According to the Flyers official website, Ray Emery is officially out for the rest of the season. This just confirms what many had already suspected as soon as Emery went on LTIR.
The one-year gamble in net only played in 29 games this season due to injuries. The Flyers’ crease is now occupied solely by waiver pick-up Michael Leighton and Brian Boucher. Of course, that could change prior to tomorrow’s 3 p.m. trading deadline.
Those numbers aren’t very good, but Emery’s season could be broken up into three sections: 1) From the beginning of the season until his injury; 2) When he played while hurt/recovering from injury; and 3) The games he played after recovering from injury.
First, from the season opener on October 2nd through November 16th, Emery played in 16 games. Through those 16, he went 11-4-1 with a 2.22 goals against average and 0.923 save percentage. He played all but one of those, and was a big reason why the Flyers got off to such a great start. In fact, through those 16 games, Tom Awad’s GVT saw him as tied for the 10th best player in the NHL. Needless to say, through November 16th, Emery was a great signing.
Then, disaster struck. As the team headed on their western road swing, both Emery and the team collapsed. November 20th saw the Flyers lose to the Sharks 6-3. Emery would play in 5 games before going on IR. In this “second” section, I’ve included the two games he played after returning from injury since he was clearly not fully healed. In this stretch, Emery played in seven games, going 1-5-0 with a 4.91 gaa and 0.817 save percentage. These numbers were atrocious. After those two games, all confidence in Emery was gone.
The final stretch saw Emery play in 6 games from January 21st to February 1st. There, he went 4-2-0 with a 1.51 gaa and .943 save percentage. Only once did Emery give up more than 2 goals (the disastrous 4-3 loss to Atlanta) and he twice recorded a shutout.
While these three stretches are a helpful way of looking at Emery’s season, the truth is that Emery only played in 29 games. That’s a small sample-size in itself and breaking that into three much smaller samples is even more statistically irrelevant. The truth is that Emery played very well when healthy and very, very poorly when injured. The larger picture – maybe even just the picture – is that Holmgren’s gamble on Ray Emery did not work out.
Yet another season goes by which sees Philadelphia lacking a steady presence in the crease. But hey, it could be worse: the Flyers could be stuck with Nikolai Khabibulin.
