The Flyers know their power play needs to be better this season.
During Saturday’s scrimmage, the team tested out the power play for the first time in camp, and it went about as well as last season.
The first unit, playing for the orange team, included Jamie Drysdale at the point, with Trevor Zegras, Owen Tippett, Denver Barkey, and Matvei Michkov.
It was hard to tell exactly where each player was positioned because they struggled to enter the zone and get set. No one on the unit is a strong faceoff man, which contributed to their difficulties getting into formation to generate chances.
Zegras and Michkov generally prefer playing on the right, which means the unit will be pretty fluid with motion against some opponents.
“They’re going to have the puck most of the time, right?” coach Rick Tocchet said. “Can they manipulate the structure that’s in front of them? That’s going to be video; it’s going to [be] spend[ing] some time with them, and they have to have that sixth sense themselves. We can’t tell them everything. It’s not a robotic game, and they’re going to have to figure it out.”
The second unit featured David Jiříček, Travis Konecny, Porter Martone, Tyson Foerster, and Noah Cates. It’s a vote of confidence in Jiříček, who played most of the scrimmage on a pair with Nick Seeler, and seems to be the clear frontrunner for the final open spot on the Flyers’ defense.
Tocchet praised Jiříček’s patience and passing on the man advantage, but joked that he’s afraid to use his booming shot to avoid hurting his teammates, which makes it challenging to practice.
“In a game, you don’t care, you tee it up, but that’s the hardest thing, and then guys don’t shoot it [in practice],” Tocchet said. “Can anybody make a puck that is an actual puck that, if you get hit, it doesn’t hurt you? It’s 2026. If somebody can do that, they’d make a lot of money.”
That second unit looked a bit stronger, and Martone got a solid look on goal in their two-minute opportunity.
Tocchet didn’t want to evaluate the units heavily after the scrimmage. Each group had just about two minutes to practice together. Plus, even with a shortened training camp, more opportunities remain to run the power play.
Last season, the Flyers converted just 15.7% of their opportunities, which ranked last in the league. There’s some reason for confidence that their trajectory is headed upward, since the underlying numbers looked slightly better. The Flyers’ five-on-four expected goals percentage was 92.26%, according to Natural Stat Trick, ninth in the league.
“There’s all the stuff with numbers and expected goals vs. actually what happened,” Drysdale said. “You look at those, and we’re in a pretty good freaking spot. It’s just a matter of capitalizing, getting into the right spots, but at the end of the day, those numbers don’t matter. The only ones that matter are the ones that go in the net.”
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