Everybody seems down on Brayden Schenn these days, from Flyers fans to the coaching staff. He was bumped off the top line in a heart beat the start of the season, and this weekend, the rumor mill kicked back into full focus regarding Schenn’s future with the team.
Of course, a trade of Schenn makes sense for a lot of reasons, primarily because the Flyers are insanely deep at forward and they could potentially, hopefully use him as a trade chip when trying to acquire some defensive help. You know, if they decide they want to improve the defense this season.
But as Andrew D. points out with his great tracking of Flyers scoring chances, Schenn has been one of the more productive players on the roster when it comes to creating chances. It’s a small sample, but look at these numbers for the first five games of the year. The first column are chances he’s set up, the second column are chances on which he was the primary attacker, and the third column is the total number of chances in which he was involved. He leads the team.
(It’s also no surprise that Jakub Voracek has been the primary character in a total of 10 chances so far. Good stuff.)
These numbers might not carry through all season, and of course he only has three points on the year despite the hefty number of chances. The points will come if he keeps generating chances like this, and it does make you scratch your head a little bit when you see these numbers and realize that Craig Berube was so quick to bump Schenn off the top line.
He’s creating offense when he’s on the ice, and that’s obviously a good thing for the Flyers.
