The circumstances in which Luke Schenn and Radko Gudas came to the Philadelphia Flyers are very different.
Schenn came with a good deal of expectation — a top draft choice — and the trade return when the Flyers shipped away talented but inconsistent young scorer James Van Riemsdyk.
Gudas, on the other hand, was largely an afterthought. Gudas appeared to be a throw-in for salary cap reasons in the Braydon Coburn trade at the deadline last spring. Flyers fans hardly noticed when he didn't suit up for a single game last year due to injury.
Despite arriving on completely different terms, the players also seem to mirror one another. Both are strong, physical defenseman — exactly the type who are rapidly going out of style in today's NHL. Both are out of contract after this season, and both appeared to little more than stopgaps to limp through the season until young defensemen move up the organization.
Now, they both are seeing their stock rise on this team. It could also be said that they are each playing the best hockey of their career.
When Dave Hakstol came in as coach this season, there was lots of talk about playing fast with defensemen pushing up the ice. It naturally followed that plodding, physical guys like Schenn and Gudas had little place on this team.
No wonder Gudas lost his place on the speedy Tampa Bay team, and presumably the same would happen in Philadelphia. Therefore it was no surprise as the players shuffled in and out of the lineup at the opening of this season.
Eventually the players found their way into the lineup. An injury here, a bad game from a teammate there, and they were on the ice. Once on the ice, these players are getting very surprising results.
Consider the chart below, which shows all Flyers defensemen Corsi performance 5v5 in "close" score situations relative to teammates. The higher the number, the more positive effect the player is having on his teammates, while a negative number means this player's presence on the ice causes his teammates' stats to go down.
(Bubble size indicates quality of competition)
You expect some upward trend as players get more offensive zone faceoffs, but hardly this dramatic. Players like Schenn and Evgeny Medvedev are seeing weaker competition, but this cannot explain the steep trend either, while Gudas is seeing strong competition anyhow.
No one stat tells an entire story, but it bears considering that Corsi statistics tend to reveal possession, which has hardly been the friend of slow bruisers. That makes the numbers even more striking, as Schenn and Gudas appear to be playing the best hockey of their careers.
Both players are in their mid-20s. This is an age when many defensemen really find their game at the highest level, and perhaps could explain some of what is happening here.
Whatever the cause, Hakstol seems to have noticed. Both Schenn and Gudas are seeing their ice time tick up in recent games. Schenn played a season high 20:46 against the Avalanche on Tuesday, and Gudas has played more than 20 minutes in two of the last three games.
Gudas is a particularly intriguing player. In addition to his team-best Corsi percentage, his presence on the ice also generates the highest team shot attempt rate of any player on the roster. Add to that how he leads all NHL defensemen in hits, and how his slap shot was clocked at over 100 miles per hour in the offseason, and you have the makings of an exciting player.
It's far too early to draw long-term consequences from this run of good play from the pair. Their relative Corsi numbers will regress to the mean to some degree in time, and their future with the Flyers is still highly uncertain. Their short term success goes against league-wide trends in style of play, and I don't think this is ushering in any new era for the NHL. Nor do I think that Hakstol is changing any long term plans about his vision for the team and the style of play he'd like to see.
Maybe this current trend is damning the rest of the Flyers defense because the team simply doesn't have quality alternatives to these two NHL anachronisms, or maybe, just maybe, we are seeing a player or two begin to stake a claim to a longer term roster spot.
Marc Naples is a contributor to Flyerdelphia and Sports Talk Philly. Follow him on Twitter@SuperScrub47.
