Back in February, we wrote a plea to the Flyers asking them to give Jakub Voracek more ice time, given that he’d been the team’s best forward at the time and yet was seventh on the team in even-strength minutes, and sixth in overall minutes, per game.
Let’s figure out if they listened, and take a look at everyone else’s ice time in the process.
The chart below compares the ice time of the 12 guys from that table back in February to what is is (for the season in aggregate) right now. “TOI then” refers to what that player’s average TOI was on February 19th, “TOI now” is what it is after last night’s game against the Islanders, and the number in parentheses is their rank in said category relative to everyone else in the table.
| Total TOI, then | Total TOI, now | ES TOI, then | ES TOI, now | |
| Claude Giroux | 21:10 (1) | 21:35 (1) | 14:57 (1) | 16:00 (1) |
| Matt Read | 18:05 (2) | 18:13 (2) | 14:15 (2) | 14:19 (2) |
| Jakub Voracek | 16:03 (6) | 17:15 (3) | 11:52 (7) | 13:31 (3) |
| Danny Briere | 17:57 (4) | 16:33 (4) | 14:06 (3) | 13:20 (4) |
| Sean Couturier | 18:04 (3) | 15:37 (T-5) | 12:49 (4) | 11:28 (8) |
| Wayne Simmonds | 16:29 (5) | 15:37 (T-5) | 12:35 (5) | 12:18 (6) |
| Brayden Schenn | 15:25 (7) | 15:33 (7) | 12:41 (4) | 12:58 (5) |
| Max Talbot | 14:31 (8) | 15:25 (8) | 10:55 (10) | 11:47 (7) |
| Mike Knuble | 13:50 (9) | 13:11 (9) | 11:48 (8) | 11:06 (10) |
| Tye McGinn | 13:28 (10) | 12:43 (10) | 11:17 (9) | 11:01 (9) |
| Ruslan Fedotenko | 12:22 (11) | 12:36 (11) | 9:11 (11) | 9:39 (11) |
| Zac Rinaldo | 7:30 (12) | 8:22 (12) | 7:24 (12) | 8:18 (12) |
(Scott Hartnell and Simon Gagne are not included because they are not on the original table, so we don’t have a good point of comparison. If you’re curious, Hartnell’s average total time is fourth among the forwards here, while Gagne’s average total time, between LA and here, would be tenth.)
Trending Up:
* Jakub Voracek. As we hoped, his ranks have improved from seventh at ES and sixth overall to third in both categories. That is a very good thing and he’s absolutely earned it.
* Maxime Talbot: He’s shifted across a lot of different lines and was scoring a bit more in the later part of the season than he was in the beginning, so I guess this maybe kinda makes sense.
* Zac Rinaldo: Still clearly the team’s twelfth forward when healthy, but he’s been much better this year in terms of discipline and has had a few games where he’s honest to God been one of the best Flyers on the ice, so I’m OK with the slight bump for him.
Trending Down:
* Sean Couturier. We’ve discussed this a bit…OK, a lot…but if you haven’t noticed, his ice time has dropped significantly. In February, he was one second away from being the Flyers‘ most active forward behind Giroux. Now he’s dropped to fifth, and his total ice time has dropped 2:18 per game in the meantime. Sure, there was a prolonged scoring drought in there, but still. It’s inexplicable.
* Danny Briere. Not too surprising, I’d think, given that he’s struggled offensively.
* Tye McGinn. Well, duh, because he’s not on the NHL team anymore. But yeah, the guy who’s either a top 6 forward or isn’t worthy of being in the lineup has seen his ice time at the big club fall on some hard times since returning from injury.
* Mike Knuble: This surprised me for some reason. It shouldn’t. But yeah his time, particularly at evens, has dropped a bit.
Other Notes:
* Claude Giroux plays more minutes per game than any forward in hockey not named Kovalchuk, St. Louis or Stamkos. Not thoroughly surprising, because he’s one of the best players in the world…but that’s a lot of ice time. Guys like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin and John Tavares aren’t even on the ice that much. You wonder if maybe someone else should be taking some of his minutes. I know a guy who may want them…
* In their two games here (entering Tuesday), Adam Hall and Jay Rosehill have played an average of 10:26 and 8:01 per game, respectively. Obviously, the small samples make it kinda tough to say anything definitive about where they’ll fit in the rest of the way.
