule would lead him to use a rotation of sorts to keep everyone fresh; Myers was back in the lineup the next day, with Vigneault calling the sitting a simple “reset” and in part driven by the rotation.

He wasn’t nearly as charitable on March 10 when he chose to sit Myers a second time.

“I would say at this time, Phil is fine (physically),” he said. “You’re never at 100 percent, but he’s good to go. He’s just not consistent. We’ve talked to him about it. We’ve shown him video. We expect him to be better than he’s shown so far.”

For the rest of March, he wasn’t.

Despite sitting once due to the scratch and once as a result of injury, Myers ultimately ended up on the ice for a whopping 25 goals against in March across 15 games, finishing the month with a ghastly minus-16 rating. Unsurprisingly, by April, he fell out of Vigneault’s rotation entirely and was being healthy scratched on the regular. The collapse of Myers’ season was complete.

Myers did make his way back into the lineup for the final 11 games of the season and didn’t play poorly in them, all things considered. But by then, the Flyers’ chances at the playoffs were essentially extinguished. Nothing he did in those meaningless contests was going to redeem his mess of a year.

What exactly was bad about Myers’ season?

Well, let’s just say there was a lot.

For long stretches of the season, Myers clearly lost the faith of the Flyers’ coaching staff. They didn’t believe that Myers was willfully ignoring their instructions, but the same mistakes just kept popping up in his game, regardless of how often they were pointed out to him off the ice. Myers entered the year a viable top-pair candidate. By April, he wasn’t even a nightly lock for the starting lineup. Yikes.

Myers also failed to truly address his lingering issues from his promising 2019-20 campaign. His penalty drawn/taken differential (-9 in 2019-20) was slightly better, but still checked in at a less-than-ideal minus-6. He continued to have trouble getting shots through traffic — after only 43.8 percent of his attempts turned into shots on goal as a rookie, Myers only mildly upped that number in his sophomore season, to 45.8 percent. And after struggling against the New York Islanders’ forecheck in the Flyers’ second-round series in the bubble, Myers’ ability to generate controlled defensive zone exits dipped as well, from 34.6 percent of his exit attempts to 29.0 percent in 2019-20.

Oh, and then there are the goals against.

With Myers on the ice (all situations), Flyers opponents scored a whopping 56 goals — over a quarter of all the goals the team allowed this season. Now, one could make the case that Provorov, Sanheim and Justin Braun all were on the ice for even more, and that’s true. But they also received a lot more overall ice time. No Philadelphia defenseman — after controlling for minutes played — was on the ice for a higher rate of goals against (4.05 per 60 minutes) than Philippe Myers.

Breaking down Myers’ recurring issues

Now, in fairness to Myers, sometimes goals against that happen on an NHL player’s watch really aren’t his fault. It’s a five-man unit at even strength most of the time, and even the PK generally has three other skaters on the ice (sometimes two). A player can receive a “minus” even if he largely did everything right. Maybe a teammate served up a juicy turnover. Maybe he was just jumping on the ice for a line change. Maybe his defensive zone positioning was fine but the play happened on the other side of the ice. It happens.

And yes, there were some times in 2020-21 where Philippe Myers wasn’t at fault. But after reviewing all 56 goals against — there were a ton of times where he was.

So when tended to lead to these goals against when Myers was largely to blame? Three consistent, recurring issues kept emerging.

Issue No. 1: Rush coverage

In 2019-20, Myers was the Flyers’ most aggressive, effective defenseman in one-on-one rush coverage against opposing forwards. It makes perfect sense — Myers is huge, he has an extremely long reach, he’s naturally aggressive, and he’s a plus skater. It’s a combination that makes for a very difficult blueliner to beat on the rush.

This season, he regressed in that area, and opponents made him look foolish far more than they should have, given Myers’ physical gifts.

To be clear, Myers still broke up plenty of zone entries and forced lots of dump-ins, ranking fourth on the Flyers’ blueline in Breakup Percentage (11.6 percent) and allowing the second-fewest percentage of Controlled Entries (56.8 percent). But both were significant dips from 2019-20 (14.2 percent and 50.9 percent, respectively). The rush defense has to be the key strength of Myers’ game, and all too often this season, it wasn’t.

Issue No. 2: Effort and aggression

Myers is bigger, stronger, and faster than pretty much every skater on the ice almost every time he jumps over the boards. So why so often was he being straight up outworked by opponents?

These are straight up passive plays. There’s no reason why Taylor Hall shouldn’t be pinned against the boards on Goal No. 1, instead of being allowed to execute a centering pass. Chris Kreider should not be able to just park himself in front of the net and have Myers simply stare at him (a hunch: this play had something to do with that February 27 scratch, which came in the very next game). And Myers shouldn’t be getting run around by Filip Chytil — a good young player to be sure, but no superstar. Myers simply needed to be more engaged in the play at times, and when he wasn’t, opponents pounced.

Issue No. 3: Play recognition/hockey IQ

This has always been a big concern surrounding Myers and his upside, and it reared its head quite a few times this season.

While acknowledging that all the intricacies of Philadelphia’s defensive zone system are not known to me, generally defensemen should be staying on their side of the ice, especially when their partners are already well-positioned to cut off the puck carrier.

Low-percentage pinches by defensemen lead to odd-man rushes. The Flyers generally encourage their blueliners to be aggressive keeping pucks alive, but within a risk/reward framework. The reward just wasn’t there on this one. And, to make matters worse, he lets the trailer beat him back up ice to score the goal.

This one is all about being decisive. Either hang back in case Joel Farabee loses the battle along the boards, or get there quick to help him win it. Instead, that little bit of hesitation leaves Myers in no man’s land and gives the Rangers a quick two-on-one down low after losing a faceoff. Not great.

To sum it up, Myers’ strengths stopped being as strong, and his weaknesses became even more obvious. Yep, that’s the makings of a very bad season.

Finding any positives?

In truth, it would be very difficult to find any objective evidence to argue that Philippe Myers actually had a good season in 2020-21. Anyone who watched him play would know that he didn’t — from the coaches, to the front office, to the fans. And it’s not like public analytics viewed Myers’ season as a success.

That said, the stats do imply that it might not have been the complete and utter disaster that it seemed to be.

Someone who didn’t watch Myers on a nightly basis and simply looked at his base-level statistical profile — particularly at even strength — would come away with a totally different interpretation of his season. After all, the Flyers outshot the opposition with him on the ice (52.23 percent Corsi For). They even slightly out-chanced opponents as well (50.74 percent Expected Goals For). That’s not bad.

The more advanced models, which account for everything from the quality of competition to zone starts to teammates, evaluate Myers’ even strength performance similarly. Evolving-Hockey’s RAPM model gives Myers a -0.006 impact on the Flyers’ xG differential, and a +1.60 impact on their shot attempt differential — in other words, Myers was more of a net-neutral even strength player than a liability. Still a disappointing season for a player expected to take a step forward, but not disastrous.

So what might a numbers person say about Myers’ season? Probably that it wasn’t great, but also was made to look a lot worse than it was because goaltenders struggled mightily to stop pucks with him on the ice. At five-on-five, Myers was “expected” to watch 2.23 goals per 60 minutes be scored by the opposition while he was on the ice. In reality? He bore witness to a whopping 3.65. His shorthanded results showed a similar chasm between expected and reality: 4.85 goals against/60 expected (actually very good) and 9.31 actual (truly awful). In fact, no defenseman in the NHL with at least 400 minutes played at five-on-five had a lower on-ice save percentage than Myers and his 87.27 percent — it’s also the second-lowest of any defenseman in hockey over the past three seasons.

The most positive interpretation, in other words, of Myers’ 2020-21 season is simple: Yes, he made mistakes, but he got unlucky in that pretty much all of them ended up in the back of the net, making him look even worse than he actually was. That doesn’t absolve Myers for his mistakes, but it does hint that he’s not likely to be this unlucky yet again.

Now, there’s a few viable arguments against this line of thinking that aren’t simply “stats are garbage, I know what I saw!” rants, and they deserve to be laid out.

First, public Expected Goal metrics don’t fully account for all of the nuances of shot quality, such as passes that lead directly to slam-dunk goals. Considering Myers’ error-prone season, it’s very possible that 2.23 xG/60 at five-on-five and 4.85 while shorthanded dramatically undersells the quality of scoring chances that were allowed on Myers’ watch.

Second, the final 11 games of Myers’ season undeniably inflated his stats — he posted a 51.23 percent Corsi For Percentage and 48.73 percent xG For percentage prior to the meaningless stretch run, and a 55.18 percent Corsi and 56.29 percent xG during it. The optimistic way to look at this is that Myers started to figure things out at the end of the season; the probably more realistic view is that the season was over for all practical purposes, and Myers’ late “surge” was not representative of his season as a whole.

That said, full-time NHL defensemen don’t usually finish seasons with their goalies stopping fewer than 87 percent of the shots when said defenseman is on the ice — it’s happened just seven times in the last five seasons. Myers likely was at least a bit unlucky. How unlucky, however, is a matter for reasonable debate.

So what caliber of player is Philippe Myers?

When 2020 came to a close, the Flyers thought they knew what they had in Philippe Myers.

At the very least, it looked like they had a top-four quality blueliner, a righthanded shot with a rare size/skating skillset. Perhaps he could develop into a shutdown top-pair defenseman, perhaps not. But they certainly appeared to have a regular nightly contributor.

Now, it’s not at all clear what they have.

Myers may be relatively new to the NHL, but he’s already 24-years-old and will turn 25 midway through next season. It’s possible that as “raw” as he seems, there might not be much more untapped potential left. And if the mistake-prone, inconsistent 2020-21 version of Myers is the real version, then he’s more of a third-pair/depth player than even a middle-of-the-lineup option.

But maybe the best way to view Myers is somewhere between the two extremes. Remember all that talk about Myers maybe being unlucky this season with his on-ice results? Well, it’s also worth pointing out that he was actually quite lucky in his promising rookie season by those same metrics. Combine the 94 games across 2019-20 and 2020-21, and maybe we end up with the real Philippe Myers.

All metrics courtesy of Evolving-Hockey and five-on-five only.

Suddenly, Myers doesn’t look like the future stud he at times appeared to be in his rookie year, nor the barely-playable mess he was this season. Instead, he’s a blueliner who helps his team to finish barely ahead on the chance and goal charts. In other words, an adequate defenseman, but not much more than that. Maybe that’s what Philippe Myers is.

And if that’s the case, the Flyers’ front office has a decision to make. Is it okay if Myers simply settles in as a solid No. 4 or a good No. 5, just one who happens to have a unique skillset that constantly teases coaches to think he’d be capable of more? His contract pays him fairly for such a role, after all. Are they convinced that Myers has another, far higher level he can reach, and still remain bullish on his upside? Or might they think that this is the time to cash in on his value around the league, while other clubs might still see him as a future top-pair defenseman? Philadelphia is preparing for a very busy offseason — could Myers be one of the casualties?

Fletcher is going to have to take a leap of faith with Myers, whether he decides to keep him or trade him. Based on a relatively small sample of NHL games, he’ll have to make a call on what he views as Myers’ long-term value. It’s that decision that will decide if Myers is still wearing orange & black come October.

All statistics courtesy of Evolving-Hockey, Natural Stat Trick, and Corey Sznajder.

(Top photo by Len Redkoles / NHLI via Getty Images)