Dave Hakstol

[Hurricane28]

Everyone was signing his praises at the end of last year but 8 games in we suddenly flip flop? BS. The most important thing is that the system works which gives us the best chance at long term success. Lineup decisions are very short term matters and won't be issues when there is better personnel.

 

[BackToTheBrierePatch]

I think a bigger issue than Hakstol might be Joey Mullen.
The entire PP is a huge mess, from the breakouts, to the entries, to the setups. Not to mention Couturier on the LEFT boards. I don't think there's another PP in the entire league that runs through a lefty on the left boards.

the PP is the least of this teams problems right now. like it should be pretty far down the goddamn list. I mean come on. The PP is 5th in the NHL right now.
26.5 is pretty damn good FFS.
But I get it around here. we could go 2-5 every game and ppl would still ****ing ***** about the PP
the PK is 21st right now so maybe we ought to look at that instead when it comes to special teams.
Only Calgary has spent more time on the PP then the Flyers. so but the refs hate us obviously

 

[StandingCow]

I am not worried about Hakstol, the season is still waaaay too early.

 

[dats81]

I'm more worred about the assistant coaches. They are not on the same page.

 

[BackToTheBrierePatch]

if anyone needs to go is Lappy.
But it would be awful difficult to can the guy with the season under way. Fire him and then what? bring in someone else who has to teach the team a whole new PK system potentially. it is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for sure.

 

[Magua]

if anyone needs to go is Lappy.
But it would be awful difficult to can the guy with the season under way. Fire him and then what? bring in someone else who has to teach the team a whole new PK system potentially. it is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for sure.

PKing isn't that hard if you're a good player. Simmonds already looks like a better PKer than VDV and PEB and White and whatever other crap players have been granted PK time in his tenure. It really isn't rocket surgery so long as you can skate well enough and have good instincts. I don't really know what a "whole new PK system" means. You have your basic box or triangle+1 or w/e in-zone and your press formations in the NZ, and you often are switching on the fly or game-to-game strategy to match opposing PPs anyway.

All smart and good players know how to PK. Usually it's the coaches who just can't get out of their own way. Like Lappy, who insists on playing significantly lesser defensive players over better PKers. That's an easy way to limit success. Or insisting on passive, shot block cluster ****ing, to which the players have to listen. You see, even now, with the coaches telling the PK to employ more aggressive tactics, at least in the D zone, the PEB-VDV duo especially just resorts back into passive tactics after 10 seconds or so of feigned aggressiveness. It's just poor instincts.

 

[Curufinwe]

the PP is the least of this teams problems right now. like it should be pretty far down the goddamn list. I mean come on. The PP is 5th in the NHL right now.
26.5 is pretty damn good FFS.
But I get it around here. we could go 2-5 every game and ppl would still ****ing ***** about the PP
the PK is 21st right now so maybe we ought to look at that instead when it comes to special teams.
Only Calgary has spent more time on the PP then the Flyers. so but the refs hate us obviously

I don't understand why people keep going on about the PP. It's really weird.

The PK, VdV being one of the main PKers, and MacDonald starting ahead of Schultz (who seemed to be a favorite of Hak's) are actual problems. But at ES I think his ice time distribution for forwards has been almost ideal. The only change I'm dying to see is VdV's ice time going to Lyubimov.

http://www.nhl.com/stats/player?agg...lter=gamesPlayed,gte,&sort=evTimeOnIcePerGame

 

[baudib1]

PKing isn't that hard if you're a good player. Simmonds already looks like a better PKer than VDV and PEB and White and whatever other crap players have been granted PK time in his tenure. It really isn't rocket surgery so long as you can skate well enough and have good instincts. I don't really know what a "whole new PK system" means. You have your basic box or triangle+1 or w/e in-zone and your press formations in the NZ, and you often are switching on the fly or game-to-game strategy to match opposing PPs anyway.

All smart and good players know how to PK. Usually it's the coaches who just can't get out of their own way. Like Lappy, who insists on playing significantly lesser defensive players over better PKers. That's an easy way to limit success. Or insisting on passive, shot block cluster ****ing, to which the players have to listen. You see, even now, with the coaches telling the PK to employ more aggressive tactics, at least in the D zone, the PEB-VDV duo especially just resorts back into passive tactics after 10 seconds or so of feigned aggressiveness. It's just poor instincts.

This is such a good post.

I'm pretty convinced that Gostisbehere would improve the PK immensely as he is easily the best on the team as far as instincts and reading plays, as evidenced by his ability to break up plays in the neutral zone and at the blue line. He's one of those guys whose defense is underrated because he's not a classic physical defenseman and his offense is so good.

He's also a great open-ice player and should see as much time as possible in 5-on-4 or less situations. Hockey coaches used to routinely play very skilled players on the PK for this reason, for example Paul Coffey in his days in Edmonton.

It's funny because in the old days when your 4th line was goons and slugs like Derrick Smith or even the Devils' ROCK line (which was great at setting the tone and forechecking), no one used their worst players on the PK. Now it's like, well if these guys can't score, they must be good at something, let's put the on the PK.

 

[Hiesenberg]

Flyers are now 5th in the NHL in PP%, hard to say Mullen is doing an awful job

 

[Vikke]

Dunno, I'd argue that the PP is doing pretty good despite Mullen, not thanks to him.
If Giroux wasn't the best PP player in the league, Mullen would've been fired two years ago.

 

[Striiker]

I swear it seems like half the people on this board don't watch other hockey games and never see what other teams post on their boards/GDTs.

EVERY fanbase complains about their coaches lineups.
EVERY fanbase complains about their coaches favoritism towards certain players.
EVERY fanbase has all kinds of different complaints that I see being made on this board and people act like it's exclusive to us. (Slow starts, bad special teams, goaltending woes, star players not dominating every second of every game, and about a million more things).

You'll NEVER find a coach that you agree with all the time. What you need to do is accept the idiotic lineup decisions and hope that he's smart enough to see his error eventually, which Hakstol usually has with the exception of a few players like Vandevelde. You also have to judge them mostly on their system and how the players are playing under them.

When Berube was here we had even worse lineup decisions that never got fixed and he also had an atrocious system that hurt our forwards offensive production (remember Giroux basically playing as the 3rd defensemen?).

Id encourage people to go read (not post in, just read) opponents GDTs after the Flyers win, you'll see how crazily similar it is to ours when we lose....even when it's the GDT of a contender team like Chicago.

 

[HopsHunting]

I agree with this 100%. Couts was playing great with those two. I think Hakstol is trying to get G going but its not the right move. Now we have 0 out of 2 top lines going when we had probably one of the most dangerous lines for the first 4 or 5 games. Needs to change this immediately

I don't understand why he's trying to get Giroux going though... Hasn't he put up respectable numbers? I could see being concerned with Schenn's slow start.

 

[klutch]

Yeah once I start *****ing about Hak and this team I just remind myself we had this fat slob a few years ago..

 

[OriginJM]

Yeah once I start *****ing about Hak and this team I just remind myself we had this fat slob a few years ago..

lmao... just perfect

 

[Cyborg LeClair]

Hakstol is not the problem. It's the bad players we have on this team that will eventually be phased out

 

[Hiesenberg]

Dunno, I'd argue that the PP is doing pretty good despite Mullen, not thanks to him.
If Giroux wasn't the best PP player in the league, Mullen would've been fired two years ago.

You are correct, as Charlie from BSH pointed out, once they are in the zone, they have elite players to excute, getting in the zone and sometimes the work around it is a major problem

 

[Vikke]

You are correct, as Charlie from BSH pointed out, once they are in the zone, they have elite players to excute, getting in the zone and sometimes the work around it is a major problem

And the lack of options and adjustments when PP1 is struggling with their basics.

Try something, put Ghost in Jake's spot, or Schenn's, to open him up for one-timers?

 

[Curufinwe]

If we replace Mullen does the PP suddenly jump to from top 10 to top 3? I really doubt it.

 

[deadhead]

The issue on the PK is that if you start playing your offensive guys there, you have to reduce their O-zone minutes. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Ghost doesn't belong on the PK, he can't clear the crease to save his life. D-man on the PK spend a lot of time wrestling in front of the net.

They may want to upgrade VdV on the PK, but it's going to be with Luby, Raffl, Read, etc., guys who can skate who aren't on the top two lines, so if they miss a shift or two after the PK is over, it doesn't hurt your offense.

 

[Curufinwe]

It makes things tough when the best possible third line has guys who don't kill penalties on it: Raffl-Cousins-Weise. (Raffl did PK under Berube, but hasn't done it at all since Hak took over.) That leaves you with:

Bellemare-VdV
Couturier-Read
Lyubimov-Simmonds

 

[TCTC]

Raffl with his style of blocking shots probably shouldn't be on the PK anyway.

 

[bennysflyers16]

It makes things tough when the best possible third line has guys who don't kill penalties on it: Raffl-Cousins-Weise. (Raffl did PK under Berube, but hasn't done it at all since Hak took over.) That leaves you with:

Bellemare-VdV
Couturier-Read
Lyubimov-Simmonds

Does Weise not PK previously, seems like he would be good at it ?

 

[Hiesenberg]

Bellemare & VDV are the worse options at forward pairings.

At some point the group out on the PK I think were PEB/VDV/MacDonald/Provorov. Literally 1 decent player and he's ****ing 19.

The forward combo of Read/Couturier is good.

 

[thelos]

I think Raffl definitely needs to be trained on the PK

 

[Curufinwe]

I'll check, but I don't think he got a second of PK time in preseason.

51 minutes on the PK in 135 games in Montreal. So he has at least done it before.

http://www.nhl.com/stats/player?agg...2016&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,&sort=shTimeOnIce