The Flyers seem to have something of a revolving door situation going on as it relates to their roster, and it seems that they’ve made one more adjustment as they move into the final trio of games before the Olympic break. The rug seems to have well and truly been pulled out from under the Flyers — their losing streak has now stretched to three games again, and they have just two wins in their last 10 games — and they’re throwing anything and everything they can at the wall, and hoping that this most recent bit of shuffling can be the thing which jolts them back to life.
Pederson returns to Lehigh Valley
Per the AHL Transactions page, in a late addition which appeared this afternoon, Lane Pederson has been returned to the Phantoms. Pederson was recalled back on January 18 to fill in for the injured Rodrigo Abols, and played five games for the Flyers, but saw his usage being quite limited on the team’s fourth line, and struggled to deliver much pop in that role. This move opens up a space down the middle, but the Flyers still have a pair of extra forwards to rotate into the lineup as needed.
This move is also, without a doubt, excellent news for the Phantoms. They’ve been getting things slowly moving in the right direction again of late, and finding some nice contributions from other members of their lineup — most notably, Tucker Robertson and Karsen Dorwart have been stepping up really nicely of late — but they’d be hard pressed to argue that they won’t be better off with their leading scorer back in the mix. Pederson has been such a key piece at the top of their lineup, so often serving as something of a straw that stirs the drink as far as both their pace setting and offensive generation goes, and his addition back into the lineup — which we could see as soon as tomorrow night at home against Bridgeport — is sure to be a major boost.
The Zegras centerman experiment continues
It is a short jump to make, of course, to recognize that the space the Pederson’s reassignment opens up will all but surely be used to continue to give Trevor Zegras a real run at carving out a role for himself at the center position on this team. It’s been a long time coming — after an allusion to the Flyers’ intention to see what he can do down the middle in his first season with the team all the way back over the summer after his acquisition, they spent much of the first half of the season trying him out in the hybrid center type of role — but at last they’re giving him some full-game looks in that spot to see what he can do.
Now, the initial returns on the first outing for a Zegras-centered line were not great. In their debut on Thursday in Boston, his line with Matvei Michkov and Bobby Brink struggled pretty mightily — they collected only 22.22 percent of the share of shot attempts and 12.92 percent of the Expected Goals, as they were caved in pretty completely as far as the overall possession goes (and this says nothing of the goal scored against while they were on the ice) — and while there were some other pieces working against them in that debut (fatigue, for one, as well as their continued pairing on the ice with the defensive pair of Nick Seeler and Noah Juulsen, which looked a mess last night) but the results still are what they are. All the same, though, in spite of this difficult beginning, this is an experiment that the Flyers would be best served by continuing to see through.
The results from the mix of centers at the NHL level so far this season have been largely inconsistent at best, and with each of Sean Couturier, Noah Cates, and now Christian Dvorak locked up to contracts with some term, and with the depth outside of the NHL looking a bit suspect — there really isn’t a center banging down the door for a recall, and all of their top prospect outside of the North American pros in Jett Luchanko, Jack Berglund, and Jack Nesbitt are still a ways away from competing for those jobs — their best shot at upgrading their center situation without having to make a trade would be to find a way to make Zegras work therein. It’s not a sure thing that this will work out for them, but this team needs, above all, more skill in their mix, and though he can’t be the everything fix for them, as one of their most skilled players, unlocking a more versatile game in him would certainly be a good start.
All stats via Natural Stat Trick.