10 reasons the 2016-17 Flyers were their own worst enemies

The Philadelphia Flyers’ 50th year of existence ended earlier this month, and for the third time in the last five seasons, they are not participating in meaningful spring hockey.

Why did a team which made the playoffs in two of the previous three seasons have to break up earlier than many thought possible? Here are the primary reasons the 2016-17 Flyers campaign all went wrong.

10. Another unexplained slow start

For the fifth year in a row, the Flyers limped out of the gate and had to keep running to stand still through the middle 40 games, then find reserves for the home stretch.

Under three diferent head coaches (Peter Laviolette, Craig Berube and Dave Hakstol) the song has remained the same. This year, it was 4-5-3 and 9-10-4. Two years ago, when the Flyers last missed the playoffs, it was 4-5-2 and 8-13-3. Four years prior, a 1-7-0 commencement kicked off this run of three seasons out of postseason contention since 2012.

9. Both goalies began the season playing poorly

With two potential No. 1 goalies in Steve Mason and Michal Neuvirth, we thought if both couldn’t come out guns blazing, at least one would if the other was hurt and keep things afloat.

Mason was the more consistent performer and Neuvirth gained a rep as the ultimate season-saver from last April’s playoff performance. Sorry, the hockey gods said. Both guys would put up numbers in the season’s early stages that would look janky even in the ’80s.

On Nov. 12, four weeks in, Neuvirth and Mason sported identical goals-against averages of 3.56 and their combined save percentage, .863, was worst in the league.

8. Top-six forwards failed to answer the bell

Injuries, inconsistencies, recovery from surgeries, inability to produce away from the man advantage and just plain rotten luck attacked the Flyers’ scoring core.

Claude Giroux finished with his lowest point total (58) since 2009-10 despite seeing action in all 82 games. Jake Voracek led the team in scoring (61 points, lowest for a leader in a full season since Andre Lacroix had 58 in 1969-70) but his 81-point performance two years ago is looking more like the outlier than a ceiling. Brayden Schenn scored 17 of his 25 goals on the power play, while Matt Read and Michael Raffl have all but disappeared.

Only Wayne Simmonds comes out smelling like a rose here, collecting his second straight 30-goal season, taking All-Star MVP honors and rightfully gaining team MVP honors at long last.

7. Failure to stabilize after 10-game winning streak

Yes, the Orange and Black are the first team in NHL history to miss the playoffs after a spate of success reached double digits, but what came after ground the gears to a halt. They went just 3-9-3 over the ensuing five weeks after the third-longest win streak in team annals was over on Dec. 17. Come to think of it, the 10-gamer wasn’t all that much of a triumph — winning none by more than two goals and racking up a goal differential of plus-14.

6. Signing Roman Lyubimov, then planting him on the bench

For the second straight season, Flyers GM Ron Hextall took the plunge on a free-agent Russian. Unlike defenseman Evgeny Medvedev, the 24-year-old forward Lyubimov seemed better adjusted to the North American game. He added a dimension of speed, vision, puck-handling and aggressiveness in all three zones to the bottom six — and was promptly played a hair under nine minutes a night, when he was playing at all.

He sat for seven straight in November, and was absent from the lineup in 20 of the last 25 games down the stretch. He hasn’t scored a goal since Jan. 25 and his lone assist before the season’s penultimate game came on Nov. 27.

Pin this one on Hextall, for not properly reading Hakstol’s lineup logic and wasting $925,000.

5. The defense was a mess

Too young and too old at the same time, it must have been pure Hell on Flyers assistant coach Gord Murphy to organize. He’s had to instruct concrete brains like Andrew MacDonald, Nick Schultz and Radko Gudas, the fading Mark Streit, the perplexing and to-be-departed Michael Del Zotto, the sophomore slump of Shayne Gostisbehere and the preternatural but raw talents of Ivan Provorov.

You could count the number of failed clears, botched coverages and turnovers on both hands most games this season. The 236 goals allowed tied for 13th in the Eastern Conference and the 2016-17 Flyers collectively allowed 27 more goals than they scored at five-on-five.

4. Continued dive of penalty killing units

Under assistant Ian Laperriere, the PK has drifted firmly into the bottom third of the league, ending below 80 percent for the second time in three seasons.

Chalk it up to personnel rather than system, which is what Hextall did in retaining Laperriere. It had been as high as 85. 9 percent 2013, then 84.8 the following year before diving to 77.1 percent two years back and then 80.5 percent last season.

Beyond the raw numbers, there’s the inability to maintain proper positioning and their total lack of counterattack. Four shorthanded scores represented the third-lowest for any full season, unacceptable for a franchise which prided itself on sticking it to the opposition when short and as recently as 2009 registered 16 shorthanded goals.

3. Their even-strength play was atrocious

Finishing 27th in the NHL with a 72.2 percent ratio of even-strength to total goals (148-for-205), the Flyers have also been outscored by a ridiculous margin of 150-to-120 with level manpower at full strength and 152-to-123 in all even situations barring 3-on-3 overtimes.

On the road, the Flyers placed third from the bottom in the league, outscored 81-58 at full strength. That’s the main contributing factor to awful plus-minuses of Giroux (-15), Schenn (-13), Gostisbehere (-21), Simmonds (-18) and Voracek (-24).

How about these tidbits for head scratches:  Giroux averaged 0.96 full-strength points per 60 minutes while everyone’s favorite whipping boy Chris Vandevelde clocked in at 0.94 in that category. In 21 games, Jordan Weal picked up seven even-strength goals in a nightly ice-time average of 12:38. In 80 games, Giroux totaled only nine goals in 15:08 per night. (Thanks to follower Bradley for these numbers).

2. Keeping Chris VandeVelde as a consistent member of the lineup for 81 games

Among the myriad ways we can dismantle Hakstol’s questionable player usage, one player in particular needs to be held up as an example for the whole. The 28-year-old barely passable NHL talent has scored eight goals in 159 games over the last two seasons.

Hakstol’s confidence is such that he, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and MacDonald are often a PK unit, ignoring the fact that, not too long ago, at least two of the above three were on ice for seven of 15 opposing power-play goals.

He was apparently so valuable to the fourth line that a potential healthy scratch earlier this week — the first one even considered all season — was erased when Weal was sick and unable to play.

You could also count the number of times on both hands Vandevelde logged more even-strength minutes than Voracek or even promising rookie Travis Konecny, but why continue the torture?

1. Awful play on the road

At 14-23-4, the 2016-17 Flyers’ performance away from home was the franchise’s third-worst in a single season since the NHL returned from a lockout in 2005. Only 2006-07 (12 road wins) and 2014-15 (10) ranked lower. Since the league turned to a conference-based playoff-seeding format with an 82-game schedule in 1995, the magic number of wins for the Flyers on the road is 16.

At (1998-99 and 2003-04) or above that number, and the Flyers have reached the postseason a total of 17 times in the 21 seasons since. Picking up all of nine points in enemy territory from Jan. 10 through Mar. 21 in 16 games does a lot to torpedo any hopes of extended spring hockey.