When you look down the stretch of the season and into the playoffs, the Flyers most critical flaw stood out like a sore thumb. The Flyers have a lack of scoring depth.
What happens when you have a lack of scoring depth is that you lean on your top players even more, which only makes things worse when they can't physically make up for the scoring because the grind there has already taken its toll.
Claude Giroux and Shayne Gostisbehere underwent surgery on Tuesday. Jake Voracek admitted that his foot injury was still an issue in the final months of the season. There's no doubt Wayne Simmonds and Brayden Schenn had their share of bumps and bruises from trying to muck and grind as much as possible in the final weeks of the regular season and the playoffs.
That took the Flyers top five scoring players, in terms of points, right out of the equation. Nothing against Radko Gudas and Ryan White, who had their moments around timely goals down the stretch, but that's not a formula for a contending team.
This is why the Flyers focus moving forward is to add to the forward position in whatever way seems more logical. One thing is certain, the Flyers want to add size, they want to add playmaking ability and they want to add scoring to the forward group.
You could see the need for all three attributes of forward in the Flyers playoff series against the Capitals. Size wasn't a great disadvantage, but once Sean Couturier went down, the Flyers were really playing with limited power forwards. Simmonds is as gritty as it gets. Schenn brings energy, but lacks the size of Simmonds or Couturier. After that, the Flyers rely more on energy and compete level than size. It made the Capitals overall edge in both speed and size look astronomical and the Flyers spent more time hanging on for dear life than trying to form some sort of attack.
The playmaking ability and scoring ability go hand in hand. The Flyers had three players reach the 20-goal mark: Wayne Simmonds (32), Brayden Schenn (26) and Claude Giroux (22). The next highest goal-scorer after that was Shayne Gostisbehere with 17 goals.
The Flyers had a lot of player reach double-digits in scoring, but still lack that second-line group that can compete with the top-line in terms of production. Giroux, Simmonds and Schenn were more or less the Flyers top line. Combined, that's a total of 80 goals from the top line. The Flyers second line, which was never truly consistent at any point in the season, regularly featured two players that finished with 11 goals on the season, Couturier and Voracek. Even if you factor Michael Raffl's 13 goals, the fifth-most on the Flyers this season, into the second-line production, they still finish a distant second to the top line with 35 goals.
The reason this is such an issue is evident in the remaining playoff teams, particularly in the Eastern Conference. The Capitals were getting timely goals from Jay Beagle as much as they were Alex Ovechkin or Nicklas Backstrom. The Penguins are getting timely goals from Matt Cullen and Nick Bonino just as much as Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin. The Lightning are getting goals from Brian Boyle and Alex Killorn as much as Tyler Johnson or Nikita Kucherov.
It's not just about the stars and the top line anymore. The teams competing have depth. That's where the Flyers need to be.
It's still too early to look into free agency and think about the type of player the Flyers could sign. Playoff appearance aside, the Flyers are still very much in development mode. That said, the Flyers have prospects like Travis Konecny and Taylor Leier that possess some of that playmaking prowess and are certainly going to use the draft to look for more size and strength to the position as much as playmaking ability and scoring.
The Flyers top priority this season is very clear and they have a few months here to address and try to take another step closer to reaching the level of the teams currently fighting for a spot in the Stanley Cup Final.
If the 2015-16 season taught us anything, it's that the Flyers are in good hands and on the right track. But they still need to establish the depth across several lines to start to truly enter the contending conversation.
Kevin Durso is managing editor for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @Kevin_Durso.
