March 14, 2024
Kyle Ross/USA TODAY Sports
The Flyers are hoping that Denis Gurianov can add a jolt to their power play.
Rocky Thompson was pretty blunt about the Philadelphia Flyers' power play following their 3-2 win Tuesday night over the San Jose Sharks.
"Well, our power play stinks, first of all," the associate coach said while handling postgame media duties in place of the suspended John Tortorella.
And that was coming from the guy in charge of the Philadelphia Flyers' power play.
You gotta respect the honesty. It is the reality of the situation after all.
Morgan Frost scored on a blocked shot that bounced perfectly to him from across the crease to give the Flyers what has become a rare conversion on the man advantage. Otherwise, they went 1-for-4 on the night when a Shark was in the box, continuing a stretch for the month of March so far where the power play has gone 2-for-17 through six games.
For the season as of Wednesday afternoon, the Flyers' power play is at the very bottom of the NHL with a dismal 12.9 percent success rate, and with a strong argument for much of it that their penalty kill is a much more potent offensive threat.
A lot of things have gone right, and unexpectedly so in many regards, for the Flyers this season. But the power play? Far from one of them.
So the bad news: There is so much work to do to try and improve this, not just in strategy but in personnel, which will take a long time – that's where you have to remember the rebuild part of the Flyers' grand ambitions.
The good news: At this point in the season, hey, you can't get much worse, so get creative, give guys different looks, and see what actually might work.
Deadline acquisition Denis Gurianov got just that Tuesday night, skating on the second power-play unit in the hopes that the skill he has flashed previously at the NHL level could be re-discovered. Not too long ago, he was a power-play force for the Dallas Stars, netting seven of his 20 goals for the 2019-20 season on the man advantage before going on to pot two more in the COVID-altered playoffs, which included the overtime winner that he teed up on to send the Stars to the Stanley Cup Final.
His trajectory fell off in the years that followed as he shuffled from Dallas to Montreal and then to Nashville and its AHL affiliate in Milwaukee, but the pieces are still there for the 26-year old winger in a rare combination of size and speed, and after taking a low-risk waiver on him for Wade Allison, the Flyers seem intent to at least initially see if Gurianov can put that puzzle he had for that year in Dallas back together.
Gurianov is SO FAST#SJSvsPHI #LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/vqwEo0QWxx
— Flyers Clips (@Flyers_Clips) March 13, 2024
They're in a tight playoff race, sure, and with a tough and pivotal stretch in the schedule coming up, but it's not like the Flyers are going to be counting on their power play to suddenly carry them through it, because it hasn't all season.
There's really nothing to lose right now in that aspect of their game. So see what sticks.
In Gurianov's early case, he might have shown them something.
"We don't have a great shooter on our power play," Thompson said. "Particularly a one-time shooter. [Travis Konecny] is probably our best shooter. I know he's a guy who can score goals, but even TK, his one-timer isn't at that level. You could see Gurianov got an opportunity there in the third period. He hammered it and it almost squeaked through, but that was the mindset behind [putting him on the power play], is to give him an opportunity.
"It's not gonna hurt our power play, because it's no good anyway. It's been a work in progress all year, but I like the chemistry on that. Both units, actually, tonight. So we'll try and get some traction with that moving forward."
You gotta respect the honesty.
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