1. Can Jakub Voracek shake off a rough year and get back to form?
In short, yes.
Voracek has shown plenty of signs that he’s ready for the new season here during training camp. The chief among those signs was his overtime winner the other night against the New York Rangers, in which he single-handedly won his team a game by embarrassing everybody else on the ice. He didn’t do it against preseason scrubs, either: Jake took Ryan McDonagh for a ride on his back around the ice, and he beat Derek Stepan and Rick Nash as well.
Jake had a bad year in 2015-16; there’s no doubt about that. He had downright terrible luck last season, both in terms of pucks … simply … not … going … in … the … net, particularly on the power play, in addition to some injury struggles. His shooting percentage was just 5.2 percent, nearly half of his career average. 55 points from Jake last year was inexcusable, however, and he needs to be better in 2016-17 for the Flyers to have a real chance to maybe win a playoff round.
Our bet is that Voracek gets some better luck — he is not a 5.2 percent shooter over the long term — and gets off to a hotter start than the slow one that seemed to carry with him all year a season ago. He’ll return to the form of the top-line winger who scored 81 points in 2014-15.
2. Are the Flyers really the team we saw in the second half of the season last year?
This really is the million dollar question. Are the Flyers the middling team that we saw under the first four-ish months of the Dave Hakstol era, or are they really a team that, from February through the end of the regular season, was one of the best teams in hockey?
The narrative is that this Flyers team started to come into shape under Hakstol in the second half of the season, and that the addition of Shayne Gostisbehere on the blue line was a game changer for the club. Couple that with strong goaltending — some of the best in the league — and it was a perfect storm that saw the Flyers go on a stretch run that improbably pushed them into the postseason.
The team probably isn’t quite that good, since if they were to keep up that second half pace from a year ago, they’d be in the running for the President’s Trophy. But there’s no real reason to think they aren’t a playoff team at the very least. There’s a lot working in their favor, too: a full year of Ghost, a healthy Sean Couturier, a better year from Voracek, perhaps an improvement on defense in the name of Ivan Provorov, and maybe Travis Konecny on the top-6. They could (should, really) be better on the penalty kill, too.
Anything less than a competitive playoff series (or two?) is a loss for this team this year as they continue their ascent back into Stanley Cup contention.
3. Just what impact do the kids have this year?
At this point, it sure looks like Ivan Provorov and/or Travis Konecny will make the Flyers roster. That’s exciting! But what might they actually do if/when they make the team?
Provorov looks NHL-ready in the preseason. He might not step in and be a flashy scorer like Shayne Gostisbehere was a year ago, but he is calm in his own end and with the puck on his stick, and he seems to always make the right defensive play. That won’t make headlines, but it would be a vital improvement on the Flyers’ defense. Should he make the team, Provorov needs to be an improvement over Andrew MacDonald or Nick Schultz at the very least — and while we are confident he can be that, we won’t know until it actually happens.
With Konecny as a likely top-six forward in the event he makes the team, the expectations are a little bit more concrete. We expect goals and assists, not just smart plays with the puck. And given that the expectations for forwards can be weighed in easy-to-understand numbers, that also breeds the possibility that Konecny doesn’t meet those expectations. He’s never played an 82-game season before, and he certainly hasn’t done it at NHL speed. It’s extremely rare — at least in this town — that kids break into the NHL in an important role before they are 20 years old, but given his junior history and first-round pedigree, Flyers fans might have unrealistic expectations.
We shouldn’t. A solid first season for Konecny would be 40ish points — but you worry that people are going to expect 70 or 80 from him in Year 1. Should he make the team, let’s not lose sight of the fact that he’s still just 19.
