Flyer’s Season Review of Michael Raffl

What You Need To Know About Michael Raffl

By: Matt Bernstein

Topics: Philadelphia Flyers, Michael Raffl, Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier

All Stats From:  http://www.extraskater.com/player/1185/michael-raffl#shooting-stats

 

One of the few bright spots of the 2013-14 season for the Flyers was the play of Michael Raffl, the 25-year-old left winger from Austria who signed a 3-year deal for the Flyers on May 31st last summer. This season he posted 9 goals and 13 assists for 22 points in his first NHL season and he also saw playing time on virtually every line. In my last blog I went over his extremely impressive possession stats compared to the rest of the Flyers, so I’ll leave out the corsi and fenwick stats for this article. Instead I’ll focus on a few other key statistics that portray Raffl’s strengths and weaknesses in comparison to the rest of the Flyers.

First we will look at his point production. Of the 22 points he had 20 of them were primary points. Sure, 9 of those 20 were goals but more importantly that means that for 11 of his 13 assists Raffl was responsible for setting up the goal scorer. I would contribute this to him playing minutes on a fourth line that for the most part was inept at scoring, but since he did play throughout the lineup it is encouraging that most of his production is coming from his play, and he is not simply benefitting by being surrounded by good linemates.

Next I would like to discuss Raffl’s shooting, which if you watched a decent amount of Flyers games last season you can pretty much already predict the results. The guy takes a lot of shots and gets a lot of chances but misses the net all too often. Last season Raffl had 101 shots on goal which does not sound bad for a guy who played less than 13 minutes/game but during the same time he also had 47 shots that missed the net. To give you a better perspective, last season when Raffl shot the puck 54% of the time he hit the net, 25.1% of the time he missed the net, and 20.9% of the time his shot was blocked. His hitting the net percentage and shots blocked percentages were both towards the top of the Flyers list but his shots that missed the net were the second worst of any forward on the team (surprisingly the first was Matt Read). Also, Raffl by far outperformed all of the fourth line players, most defenseman, and Steve Downie even though that is not too great of a feat.

It is also worth noting where Raffl was deployed on the ice most of the time and the competition he played against. Last season Raffl had an impressive quality of competition rating/time on ice at 28.5% which was 7th among forwards including Downie, so realistically 6th. As far as deployment, Raffl started shifts in the offensive zone 32.7% of the time, began in the neutral zone 41.4% of the time, and started in the defensive zone 25.9% of the time. Cumulatively, Raffl was deployed primarily in offensive situations, in fact only Hartnell, Voracek, Lecavalier and Simmonds were deployed in a more offensive fashion.

Finally, I’ll wrap this up with a few more general stats and overall insights about Raffl. Last season he drew 18 penalties while only taking 14. He also blocked 44 shots, and had 113 hits for (7th best on the team) and 113 hits against. Lastly he had 25 takeaways and 21 giveaways. So what does this all mean?  I would say that these stats, along with the possession stats from my last blog, indicate that Raffl is a good possession player who can generate offense without having to log large amounts of minutes or even play on the powerplay. It also indicates that Raffl needs to work on hitting the net more often and learn how to play a more rounded game so that Berube will trust him 5v5 in the defensive zone more often, which is interesting because Berube seemed to often trust him on the penalty kill (117 minutes this year). Essentially, these stats point out that Raffl had an all around solid season last year and, in my opinion, is ready for a role with more ice time and responsibility.

If you want to check out where all of these stats came from please visit this link http://www.extraskater.com/player/1185/michael-raffl#shooting-stats