As confident as ever, Flyers’ Morgan Frost working to prove he can be a consistent NHL threat

For center Morgan Frost, gaining the upper hand over his opponent starts with his feet.

In his final moments in the Flyers locker room before stepping onto the ice for a game, Frost reminds himself, move your feet. He repeats the same intention in his head on the bench between shifts. The 23-year-old has even told linemate, Owen Tippett, to call him out if he notices him coasting with the puck instead of pumping his legs. Whatever it takes to reverse the old habit.

“I think it’s been a huge emphasis for me ever since I turned pro,” Frost told The Inquirer. “The thing is, when I’m out there, I feel like I’m moving my feet a lot. And then I watch the tape, and it’s like, I’m not. So I think it’s just a mindset when I’m out there to be constantly thinking about it.”

While Frost used to watch film in junior as a top producer for the OHL’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds and fixate on a snipe or a “sick toe drag,” these days, the fourth-year pro keys in on his positioning and play away from the puck. Those details become more important for any offensive-minded player making the transition to the NHL. They’re all the more critical to master with Frost now on a one-year deal and the clock ticking on him to prove he’s the offensive dynamo the Flyers thought they had selected with the 27th pick in the 2017 draft.

On Nov. 29, coach John Tortorella likened Frost’s inconsistent play to a toilet seat, swinging up and down — “I don’t take that personal,” Frost said. “And I think it was pretty funny.” Since then, Frost has registered nine points (four goals and five assists) in 12 games, primarily playing on the top line alongside Tippett and veteran winger James van Riemsdyk, and on the power play.

More important to Frost than the points is his belief that he’s generating more offense in general, proving to himself that he belongs at the NHL level.

“I feel as confident as I have playing pro right now,” Frost said.

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As the former coach of the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires from 2015-2017, Flyers assistant coach Rocky Thompson recalled Frost as a “very high-skilled,” driver of offense for the Greyhounds. Frost racked up 310 points (106 goals, 204 assists) in 257 career games, and posted 100-plus points in each of his final two seasons.

In junior, Thompson said that Frost could stop moving his feet and still make plays. But at the NHL level, when a playmaker stops moving his feet, everyone on the ice knows what his next move is going to be. Frost ran into that issue as he sought to translate his skills with the Flyers.

“As soon as he gets kind of on the rails, the passing options and all those things, they close up, and it makes it more predictable for the defensive players on the other team to just intercept those plays,” Thompson said.

For Frost to reach the next level in his game, he needs to become a shooting threat, a driving threat, and a distributing threat in the dangerous areas of the ice. Frost admires those abilities in teammate Travis Konecny, who utilizes his speed to open up the offense, but has been laboring to get to that level himself.

Both in his first professional season in 2020 and last season, Frost fluctuated between the Flyers and the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, struggling to carve out a full-time role in the NHL and never averaging more than 0.35 points per game. Sandwiched between was a lost 2021 campaign in terms of development, as Frost played in just two NHL games and underwent season-ending shoulder surgery.

This season, Frost requires waivers if the Flyers want to send him down, so they’ve stayed patient with him as they work with him to advance in the details of his game. In film sessions, in practice, and on the bench mid-game, Thompson and the coaching staff encourage Frost to be first to pucks and to attack the middle of the ice, then make a play, all while leveraging his skating abilities. Frost is starting to improve in those areas, according to Thompson.

“What he needs to do is have confidence in himself to continue to drive and to take his game to another level,” Thompson said. “And compete. Really, it’s competing. Competing with the puck. People think competing is just without the puck; no, it’s with the puck. If you’re not moving your feet, if you’re staying on the outside, you’re not competing when the puck’s on your stick, you’re not a threat.

“You might make a mistake. That’s OK. Make mistakes all the time. But you’ll learn from those, you’ll get better, and you’ll be more of a threat.”

Undoubtedly, Frost has made his fair share of mistakes this season. But he reflects on those mistakes as “learning on the fly,” teaching moments that reinforce what works and what doesn’t against NHL players.

“I’m out there, and then I try to do something, and then I get the puck stripped from me,” Frost said. “Or I see something in video and it’s like, ‘Oh ...’ You know? I should probably clean that up.”

In recent weeks, Frost has shown that some of those lessons are sinking in. He registered a career-high four points (one goal, three assists) against the Arizona Coyotes on Dec. 11.

But beyond the points in the boxscore are the ways that Frost is creating offense — attacking the net on his goal, forcing a neutral-zone turnover on the forecheck to spring the two-on-one that led to van Riemsdyk’s goal, putting a spin move on a defender in the sequence that led to Tippett’s tally, and winning a puck battle off a face-off to set up Konecny for a late tying goal.

Tortorella noted afterward that Frost is an effective player when he moves his legs and he “allows” himself to play his game. Frost acknowledged that at times when he lacks confidence, he’s been guilty of not making a play and hurriedly getting rid of the puck. Recently, thanks to his growing confidence, he’s played with the puck on his stick and trusted his offensive instincts while operating within the structure established by Tortorella.

“I wouldn’t say I was ever nervous, but like a little bit when you’re a young guy, you know?” Frost said. “And I was kind of up and down between the minors. Maybe sometimes you grip the stick a little tighter. So I think just like my mental approach to the game, I definitely feel like I belong here, I can make a difference, and I think that changes everything when you’re going out on the ice.”

Frost recently scored in three consecutive games for the first time this season. On two of the goals, he beat the goalie clean from the circle with a wrist shot, fruits of the trust he’s established within himself.

For now, the toilet seat is situated in whichever position is considered the positive one. When Tortorella breaks down Frost’s recent tape, he sees that Frost is more involved in battling for pucks and being in the right areas to battle for pucks in the first place. As a result, his line has had the puck more, culminating in a dominant possession performance against the Blue Jackets last week when the trio put up 24 shot attempts to their opponents’ six (80%), according to Natural Stat Trick.

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“You can tell what kind of a different player he is when he’s playing with confidence and moving his feet like that,” Tippett said. “I’m really happy for the production he’s put up and the success he’s starting to have now. I know it can get frustrating when you’re working hard and you don’t get those points, but really happy for him the last couple games.”

In 34 games this season, Frost has scored seven goals, breaking his career high of five set last year in 55 games. He still has plenty more to prove as he works to achieve consistency in his game, and Tortorella isn’t ready to make the final assessment of his young forward.

But as long as Frost’s feet are moving when the puck is on his stick, they’re pointed in the right direction.