As the Flyers’ second round series against the Hurricanes is set to open up, and with some time already spent digging into their four regular season meetings — which were close on the score sheet but a good bit more lopsided as far as the underlying numbers go — team and viewer alike will be looking for areas where the Flyers can gain some more solid footing against this next divisional rival.
This Hurricanes squad, it goes without saying, is a very good one, and as such it’s going to take more than just one area of the Flyers’ game clicking in order to slow them down. It will take a focused approach through all areas of the game for the Flyers, but there will remain a few key areas could make the most of an advantage here.
Diving into some of the numbers, one of the bigger surprises coming out of their series against the Senators was, for all of their dominance over the complete series, the Hurricanes really seemed to struggle on the power play. Through their first four games, the team scored just two goals, and converted at a rate of just 13.3 percent, which was squarely in the bottom half of the league standings in effectiveness. This average is all but shockingly low — just 1.5 percent better than the Flyers’ power play, which has been a constant source of angst over their first round series — and a huge difference in effectiveness from what they delivered in the regular season, when they were converting at a 24.9 percent rate, fourth best in the whole of the league.
And while some of these woes may have been personnel-related — notably, the Hurricanes were without one of their top offensive weapons in Nikolaj Ehlers through the first round, but he’s set to return against the Flyers — their problems were larger than that, as their effectiveness took a quite complete downward swing. Here, too, goaltending was a major difference-maker, as the team pretty dramatically underproduced their expected results in their actual results — the Hurricanes got just two goals out of 3.93 Expected Goals’ worth of work. But, all the same, there are some lessons that the Flyers could take from what the Senators’ penalty killers were doing to shut down the Hurricanes on the man-advantage.
For the Hurricanes, it was a pretty complete step back in terms of production — through the regular season, they produced chances at a rate towards the top of the league rankings, averaging 111.7 CF/60, 56 SF/60, and 9.15 xGF/60, an undeniably high rate of offense, but they dropped down to 105.46 CF/60 and 50.3 SF/60 through their four playoff games (though, for what it’s worth, they did slightly outperform their season average in higher quality chances, putting up a 9.42 xGF/60). It’s not a massive drop-off, but it’s enough to have dulled their effectiveness. It was enough of a difference in their process to make a difference, and while there’s certainly a degree of upward regression to be expected, it’s also true that the Senators found a bit of a weakness to exploit, and it can be done again.
Now, the good news for the Flyers is that they’re coming in with some real momentum of their own, as far as their penalty kill is concerned. They, too, are outperforming their effectiveness relative to their regular season performances (an 84.2 PK% through the playoffs, up from 77.6 percent in the regular season), so the question of regression looms for them as well, but their underlying process is supporting the results they’ve gotten so far — they’ve been much stingier in terms of both total and quality chances conceded, allowing -3.13 CA/60, -9.62 SA/60, -0.30 xGA/60 relative to the regular season. They had a couple of bad breakdowns against the Penguins, and those ended up costing them, but on the whole, they’ve really done well to raise their level of play on the penalty kill when it’s mattered most.
All of this is to say that the Hurricanes, without a doubt, are a team that can generate a lot in the way of offense, and this has been a consistent source of frustration for their opponents all season long. They left quite a bit on the table through their first round series, and while it’s going to be difficult, the door is open for the Flyers to put in a similar bit of work to frustrate them while they’re on the man-advantage. Their more physical brand of agitation may have worked well against the Penguins in their last series, but it’s difficult to imagine the Hurricanes getting goaded into a similarly bogged down physical battle, but the Flyers could still get under their skin through the strength of their shot suppression game.
This matchup has been about as tight as could be through their four meetings in the regular season, with the Hurricanes coming out on top the majority of the time, so any advantage that the Flyers can exploit in these next meetings will be sure to go a long way.
All stats via Natural Stat Trick and the NHL.
