At first glance of the title people probably think I am losing my mind, but there is a method to my madness. For the whole year I have been saying one thing about the Flyers, this team lacks the correct makeup. While they are surely on the correct path on building this team to be solid there is still work to be done in my mind.

In one of my semesters in college we learned about sports psychology and what the make up of a team is all about. While I do believe the Flyers improved their team bond and comradery amongst each other I still believe team cohesion is not quite there and could be absent because of their scoring depth. To make team cohesion fully blossom each individual needs to know their own identity and their roles to the team (example- Giroux has to put points up for the team, Couturier- used as a defensive specialist).

If we look at teams that won the Stanley Cup from the last 4 years, Detroit 07-08, Pitt 08-09, Chicago 09-10, and most recently Boston 10-11 they each had an identity to their team. They had their top 6 players who would put up their points and their bottom 6 players who knew they were role players and embraced that role for the good of the team. Here are some stats for theses teams during the regular season:

Detroit 07-08: had 6 forwards reach the 40 or more point mark.

Pitt 08-09: had only 4 forwards reach 40 or more point mark

Chicago 09-10: had 6 forwards reach 40 or more point mark.

Boston 10-11: had, the highest, at 7 forwards to reach 40 or more point mark.

Flyers 11-12: had 7 forwards reach 40 or more point mark, and lets face it if JVR was healthy they would have had 8 forwards.

Even the 5 teams still left in the Stanley Cup playoffs this year, benefit from good team cohesion and identity. Their regular season stats were as follows:

LA- 4 forwards with 40 or more points (5 if Carter would have been there the whole season)

PHX- only had 3 forwards with 40 or more points

NJ- 7 forwards with 40 or more points

NYR- 4 forwards with 40 or more points

WASH-5 forwards with 40 or more points

To me those stats are saying you have your first and second lines contributing offensively and your third and fourth lines chipping in offensively sometimes but mainly out their for great energy and defensive reliability, along obviously with good team defense and goaltending. With all this in mind I think the Flyers need to set better expectations on who is going to be their go to guys and who are going to be their role guys and if guys like Read, JVR, Schenn are going to be bottom 6 players I think it would be in the teams interest to trade some of their offensive depth for defense along with some role players to help this team come together.

So I'll ask the question to you, is too much scoring depth a bad thing? Does having players, like JVR who has potential 30 goal scoring ability, being stuck with bottom 6 minutes hurt the team more than help?

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Thanks for reading!