BryzScoredOn

Crashing the Crease: How Many Wins Does a Low Save Percentage Cost?

At the time of my last article, I had a thought about save percentage. We often harp on it, but very rarely do we think of it in practical, dollars-and-cents terms. If a goalie A has a .900 save percentage and goalie B has a .910, for example, what does that tell you aside from goalie B is stopping more shots? A simple way to look at it is that goalie A will let up ten out of every 100 shots he sees, while goalie B only lets up nine. Big deal, right? Prompted by Eric T.’s article over at …

Rafael Diaz

Five Questions: Fixing the Flyers

Flyers Faithful revisited a former recurring feature, Five Questions, to address some current hot and important topics, including the draft, prospects, and the future of the Flyers. For this edition of Five Questions, we asked John Saquella, Jim Butler, James Centifonti, Joshua Janet, and our very own Jared Abbott to participate. Below, you will find their answers to today’s question. If you were currently the General Manager of the Flyers, how would you go about fixing the defense without decimating the core of the team? John Saquella: I feel, rather strongly, that a lot of the team’s defensive issues are due …

Taylor Leier, giver of teabags

Five Questions: Diamonds in the rough

Flyers Faithful revisited a former recurring feature, Five Questions, to address some current hot and important topics, including the draft, prospects, and the future of the Flyers. For this edition of Five Questions, we asked John Saquella, Jim Butler, James Centifonti, Joshua Janet, and our very own Jared Abbott to participate. Below, you will find their answers to today’s question. Tye McGinn has been a pleasant surprise this season, as Matt Read was last year. Which of the current Flyers prospects do you think could make the leap and become the next dark horse NHLer? John Saquella: I like Taylor Leier …

Steve Spott

Five Questions: The next head coach

Flyers Faithful revisited a former recurring feature, Five Questions, to address some current hot and important topics, including the draft, prospects, and the future of the Flyers. For this edition of Five Questions, we asked John Saquella, James Centifonti, Jim Butler, Joshua Janet, and our very own Jared Abbott to participate. Below, you will find their answers to today’s question. Assuming that Peter Laviolette does not return behind the bench next season, who would be your (realistic) top three picks to coach the Flyers?  John Saquella: I have long been calling for a change behind the bench, and my first choice was …

Juuso Riikola and KalPa

Five Questions: Sleeper picks

Flyers Faithful revisited a former recurring feature, Five Questions, to address some current hot and important topics, including the draft, prospects, and the future of the Flyers. For this edition of Five Questions, we asked John Saquella, Jim Butler, James Centifonti, Joshua Janet, and our very own Jared Abbott to participate. Below, you will find their answers to today’s question. There is a lot of talk about the depth of this year’s draft class, specifically in the first round. What player or players do you see as sleeper picks that Flyers should target in later rounds? John Saquella: I like Juuso …

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CBA Explained: No move/trade clauses

I discussed no move and no trade clauses in my CBA 101 series last year, however, the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) introduced a slight tweak to those rules that we have already seen come to fruition this NHL season. You may as well call this the “Jeff Carter clause”. From the CBA Summary of terms: “No Move/No Trade Clauses that are negotiated as part of a contract extension may become effective immediately upon execution of, but prior to the effectiveness of, the extension contract, provided: a) The Player is otherwise currently eligible to have a No Move/No Trade Clause, and b) …

Image via ESPN.com

Cap advantage recapture makes trading for Shea Weber far too risky to even consider

Recently, Flyers beat report Tim Panaccio offered the following prediction for this summer: Let me be first to predict: #flyers re-visit NSH and Shea Weber this summer — Tim Panaccio (@tpanotchCSN) March 29, 2013 Even outside of the fact that I’m not sure Nashville would be eager to trade him after paying him such massive sums of money in his first year, I would argue, with all due respect to Tim, that it would be a terrible, terrible decision because of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement’s (CBA) “cap advantage recapture system”. If I were an NHL general manager, I wouldn’t …

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CBA Explained: Retained salary transactions

One of the most interesting wrinkles written into the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) are retained salary transactions; or more simply, the ability for teams to retain salary on a player they trade away. This edition of CBA Explained will expand on the topic. Many fans had been clamoring for this rule to be implemented for some time now. Major League Baseball allows you to include cash in a trade, which dramatically helps teams consummate deals involving highly paid players. I would suspect this to be the case in the NHL as well. While a highly-paid, under-performing player is typically unattractive, if something could …

Goalies have gotten huge - but will shrinking them 'fix' scoring? Courtesy Ottawa Sun.

Crashing the Crease: Will Smaller Pads Really “Fix” NHL Scoring?

With the league’s 30 General Managers meeting to discuss ways to tweak the NHL product, the issue of goal scoring totals has once again reared its head. Since the resumption of play from the cancelled 2004-05 season, scoring has slipped from 6.05 goals per game to 5.25 goals per game. Whether or not that is really a problem that needs fixing is an argument for another column, but the fixes being discussed are rather relevant to goalies. What is the solution? Well, according to some – including Mike Babcock — the answer is a simple ultimatum: bigger nets, or smaller …

Bad Coburn

Breaking down the Bullies: Third-period meltdowns

When the Flyers take the ice against Pittsburgh later this week, they might have a much different mindset than that of about month prior versus Winnipeg. With the team likely to be in a selling mode as their long layoff drags on, that game might best be described as the last time the Flyers had hope. After a rough start to the season, the team needed to go on a run to turn things around. Entering the third period of this contest the Flyers were trailing, but they were able to overcome adversity and get their game together when it …

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