The Importance of Scott Laughton
One of the biggest aspects to stand out for the Flyers in their first two games of the season has been their ability to score goals at any time.
In the NHL it’s rare to find a team with 4 lines that are all legitimately live to put one in the back of the net at any moment, but the Flyers this season appear to be one of them in their small sample size so far.
Personally, the most interesting line to pay attention to this season is the 4th line of Michael Raffl, Scott Laughton, and Nicolas Aube-Kubel. Those 3 guys would be 3rd liners on a lot of NHL teams, and that just speaks to the depth of the Flyers forward group.
The most important member of that 4th line is center Scott Laughton, who is entering his 8th year with the orange and black.
Many moons ago, the Flyers selected Scott Laughton from the Oshawa Generals with the 20th overall pick in the 2012 NHL entry draft. At the time of his drafting, Laughton was one of the best players in the OHL for a couple of seasons and even captained Team Canada during the 2014 World Junior tournament in Sweden. He took a couple of years to get adjusted to the NHL and finally recorded a 21 point (7 G, 14 A) season in his third season with the Flyers in 2015/16. He hadn’t played 80 games in a season till the 2017/18 season in which he recorded 20 points (10 G, 10 A) in 81 games.
At the time, many Flyers fans were skeptical that Laughton could develop his game any further for the NHL. He answered the skeptics in the turbulent 2018/19 season when he played a lot of 3rd line minutes for the team during the season and recorded 32 points (12 G, 20 A) in 82 games played.
Since that season Laughton has continued to defy the expectations set by the fanbase and be a force on offense for the bottom 6 group. Especially during the playoffs when he was one of the best forwards for the Flyers in their series against the Islanders scoring 4 points in 7 games including an OT game-winning deflection goal in game 5 to keep the series alive.
Now please don’t get this misconstrued that I believe Scott Laughton should be the 1C or 2C for the rest of the season because I definitely do not but Laughton provides an offensive element that a lot of 4th line centers seem to lack which is creativity. Most 4th line centers fill their role of being apart of the “energy line” whose objective is to be fairly physical, keep the puck in the offensive zone, and get some pucks in the net from time to time. But Scott Laughton isn’t just a physical presence as he‘s effective at distributing the puck and setting up opportunities for others and himself.
A lot of the members of the media and fanbase tend to underrate his ability to shoot the puck since his goal numbers don’t fly off the charts but Scott is really good at shooting wristers from the faceoff circles which is where a bulk of his goals comes from. Although he’s honestly shown an ability to score up close, on deflections, and on the wrist shot.
The biggest key for Laughton’s game throughout his career is to surround him with talented guys as he’s been his most effective on offense when he doesn’t have to solely carry the offense.
The consistency of his wingers in NAK and Raffl showed to be key throughout their time as a unit at the end of last year, and through the first couple games of the 2021 campaign.
The impact of Scott Laughton and every other Flyers center will be highlighted in the next couple of weeks with the injury of Sean Couturier sidelining him for at least the next two weeks.
No one can truly replace the two-way talent of Couturier but the team is going to need all of their centers to step-up and this includes Scott Laughton who will look to keep the momentum of the 4th line going throughout the rest of the season through the playoffs.
Featured Image: Broad Street Buzz
Discover more from Philadelphia Sports Nation
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categorized:Flyers