The 2023 NHL Conference Finals are set thanks to a 2-1 Dallas win in Game 7 of their second-round matchup against Seattle. Roope Hintz chased down a loose lob pass to score what would stand as the game-winner for nearly 24 minutes, and Wyatt Johnston roofed a backhand in tight late in the third period for what ended up being the game-winning, and series-winning, tally. Seattle scored with 18 seconds left to make things interesting, but that was as close as they got.

To the shock of no one, Miro Heiskanen cracked the 30-minute mark (and then some) in regulation, managing a couple blocks and six hits.

This ends what was a very successful campaign for the second-year Kraken. The injuries to Andre Burakovsky and Jared McCann challenged their depth, and they still managed two seven-game series against two of the best teams in the West. Philipp Grubauer had another good game, saving 26 of 28 shots faced with some of them being very difficult stops. Hopefully it is a good sign for him and Seattle moving forward after having some tough stretches these last two years.

Dallas moves on to face Vegas in the Conference Final. These two teams have some interesting history dating to the 2020 Bubble Playoffs and earlier. Only three points separated the Stars from the Golden Knights in the regular season, though Mark Stone is a difference-maker. This is speculation on my part, but if the East Final starts Thursday night, my bet would be on Dallas/Vegas starting Friday. We will see.

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The 2023 Dobber Hockey Prospect Report is now available for pre-order in the Dobber Shop! Come get a head start on all the names fantasy owners will need to know for the future of their keeper/dynasty formats.

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It was lockout cleaning day for Toronto less than 72 hours after their Game 5 loss to Florida. These types of things tend not to offer us very much information with plaudits and euphemisms normally taking centre stage. This one was no different, with the usual "we have belief/haven't thought about my next contract/love playing here"-type phrases bandied about. Kyle Dubas spoke of wanting to talk to his family about his future. The Leafs have a very interesting summer ahead of them, but this didn't offer any insight into anything.

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Carolina got some good news, as expected, on Teuvo Teravainen:

Normal jersey for Teuvo Teravainen today. Was in a no-contact jersey Saturday.

— Luke DeCock (@LukeDeCock) May 15, 2023

An added note here is that he was rotating in on the fifth line, or spelling off players on the top four lines, so it's not a guarantee he returns for Game 1 even if he's 100% healthy. It might seem weird to do, given his productive history, but he has been struggling this year. Evolving Hockey has him with – by far – the worst expected goals impact among 'Canes forwards in the regular season, and second-worst goals impact. This team is really rolling right now – why tinker with it for a guy that hasn't been playing well for months and hasn't played at all in weeks?

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Ryan Lomberg was back at Florida practice, rotating in on the fourth line:

In line rushes, the fourth line of White, Dalpe and Staal stuck together while Ryan Lomberg filled in next to Nick Cousins and Givani Smith.

Bennett, Tkachuk both taking maintenance days.

— Colby Guy (@ColbyDGuy) May 15, 2023

The potential return of a fourth liner might seem like a small thing, but once you get to the Conference Final, every roster spot is valuable. Florida's current fourth line got crushed by Toronto, being out-chanced 19-11 and outscored 3-0 in just 20 minutes of ice time. One very good, or very bad, game from them could easily be the difference between going home or a trip to the Stanley Cup Final. Lomberg isn't elite, but he's a good fourth liner, so it's something worth keeping an eye on over the next couple of days.

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This Ramblings will continue my offseason series of reviewing the fantasy seasons of the non-playoff NHL teams. With playoffs taking a lot of the oxygen, and these teams falling to the wayside, it's an opportunity to give the teams out of the spotlight a bit of attention.

Our review will cover successes and failures, as well as improvements and declines, from both the team and individual player perspectives. We'll finish with where the Flyers go from here and all this will be, of course, through a fantasy lens.

All data will be from our Frozen Tools or Natural Stat Trick unless otherwise indicated.

Successes

Though injury kept him out for about a quarter of the season, what a year from Travis Konecny. He played just 60 games but still finished 126^th in Yahoo! Fantasy, outpacing his ADP of 156. It isn't hard to imagine roughly where he would have finished had he played 80 games instead of 60.

It wasn't a mirage, either. Per Corey Sznajder's tracking data, Konecny's Scoring Chance Contributions per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 (SCC/60) improved 18% from 2021-22, landing at a rate sandwiched by Taylor Hall and Martin Necas. Despite the Flyers finishing 26^th in 5-on-5 scoring, they were league-average with Konecny on the ice. Considering the injuries they had elsewhere in the lineup, that is a great year. When we add Konecny's last two seasons together, he finished in the 88^th percentile of regular forwards in primary points/60 minutes at 5-on-5 (P1/60), which is a mid-tier top-line forward. His mark of 1.92 P1/60 tied him with William Nylander in that span. It is also higher than Brad Marchand and Mikko Rantanen (1.89), as well as Artemi Panarin and Brady Tkachuk (1.88). He has truly become a high-end offensive winger, and his fantasy results show this fact.  

Owen Tippett finished second on the team in goals with 27, which was by far a career-best mark for him. He also set career-best marks in assists (22, and double his previous high), in points (49, more than double his previous high), in shots (231, over 100 more than his previous high), in power-play points (12, double his career mark), and in hits (125). The 10^th overall pick showed flashes of this upside in Florida, but some of the tracking data referenced earlier suggests he was a very good offensive player besides his shot, and that shot is still his calling card:

He and Konecny make a nice 1-2 combo on the wings for the Flyers.

We will mention two guys that had great starts but then slowed down in Kevin Hayes and Carter Hart.

Hayes's first 40 games saw him post 36 points and it was a big reason he went to the All-Star Game. The problem was he posted just 18 points in the next 41 games, including just five points in his final 20 contests. That drop made me basically unusable after New Year's Eve, but he was still good for half the year.

It was kind of the same for Hart, who posted a .914 save percentage in his first 23 games and a .901 save percentage after. On the whole, though, Hart likely outpaced his ADP in most fantasy leagues, as he did on Yahoo!, so it was a successful year from him.

Failures

It is safe to say that the signing of Tony DeAngelo didn't go well. He was coming off a great year in Carolina with 51 points in 64 games, but it did not translate to Philadelphia. His assists per game fell by nearly one-third despite over two extra minutes in TOI per game, and that dropped his points per game by 25%. And this is where we get into why real-life defence impacts fantasy.

It is no secret that DeAngelo struggles mightily in the defensive zone and has his entire career. If anyone could turn that around, new Flyers coach John Tortorella was a top candidate. The reality is that the defensive issues got much worse, and it led to easily the worst defensive season of DeAngelo's career, when looking at goals against or expected goals against impacts, at 5-on-5 (per Evolving Hockey). Visually, this is what it looked like, when the Flyers were playing 5-on-5 without DeAngelo on the ice (from HockeyViz):

The blue areas are where opposing teams shot less frequently against the Flyers than league average. Without DeAngelo on the ice, the crease was fairly clear.

On the flipside, this is what it looked like with him on the ice at 5-on-5:

The red areas are where opposing teams shot more frequently against the Flyers than league average. With DeAngelo on the ice, it was a fire drill.

This tells us there is a very good reason why DeAngelo went from 24:13 in TOI per game through December 31^st, dropped to 20:14 a game after that, and was a healthy scratch by the end of the season. His offensive metrics, at least at 5-on-5, were consistent with his time in Carolina, but the lack of defensive depth in Philadelphia pushed him into a prominent role and he saw the result of that.

Outside of DeAngelo, it's hard to say there were many outright failures. Sean Couturier and Ryan Ellis were hurt all season, James van Riemsdyk is nearing the end of his career, and guys like Morgan Frost and Noah Cates had good seasons for their expectations. The only name that comes to mind is Ivan Provorov. He may have been an end-of-roster draft pick in smaller formats, but his goals, assists, points, shots, PIMs, and blocks per game all declined. A big part of the production drop was just two power-play points (lowest since 2018-19) in just 66 minutes of PPTOI, over 110 minutes less than 2021-22. If he doesn't get much power-play time, his fantasy value isn't far off from a Colton Parayko-type.  

Improvements

Whatever a person's thoughts on Tortorella, he does seem to be a good defensive coach (which has been his reputation for years). At even strength, compared to 2021-22, the Flyers improved their goals against by 6.5%, their shots against by 9.6%, and their expected goals against by 2.8%. A reminder that expected goals went up in the league this year, so a decline of 2.8% is especially impactful.

The penalty kill didn't improve outright, allowing 0.03 more goals per 60 minutes than a year ago. However, the league average PK goals against/60 minutes climbed 4.6% compared to last year. Philly's increase of 0.3% is, comparatively, an improvement. Another mark for Torts here.

This spot is usually for team improvements, leaving the 'Successes' section for players, but we have to include Rasmus Ristolainen here. Evolving Hockey has Ristolainen with negative expected goals impacts at even strength for his entire career, including below-average defensive impacts his entire career. That led to a negative goals impact and expected goals impact in every single season of his career.

Until now.

To get a look at this visually, let's go back to HockeyViz. The highlighted blue box in the image below is every season of Risto's career, and the red portions inside that blue box shows the seasons where he had a below-average defensive impact. Readers will notice it's red every single season until 2022-23:

Remember that viz earlier of the net-front looking clean without DeAngelo on the ice? Flyers fans can thank Ristolainen for that. His improvements were so large that by the end of the year, Torts had rewarded Risto with regular top PP minutes. If that defensive play persists, it's not hard to see Tortorella rewarding him with even more ice time, and that should only help his fantasy value, which is still high in banger leagues despite a drop in hits.

The final mention will be that of an improved power play, though they remained dead last in the league in goals/60 because everyone else got better as well. It's a tough world out there.

Declines

The big declines came on offence, even not counting the dead-last power play. Even strength shots- and goals-for declined for the Flyers, even if their expected goals went up (which isn't a huge deal because it went up across the league, remember). Then again, they were missing Couturier and Ellis, and Konecny missed a lot of time. If those guys are all in the lineup for 75 games, this is a different conversation.

Of course, the problem is how it improves. The health of Couturier/Ellis are ongoing concerns, prospects like Cutter Gauthier and Bobby Brink look solid enough but neither looks like a future superstar, and the current roster has a lot of solid-but-not-great players outside of Konecny. The lack of high-end talent makes an impending, and meaningful, rise uncertain.

Where They Go From Here

This is a team at a bit of a crossroads. They have a few veterans with extensive contracts as Cam Atkinson (2), Hayes (3), Ellis (4), and Couturier (7) all have multiple years left. Younger guys like Konecny (2), Scott Laughton (3), Ristolainen (4), Joel Farabee (5), and Travis Sanheim (8) also fit that bill. That is half a starting roster all locked up for multiple years, and most of them for at least three more. It makes it hard to tear down and rebuild, so the team will likely try the retool-on-the-fly route.

The problem is that Philadelphia has less than $9M in cap space for 2023-24, per CapFriendly, if all their injured players return. Morgan Frost, Cam York, and Noah Cates all need extensions as restricted free agents. It is not hard seeing that trio chew up most, if not all, of that $8M in cap space, so if the Flyers want to add to the roster from outside the organization, they'll have to subtract contracts, and that's not easy to do. (That is assuming the injured players return to play and don't end up on Robidas Island.)

It seems likely the team tries to improve on the margins and just banks on health from the veterans with improvements from the young guys. It isn't hard to see Flyers management just saying, "Our offseason additions are Couturier, Ellis, and Atkinson getting healthy." In other words, huge shake-ups shouldn't be expected, even with new management in town.

Assuming their key guys are healthier in 2023-24, it's not hard to see the Flyers taking a step forward. They could have two legitimate scoring lines with Couturier and Konecny carrying one each, a better blue line with Ellis eating into DeAngelo's minutes, and solid defensive play. It could mean good seasons for players like Konecny and Hart once again.

That, of course, depends a lot on the health of those three veterans and long-term health issues can be very complicated. With New Jersey taking a huge step as a franchise, Buffalo and Ottawa looking primed for a playoff push, and the remnants of the Old Guard, the Flyers have their work cut out for them, healthy or not.

Previous Offseason Reviews:

Buffalo

Calgary

Pittsburgh

Nashville

Ottawa

Vancouver

Detroit

St. Louis

Washington

Arizona