Claude Giroux play has been very important to the Flyers as they climb past the .500 mark on the season

Claude Giroux play has been very important to the Flyers as they climb past the .500 mark on the season by John Chillari

Today marks the last day of the year 2013. For the Flyers it has been one filled with inconsistent play, a coaching change, and a dreadful start. To their credit, the Flyers have performed better the last 2 months and have secured a winning record for 2013. This has been on the heels of Claude Giroux’s torrid point streak that presently sits at 9 games. He has posted 6 goals and 11 helpers in those games.

This recent bout of good play has given the fans hope that the Flyers will give us a playoff berth this year and remain competitive going forward. Where I would like to see them improve in 2014 would be in a simple but very revealing statistic, shot differential. It’s a simple concept that leads to three positive outcomes, less goals against, more goals for and for the most part, a better standing.

In the graph below I have illustrated the positive correlation between a positive shot differential and the team’s current standing overall in the NHL.

Until I get a better grasp of using the spreadsheet function in Open Office, please bear with me as I know the legend and graph are a little hard to read.

Of the teams listed, excluding our Flyers, they represent the 10 best teams in shot differential, 8 of them currently are in the top 10 of the NHL’s overall standings. The only team who places outside of the top 15 would be the New York Rangers. It seems so aggravatingly simple to just take more shots but obviously there is such a thing as a quality shot. The Flyers to their credit over their last 10 games have succeeded in producing a positive shot differential in 7 of their last 10 games. They’ve won 6 of those games and recorded a point in 8 so there is optimism going into 2014 that they are on their way to producing a positive shot differential.

So in conclusion, I am bully on the Flyers going forward into 2014 and I hope they include taking more shots into their New Year’s resolutions.

Have a great and safe New Year from everyone here at Broad Street Buzz as we look forward to an exciting 2014!

As always, please send all your hate mail to bear[dot]canney[at]gmail[dot]com and your angry tweets to @BcanneyBSB.

Stats were gathered from ExtraSkater.com and NHL.com.