The Philadelphia Flyers have started the season 0-5-2 with a league-worst -20 goal differential. That is 11 straight losses going back to the second-round playoff sweep at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes. Their expected goal differential is also the worst in the league (-13.44) but not as bad as their actual goal differential, because they are tied for the lowest shooting percentage at 5.71%. Conclusion: they are bad AND having bad luck offensively. Travis Sanheim has a team worst -14 on ice goal differential.

The offense has been a death knell for fantasy with a grand total of eight goals in seven games, last in the Eastern Conference. They are the only NHL team with an expected goals-for per 60 minutes lower than 2.0 (1.97).

The shot differential is outright ugly. Think the anti-Carolina Hurricanes but worse. The Flyers have given up 246 shots while taking 140 shots on the opposing goalie. That horrendous 36.3% shots percentage is by far the lowest in the league. Last year the worst team (Vancouver Canucks) had a 46.2% shots percentage.

In 2025-26, the Flyers were pretty much even in the shots department. They took 2090 shots and gave up 2087. Which comes out to between 25 and 26 shots on goal both for and against. This year, they are allowing over 35 shots against per game (last in the league), while taking only 20 shots per game (also last in the league).

The strength of schedule has not been easy, as the Flyers have faced the New Jersey Devils, the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Ottawa Senators, and the Carolina Hurricanes twice.

On October 6, they added another winger with the $1.2M AAV signing of Michael Bunting. The first casualty was Alex Bump, who was sent down to Lehigh Valley of the AHL to make room. Bunting will compete with Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, Denver Barkey, Matvei Michkov, Tyson Foerster, and Porter Martone for a top nine winger spot. One of those seven wingers will be on the fourth line. Let us not forget about Trevor Zegras, who often gets bumped to wing – he had a 34.1% faceoff win percentage last year, taking 384 faceoffs last year (4.7/game). In 2026-27, he is already at 8.57/game. Zegras is getting more chances at taking faceoffs but there is hardly an improvement as he has only won 21 of 60 faceoffs (35%) this season.

Bunting began on the fourth trio, but in the most recent Flyers game, he was with arguably the two most potent offensive forwards in Zegras and Michkov. Unfortunately, they were deployed like a fourth line receiving the least even strength minutes (5:15), and were dominated in possession (Corsi For percentage of only 23.1%).

Due to 10 points in his first nine NHL games at the end of the 2025-26 season, Porter Martone was being drafted quite high: 74^th overall on Fantrax and 69^th on Yahoo. He was neck-and-neck with Gavin McKenna for best odds at winning the Calder Trophy. He seemed to have the trust of Rick Tocchet averaging 17:02 in ice time. However, that number has plummeted to 13:35 to start this season. His production has vanished with only one point in seven games, a power play goal against the Boston Bruins. His per-game rate of shots (0.71) and hits (0.86) are down as well.

Rick Tocchet’s propensity to split the PP units and shuffle the lines makes it difficult to analyze the deployment but here are some trends on the man advantage compared to last year using percentage of power play time:

Tyson Foerster up from 50% to 59.4%.

Matvei Michkov up from 47% to 60%. Michkov is getting 51 seconds more on the power play but getting 33 seconds less at even strength.

Zegras is exactly the same as last year at 61.4%. That mark is the highest among Flyers forwards both this year and last year, which highlights Tocchet’s strategy to split the man advantage units almost equally.

Porter Martone is down from 50.4% (nine-game sample) to 38.5% (seven-game sample).

As for the Flyers’ goaltending, it is ranked 20th of 32 with a save percentage of 0.886%. 

Dan Vladar's +13.8 GSAx ranked 10th amongst all goalies last year, this year he is down to -3.4 GSAx, which has him at 56th out of 63 goalies.

Joseph Woll (+2.7 GSAx) has out-started Vladar four to three and put up better numbers: 0.914% vs 0.857%.

If Vladar splits starts, and plays behind this poor offense, he will lose the majority of his fantasy value that he surprised us with last year. Woll looks to be an important handcuff for Vladar owners at this point. Woll has also faced the stronger teams: New Jersey, Ottawa, and Carolina twice.

On defense, David Jiricek (like his brother Adam in St.Louis) has recently found his way to the top power play unit. Jiříčekwas scratched for the first two games of the season. In his last four games he has between 41.4% and 62.7% of his team’s power play time. His competition is not that impressive as Jamie Drysdale contributed just nine power play points last year, while Cam York only had seven. 

Moving to Boston, Charlie McAvoy has done his time and is ready to return to the lineup after serving his six-game suspension. While he was out, the Boston Bruins tried Hampus Lindholm, Mason Lohrei, and Frederic Brunet on the top power play. Brunet assisted on a David Pastrnak power play goal against Utah. He is a 23-year-old left-handed defenseman drafted in the fifth round of the 2022 NHL draft. He was a point-per-game defenseman in his last season in the QMJHL, which was split between Victoriaville and Rimouski. In 2025-26, he led the Providence Bruins in scoring by a defenseman with 36 points in 65 games. McAvoy is an injury magnet, so Brunet is someone to keep an eye on.

Another defenseman who was above a point per game in his last season in the QMJHL (also with the Rimouski Oceanic) is Charle-Edouard D'Astous. He got a spin on the top power play at Tampa Bay Lightning practice, at the expense of Brandon Hagel. In game however, they stuck with Hagel on PP1, but if that power play doesn't click, it could be something Jon Cooper tries in the future. D’Astous has already supplanted Victor Hedman from PP2 so we could be witnessing the complete erasure of Hedman as a useful fantasy asset. 

No special 5-on-3 personnel for the Washington Capitals. The Jakob Chychrun unit was wrapping up on the power play when Nick Robertson took a puck over glass penalty, and so the Cole Hutson unit came on for the 5-on-3 power play. The numbers so far show about 60% power play time for veteran PP1 Chychrun unit, and 40% or so for the Hutson unit. Alex Ovechkin still cheats a bit (71.4%) at the expense of Ilya Protas (31.0%).

It is still very early in the season, but here are some players that are taking a lot of shots but not being rewarded with goals. They are involved and due for a course correction, so be patient with them: 

Timo Meier: 23 shots, zero goals. 15 of which are at 5v5, including five slot shots.

Pavel Dorofeyev: 21 shots, one goal. He lost some power play time to Gabe Perreault in Sunday’s win against the Vancouver Canucks.

Jackson Blake: 20 shots, one goal.

Matthew Schaefer: 19 shots, zero goals.

Owen Tippett: 19 shots, one goal.

Lucas Raymond: 17 shots, zero goals.

Sidney Crosby: 16 shots, zero goals.

That's all for this week.

Player data from Frozen Tools. Advanced stats from Money Puck. Face-off percentage from nhl.com.

Follow me on X/Twitter here: @KmanHockey_DH