Bulls on Parade is such a good song, but I think the vibes aren’t the same. The chill nature of Man I Need is just…perfect

Man I Need is an absolute banger song for this run.

I think with regular season and playoffs combined he’s above PPG. Ridiculous. Star in the making.

Flyers win but I forgot my iPad at work so phone art time!!!

#ignitetheorange

Guys who have completely gone up another gear in the playoffs: Couturier, Tippett, Drysdale, Sanheim, Risto, Martone, Hathaway, Glendening.

Zegras and Foerster have continued to be awesome, but those other guys look like completely different players.

And now he was broken in half by a cross check. How much more punishment can one man take

where were you when Crosby was kill

Charlie the Flyers *sold* at the deadline and now they're the adult in the room. What is happening

While not the young guys, Vladar and Tippett have been the clear MVPs of the playoffs so far. Couturier should also get his flowers, but man those first two. Tippett just does shit no one else can, and honestly it's making it harder to think about trading him.

Foerster has largely been quiet but effective. Near a 70% xGF% on the top line. His board work has still been strong, and you know he's going to laser one soon.

What can you say about Martone that hasn't been said? His xG% is bad (34%), but 2 GWG will erase that pretty quick.

Zegras is crushing it at center in a playoff environment. He's been way more physical, going into the dirty areas. Doesn't look out of place at all. Rocking a 65.94 xGF% (per NST). 43% at the dot (lost two more than he won) isn't great but it's not killer.

Through two games, a lot of positives for the Flyers young core. Drysdale looks every bit of a first pair defender. Been more active offensively and his defense might be his best weapon at this point. Made Crosby look foolish. His skating is unreal, so hard to get separation off of him.

This whole thing is trying to give Tocchet his flowers for doing a legitimately good job, even after starting the season by doing everything I was worried about. He did the most important thing: he changed things that weren’t working. It’s still his system!

…what?? No I’m not lol I literally said in the OP that his system is working. He *did* do a bunch of stuff that wasn’t working that he brought over from VAN. He adjusted those to fit the team slightly better and things have been great. I didn’t have a system in mind, that’s all him.

Who said he threw out the system? What? lol I just said he made adjustments.

The issue is that a lot of Adam’s winners are teams that have a usually hot goaltending, or, in Tocchet’s case PDO. So it hid a lot of the issues the team had, which were exposed the following year. It’s not about how hockey “should” be played, so I don’t know where’s that’s coming from

Talking to VAN fans, he’s done a lot of things different here than there. He loosened up his system to allow for more offensive creativity for starters. He’s not doing the same system he was at the beginning of the year when it wasn’t working as well. I think that’s super important.

He played guys in their positions (turns out Z is a pretty good C!). Most importantly, it seems he leaned into his strength as a player’s coach: he got them all to believe and work together. There’s still issues on the team (offensive production), but they look fun and good.

But then something happened: he…changed! He pivoted! I don’t know if Briere had to say something and he just respects the Flyers more than Vancouver, but suddenly he stopped being a dummy in interviews.

I still don’t think his Jack Adam’s season is very relevant, haha. But that’s just a data hangup for me. This year? I could easily see him getting votes and it’ll be earned.

The thing with Tocchet is that he did everything I was afraid of him doing this year. The mid point was real, real ugly.

@theflyersprism.bsky.social

Matches the eye test. So many players looked great it’s hard to name someone who didn’t.

Credit to Tocchet for this season. This team looks ready for the playoffs, they bought into his system, and it’s working well.

Flyers looking like straight up the better team through the first half.

Konecny and Couturier have the juice so far. Buzzing out there. Lot of young guys look great too.

Flyers series is going to come down to goaltending and penalties. If the Flyers stay out of the box and Vladar remains consistent, I think they can grind out the Penguins. A lot of the public models aren’t seeing the difference in net because of Ersson, and the Flyers have legitimate momentum.

Finally can start working on my regular season in review article. Going to look at how each player performed by the metrics and try to assign a grade. And maybe a spicy grade for one Rick Tocchet as well.

Mich and Martone have owned in GameScore for the last few weeks.

Michkov really woke up the last 15% of the season. He and Martone have been critical to this teams success.

Those are specifically the Buffalo's sabres.