Five-on-five goal scoring continues to be at the heart of the Flyers’ perplexing woes this season.
It reared its head once again following Thursday’s dramatic 1-0 shootout loss in St. Louis (see game story).
The Flyers host Detroit on Saturday in an afternoon matinee at the Wells Fargo Center.
The Flyers are averaging just 1.64 goals at even strength this season — 23rd in the NHL — down from last year’s 1.84 which wasn’t all that terrific, either (15th).
“It’s about getting to the net and getting more pucks to the net,” said coach Craig Berube, echoing general manager’s Ron Hextall’s thoughts from earlier this week. “That’s my opinion. We get rush chances. I look back at the Dallas game there.
“We could have had three or four goals off the rush very easily. We had 2-on-1s, 3-on-1s. They didn’t go in. But this time of year, especially this time of year, you gotta grind it out around the net to get goals. You gotta get dirty goals. They all can go to the net.”
Hextall also said not enough players are going into the traffic areas to get hard pucks.
“We just gotta do a better job of it,” Berube said. “And we gotta do a better job of getting more pucks through. Look at St. Louis. They had 23 blocked shots. Some team had 30 against us. We gotta do a better job of getting the puck through.”
Michael Raffl leads the Flyers in 5-on-5 goals with 15. Wayne Simmonds is next at 13, followed by Sean Couturier (11) and Jakub Voracek (10). No other Flyer is in double-figures.
Incredibly, while Claude Giroux is 16th in the NHL in scoring with 61 points, 11 of his 18 goals are on the power play. Giroux has just seven 5-on-5 goals this season and has not scored an even-strength goal on home ice. His 11 power-play goals are tied for fifth-best in the league.
The Flyers overall 2.54 goals a game is the lowest it’s been since their second NHL season (1968-69), when they averaged 2.29 goals a game.
“Giroux and Voracek, [Brayden] Schenn, Couturier, [Matt] Read … we need more 5-on-5 goals from them,” Berube said, adding he has tried to tweak the system to help produce more scoring.
“We’re always looking at doing things. We have a structure on our offense play in what we want to do. The one area where we haven’t been very good at and we need to keep harping on is getting to the net more and harder. …
“And getting some dirty goals and some tips and rebounds around the net. That’s the one area for me. We don’t have enough guys getting there at the net.”
Tragic number
Boston needs 17 points to officially eliminate the Flyers from playoff contention or 17 points lost by the Flyers over the final 13 games achieves the same goal.
Del Zotto skates
Defenseman Michael Del Zotto (right foot) skated just 15 minutes on his own before the optional practice but did not appear comfortable. He has missed the last three games.
Berube would not comment on Del Zotto’s status, but referred inquiries to Hextall.