What the Flyers can learn from their regular season series vs. Penguins

The day has finally arrived, and the Flyers are set to kick off their opening round playoff series agains the Penguins on the road in Pittsburgh tonight. It\'s the biggest moment the team has faced in quite some time, and they\'ll be looking to take all of the lessons learned through this long as sometimes arduous season, and throw all that they can at this matchup.

From those four games played throughout the regular season series against the Penguins in particular, the types of showings they were met with were varied, but there are some big lessons that the Flyers can take from how they all unfolded.

The Basics

Game Goals For Goals Against Shots For Shots Against Result 10/28 vs. PIT 2 2 34 26 SO Win 12/1 vs. PIT 1 5 29 27 Loss 1/15 @ PIT 3 6 34 30 Loss 3/7 @ PIT 3 3 15 23 SO Win

On the surface, the regular season series was a reasonably even one. Each side came away with two wins apiece, and though those two losses for the Flyers were quite lopsided, even in those matchups, they managed to create a good volume of chances (something they really struggled with in a number of their games outside of this series). None of these were hugely commanding showings that they delivered, but their offense wasn\'t finding itself completely stifled by the Penguins\' system, which is a promising enough starting point.

And for both sides, too, these games have run the goaltending gambit -- for the Penguins, they\'ve started Stuart Skinner in two of those games, and then Tristan Jarry and Arturs Silovs got one start each, while the Flyers have used Dan Vladar twice and Sam Ersson twice (though he was pulled in the January game, so the Penguins have also seen a bit of Aleksei Kolosov in the season series). And for the results, it\'s a win and a loss in the back pocket for both Vladar and Skinner, who enter this series as the presumptive starters and on equal footing, in that regard.

By The Numbers

Team GF% GF%Rel SF% SF%Rel CF% CF%Rel xGF% xGF%Rel PHI 43.75 -8.19 53.42 +3.44 50.73 +3.00 51.85 +1.14 PIT 56.25 +2.51 46.58 -4.24 49.27 -0.90 48.15 -3.37

Digging into some of the 5-on-5 underlying numbers, though, the picture begins to shift a bit.

While the final results for them were mixed, there\'s no doubt that much of the underlying process was working for them in this series. Throughout those four games, the Flyers were able to pretty consistently get the better of both the raw share of chances created, as well as the share of quality offense generated -- and, perhaps even more critically given some of their struggles over much of the season outside of these matchups, get more in the way of tangible shots placed on goal -- and that\'s something that, if they\'re able to keep it up, could work in their favor over a longer sustained series.

What\'s more, the difference between how each of these teams fared in this series as compared to the rest of their seasons is striking. The relative figured that we\'re using here are not their numbers in each metric relative to the league average, but to their own season average, and we see that while the Flyers were able to generate markedly more against the Penguins than they were many of the other teams they faced on the season, they were also able to prevent the Penguins not just from getting the better of them in the individual matchups, but also from creating as much, in turn, as they would have been used to outside of this series. And that\'s quite a promising recipe to have seen unfold.

The one area, though, where they did not grade out as well was in the goals scoring differential, which speaks to one of the broader issues that faced them across this series. That is, a sound underlying process only goes so far, particularly in a condensed series like this one will be, as a team\'s ability to capitalize on it, and that was one of the major deficiencies for the Flyers across this regular season series. They were largely able to get the better of the chances across those four meetings, but between their own inability to convert on the chances they were creating and some of the mistakes they were making in their own zone, they weren\'t able to take control of this series to the same degree that the numbers suggest they should have been able to. Of course, they aren\'t everything, but they leave us with a sense that some chances were left on the table throughout those earlier four games.

The Big Picture

Looking at the whole of this picture that the numbers paint, there\'s a lot of reason for optimism about what the Flyers could do in this series. Of course, the Flyers have other issues that the numbers likely aren\'t fully capturing -- the eye would tell us that, while they aren\'t allowing an especially high volume of dangerous chances, the way that they\'re breaking down leading up to a number of these scoring plays against them, the pre-shot movement that they\'re allowing, is turning some of these ostensibly lower-percentage plays (as far as the pure shot location is concerned) into much more dangerous chances against -- and that\'s something the team will need to be acutely aware of and work to shore up. But, all the same, it\'s clear that there\'s a lot that they\'re doing well to, relatively speaking, tilt the ice in their favor as far as possession goes.

Pairing this with the fact that the Flyers are getting some of their best goaltending, on a collective level, through this most recent stretch of the season, and the Flyers have a legitimate chance here to make this series interesting. A lot of the experts might not be all the way bought in, but this series has the chance to be a competitive one, on top of surely being the spirited next installment of this tense rivalry that we\'re sure to see unfold.

The Flyers can take some lessons from the regular season series on both sides of the puck -- on how to limit the big breakdowns they\'re allowing in the defensive zone, and on the necessity of bearing down and converting on a few more of those chances they\'re generating, because they\'re certainly generating enough -- but the timing of this series could work in their favor as well. The team has been making some tweaks to their system, and with a good bit of practice time in the books, they\'ve had a good chance to really implement them. The playoffs are a whole other beast entirely but, between the continued work they\'re doing on their structure and the momentum that they\'re carrying with them off of this huge push through the stretch run, they\'re hitting the postseason as prepared and in as favorable of a position as they could hope.

This team been on the inconsistent side when the lights have been brightest so far this season, but they have a chance here to switch up yet another narrative, and keep this ball rolling.

All stats via Natural Stat Trick.

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