The duo of Sean Couturier and Matt Read broke out on Thursday night and combined on the two early goals to sink the Devils. This is a pair that has been getting a lot of unwarranted criticism of their offensive production this year.
The cause of their limited production is a combination of zone starts, quality of competition, and RJ Umberger.
Couturier and Read have played nearly the same amount of time on the ice with Umberger as without him, and I thought it would be a good idea to compare those two different situations.
*All stats in this article are up to and do not include the Carolina game.
Sean Couturier
In all charts, the players stats with Umberger will be in black (as in black hole), while the stats without Umberger will be in orange.
The Flyers both generate more shot attempts and allow less shot attempts when Couturier is away from Umberger opposed to on the ice with him. This leads to a huge change in goal numbers.
When Couturier is on the ice with Umberger, his production takes a bit of a hit. Without Umberger he is on the ice for 0.81 goals per 20 minutes, opposed to just over 0.234 per 20 minutes with Umberger. Futhermore his goals against per 20 minutes goes up from 0.607 to 0.702 goals per 20 minutes.
All of this boils down to a 25% goal for percentage when Couturier is on the ice with Umberger, and a 57.10% goal for percentage when Couturier is on the ice without Umberger.
Umberger has a huge impact on the point totals of Couturier. In very similar amounts of ice time, Couturier has scored 5 of his even strength points away from Umberger, opposed to just 2 with him.
Matt Read
When Read is on the ice with Umberger as opposed to without him, the numbers are even more pronounced.
When Read is on the ice with Umberger the Flyers are generating 5 less shot attempts and allowing 3 more shot attempts per 20 minutes.
This leads to a huge change in corsi for percentage when Read is with Umberger (37.40%) and without him (49.30%).
Once again, this impacts the goal numbers as well.
When Read is away from Umberger he has a goals for per 20 minutes and goals against per 20 minutes of exactly the same: 0.831.
When Read is with Umberger this goals against per 20 number actually comes down ever so slightly to 0.827, a negligable difference. However, the goals for per 20 number drops significantly, just like it did with Couturier.
This leads to another large disparity in goal for percentage, 22.2% with Umberger for Read, and 50% without Umberger.
Once again Umberger has a huge impact on point totals. Read has just one point, a goal, with Umberger on the ice. When Umberger is not on the ice with Read, Read's point totals jump up to 6 points.
Overall
It is pretty clear that Umberger has been dragging this pair down, much like he has to the other players he has played with this season.
This has not only impacted puck possession and allowing goals, but it has limited the offensive potential of Couturier and Read.
Couturier and Read showed on Thursday night that they have the skill to get the job done, and a better left wing would definitely improve their numbers.
RJ Umberger has been one of the consistently bad Flyers players this season yet has somehow avoided the press box. At this point with Lecavalier battling a slight injury it might not be the right time to scratch him though. However, Jason Akeson has been putting up some numbers in the AHL and might be worth another look with the big club.
Ryan Gilbert is a contributing writer for Flyerdelphia and can be found on Twitter @RiskyBryzness
