Scott Laughton’s numbers reflect a checking role on a bad team

Before talking numbers, it is important to talk context. The Flyers are presently the 26th-placed team in the NHL. Last season they were 21st, and the year before that they were 26th. You have to go back to 2019-20 for the Flyers to be a playoff team. It’s also important to remember that the Flyers have given up the 4th most goals this season. That’s going to impact some numbers, and you can particularly see it in the difference between expected goals against this season and actual goals against. The difference between xGA/60 of 2.2 and GA/60 of 3.1 is huge and Laughton’s miserable PDO of .95 reflects that as well. You could say that Laughton has been “unlucky” over the past three seasons in Philadelphia and those are grains of salt that need to be considered in the conversation.

Another piece of context that is important to consider is who Laughton plays against and according to the Puck IQ data that puts competition into the Elite (top line), Middle (2nd/3rd lines), and Gritensity (bottom line) matchup designations, Laughton has primarily been deployed against middle six competition. Sean Couturier’s line in Philadelphia was the unit used for shutting down the opposition’s top line and Laughton, while being billed as a two-way player doesn’t fall into a category of impactful defensive forward and you can see that reflected in the Corsi against and goals against numbers above.

The hitting numbers have more context as well as it shows that Laughton is more of a checking forward than defensive centre like Couturier or Kampf. If the Leafs want to use him in a shutdown capacity, it might be a situation where Laughton needs to be deployed with other players like Holmberg, Jarnkrok, or Kampf that bring some of those elements and can get more out of Laughton. If the intent is that Laughton is a player meant to be trusted in all situations, the numbers reflect that better, but I’m not sure you can call Laughton someone who will truly drive a line and he’ll either need a strong committee or a puck controlling presence to pick up that slack for him.

The deployment of Laughton under Berube may change from how he was utilized under Tortorella, but it is worthwhile additional context to consider too. Consistently over the past three years, Laughton has been the most frequent Flyers penalty-killing forward. The Flyers have very much been a middle of the road team when it comes to penalty killing over the past three years, so Laughton helping the Flyers perform better on the penalty kill than they do at 5v5 is likely something that can be considered a feather in his cap and bringing him into the fold to upgrade a departed penalty killer like Connor Dewar is encouraging.

Over the past three years Laughton has averaged 0:30 of Overtime per OT appearance and that has dropped to 0:15 this season. Laughton also has averaged 1:18 minutes of PP TOI per game over the past three years but has been down to 0:39 per game this season. Laughton’s decline in offensive opportunities at the time when his 5v5 offence has increased is certainly an interesting development, but the Flyers giving time to Matvei Michkov, increasing Bobby Brink’s time and wanting to utilize Andrei Kuzmenko in those roles over Laughton makes some sense. Despite Laughton’s offence being up he was still the 8th-highest scoring Flyer forward at his departure and that doesn’t account for Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee as well as Kuzmenko’s shorter time on the roster but having more offensively driven attributes impacting that deployment as well.

Craig Berube will likely mirror that usage and the second powerplay unit could be a possibility but not a given and overtime play outside of the playoffs is unlikely.

Laughton’s NHL Edge numbers don’t really display a standout attribute, as one would likely expect of a third line player. There isn’t a standout skill like speed or a heavy shot that the Leafs will suddenly be leaning on and while Laughton’s top speed is below the 50th percentile, most of the league is clustered in that range and painting speed as a deficiency might be unfair based on this, just not an opportunity to say the Leafs are getting faster.

Getting Laughton for this year and next at $1.5M is a big part of justifying the move to bring him in. Laughton performs like a typical $3M third line centre but at half the price the Leafs are going some additional value out of the player.

Deployment and linemates will likely determine whether Laughton was the right move or not and at least two games in it doesn’t seem like Max Domi and Bobby McMann are the fit for Laughton. Albeit that Laughton is playing two games and getting over some learning curves, but Max Domi in particular might be a difficult burden to place on Laughton. The fact that the line has struggled even more offensively than defensively should point to a change being needed although Berube not wanting to disrupt his top six to accommodate his third line as makes sense.

Based on the numbers, Laughton is an upgrade over a number of bottom-six Leafs forwards, the issue might be based off his numbers that he won’t be enough of an impactful upgrade.

Data from NHL.com, Natural Stat Trick, and Puck IQ.