A New Chapter for Samuel Morin
In the final hours of 2020, Chuck Fletcher added to the year’s craziness when he announced that 2013 1st round draft pick Samuel Morin would be moving from defense to left-wing.
This announcement from Fletcher adds another chapter to the unique story of Morin, who has struggled with injuries for the past couple of seasons. According to Morin, he has now been practicing at forward for the past couple of months after Alain Vigneault, and Ian Laperriere approached him earlier in the offseason. The 25-year-old said that he has previous experience playing forward from his junior hockey days, although he quickly switched to defense.
This decision from the organization symbolizes one last creative dart throw to salvage the career of Morin and bring a sense of old-school Broad Street Bullies toughness to a lineup that was lacking it in the 2020 playoffs. For the most part, the Flyers mostly got pushed around and outplayed in last year’s playoff series with the Islanders, specifically by left winger Matt Martin. The best-case scenario for Samuel Morin on the wing is to be a Matt Martin-type player, where the expectation is to be a robot vacuum on the ice essentially and just hit everything on the ice.
On Thursday, Morin actually said that he’s been studying Matt Martin’s tape and stated:
“The puck is always behind the D-man, and he always finishes his hit. His shift is honestly in like 30 seconds; he just goes change, then [Mathew] Barzal is on the ice, and they are just buzzing in the offensive zone because of just the little details he does. He finishes his check on the D-man; it’s so annoying. I’ve been looking at his shifts a lot.”.
Now Matt Martin does have 11 NHL seasons under his belt, so it would be unrealistic to expect Martin’s off-the-puck results out of Morin in his first season at forward, especially since his playing time will most likely be limited.
Although the sample size is small, Morin has shown a better ability to shoot the puck than Matt Martin has, so a 6 to 8 point season may be reasonable depending on how much NHL ice time he actually sees this season.
In his 5 years of pro hockey, the 6’6, and 203lb Morin has never shown a fear of dropping the mitts and dusting-up with the opposition. Thus, the fist-flying services of Morin will come in handy in the Flyers’ intense short regular season where old metro foes like the Penguins, Rangers, Capitals, and Devils will become familiar faces. The heat is already turned up against in division games, but an added element of 8 games against each division team and baseball-esque back-to-back series will surely cause some tempers to flare. When in the lineup, Samuel Morin will look to fill the gritty role left by Wayne Simmonds’ departure. In his time with the Flyers, Wayne Simmonds never backed down from a fight, and the same can be said for Morin, especially with a quick Youtube search of his name where there are plenty of Samuel Morin fight videos.
Another one of the main motivating factors of the switch appeared to be the fact that the AHL season is still kind of up in the air, and there’s honestly not really a spot for him in the defensive group with the Flyers.
The team was left in a situation where they could either have him potentially play in the AHL and give it another shot at defense or sit in the press box like he’s unfortunately been subjected to for the past couple of seasons during his call-ups from the Phantoms.
The organization is banking on Morin adding value and getting ice time as a pain-bringing forward instead of another season of having him sit in the press box. There is a taxi squad for the 2020 season where teams can keep a group of four to six players, so, likely, he will most likely be put on the taxi squad at the end of training camp. The taxi squad players can practice their NHL team, join team activities, and travel with the team but may be subjected to waivers if loaned down to the minors.
After having 2 ACL surgeries and knee surgery all in the past 3 years, the once highly-touted prospect is fighting to keep his NHL career alive, especially since he becomes a restricted free agent in 2021-22.
Though if there are two things that Philadelphia sports fans love the most, it’s an underdog and a fighter, which are two things that new left-winger Samuel Morin will embody heading into the 2021 season.
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