Get Carter

Until the Flyers make a move for a goalie, trade talk will swirl around Jeff Carter.  Trading Richards is not off the table, but Carter remains the more likely candidate.

Rumors have already started.  Toronto have always liked him, the Flyers could trade him for a package including Bryzgalov's rights in the Phoenix, and many other teams looking for a solid 1/2 center will be interested (LA? Dallas?).  The rumored asking price is a roster player, top prospect, and picks.  Keep in mind the point of trading Carter would be to open up cap space to fill other needs, so it doesn't make sense to get an expensive player back unless it's a goalie.

Carter is a natural trade candidate.  He is signed to a long term with a reasonable cap hit, and viewed in a 3 year window, he is one the top handful of goal scorers in the NHL.  He has an explosive wrist shot, decent size, is responsible defensively, and has the speed to separate from the defense.  All things that will keep teams perennially interested in a trade.

So what's not to like about him?
--For starters, it is my opinion that his wrist shot is very overrated.  His shot is inaccurate, and maybe more importantly his release is slow.  In his first few seasons Flyers fans referred to him as "high-and-wide" because that's where so many of his shots ended up.  You still rarely see him pick a corner, as most of goals come from simply overpowering the goalie.

--Second, he doesn't use his size consistently to hit or protect the puck.

--Third, he is a very poor passer of the puck, and as a result does not utilize his teammates.  His shot is heavy, but so is his pass.

--Fourth, and more elusively, for all his goals, he's not a smooth finisher.  Part of that is the shortcomings of his shot mentioned above, but he really has no dekes to speak off.  His game is all 'skate-fast-then-shoot'.  With all the breaks he gets with his speed he mainly just coasts in and shoots, or simply takes the puck to his backhand and tries to beat the goalie with speed.

--Fifth, and a biggie, he has mostly disappeared playoffs while guys like Richards, Briere and Giroux step up big time (though he has been injured the last two playoff seasons).

I project Carter to be a 35-40 goal 30-35 assist guy going forward.  I kind of expect his 46 goals in 08-09 to be his career high.  This is very nice production for a defensively capable center, but not really true star center production.  For the Flyers, with three other centers who are arguably just as good or better, Carter is a luxury that can be swapped out for a more pressing need.

The Carter trade talks will surely intensify up through draft day.

Blame Management?

Richards has been, and will continue to be, the center of criticism around the way the Flyers' season ended.  He is terrible with the media and is apparently not a vocal leader.  Sometimes I think of him as "Captain Mumbles".  A lot of Flyers fans are dragging him through the mud, questioning his leadership and his heart in general.  This is more a response to the fact that he has a C on his jersey rather than his play in general.

So will the Flyers trade their captain this offseason?  It appears the option is at least on the table for the first time.

First of all, I don't buy complaints that Richards doesn't have any heart.  The guy always plays hard and generally DOES lead by example.  Still, he did not have a good season overall, and he looked to be playing at half speed down the stretch in a way that generally indicates poor conditioning or an injury (and I'm not talking about a wrist injury that affects his faceoff prowess).  To be fair though, his production wasn't too bad, and he spent much of the season with the Flyers' 3rd line wingers (Nodl, JVR through his slump, Zherdev as he passed through the lineup).

Given that this criticism is revolving around his captaincy, forget his on-ice play for a moment and just focus on his performance in his role as a captain.  Holmgren and others have defended him saying he could improve on certain captaincy skills, and that he is "a quiet kid."  Okay, sounds plausible.  The question that raises with me however, is that the Flyers already knew he was a quiet kid when they named him captain---this can't be a surprise.

Put differently, assuming Richards' issues with the media and vocal leadership is a real problem, is management to blame for making Richards the captain in the first place and putting him a role for which he was not suited?  Even if you take for granted that Richards was destined to be the captain of the Flyers someday, timing is always relevant.

In some ways I was surprised the Flyers were so eager to name another young captain after the Flyers named Lindros the youngest captain in the league, which didn't exactly turn out for management.  Young captains can occasionally work (think Jon Toews), but isn't that more the exception than the rule?

The Flyers made Richards captain before the 2008-09 season, when he was coming off a breakout year offensively and the Flyers advanced to the Conference Finals in the playoffs.  He was 23 at the time, young by any standard for a NHL captain.  The Flyers locker room at the time wasn't exactly full of captain candidates, with the other possible candidates being Gagne, Knuble and Timonen.  Reportedly Gagne turned down the captaincy years before, Knuble was in the last year of a contract, and Timonen had only been with the team for 1 season.  (In hindsight, Timonen's level-headed veteran personality probably would've been a good fit.)

It's been said that the Flyers can't take away the C from Richards, and that he is either the captain of the team or will have to be traded away.  Captain in hockey may be like a QB in football--they get too much credit when things go right and too much blame when things go poorly.  Ultimately I think it would be a shame if the Flyers feel like they have to trade away a hard working 2-way center in his prime because he wasn't a good fit at captain at this point in his career, and management will have to look back and question the decision they made 3 years ago.

Postseason Scene Set

Nothing is actually going to happen with the Flyers for several weeks, until the playoffs end and the draft approaches, but the storylines are being set.  It's impossible to know which of the many rumors to believe, but recurring themes seem to be that Richards and Laviolette aren't getting along and that there may be a rift between vets and younger players.  As a result, the trade of Mike Richards, once unthinkable, is actually a realistic (though pretty small) possibility.  


Here's one sign of veteran discord from the level headed Timonen:
-"The better team won. It's a fact. We just couldn't get going for some fucking reason"
-"That's what pisses me off the most. We weren't even close. There was no effort which I find unbelievable"
-On an upcoming meeting Holmgren; "I don't think we'll have coffee and cakes there"

No one is safe, as some kind of roster shakeup appears likely this offseason.  At this point however, it's impossible to identify the root causes of the issues, but seeing who the Flyers ship out this offseason will be telling.

The Injured List
-Versteeg to have abdomen surgery, though to his credit he showed no signs of it.
-Pronger back surgery.  I really hope he's healthy to start next year, because he never really was this year at any time.
-Betts finger surgery
-Leighton hip surgery
-Meszaros wrist surgery, which obviously didn't prevent him from being the team's best defensemen.
-Carter, maybe
-Hartnell, maybe
-Richards wrist surgery.  This is bizarre because it was his skating that seemed to struggle.

Different approaches to the goalie issue
I've already run down the free agent options, but there are two other ways the Flyers could attack the problem.

1)  Trade for a veteran.
Pros: Gets a proven winner
Cons: Requires trading significant assets to clear the cap space and to lure the talent.
Candidates: Nicklas Backstrom, Miika Kiprusoff
Personally I'm not too keen on trading a good player in their prime to get a season or two from a vet goalie at a huge cap hit who may be on the downside of their career.

2) Trade for a blossoming young goalie
Pros:  Get a seemingly good goalie, cheap (for a season or two at least)
Cons:  Could demand high trade return, still enter season without anyone proven
Candidates:  Cory Schneider, Jonathan Bernier, Anders Lindback, Jhonas Enroth
There is no way I trade JVR or Giroux for a young goalie, and as fun as it is to say "may the best man" between Bobrovsky and a new acquisition, this ultimately amounts to another season of hoping for the best in net.

For these reasons, I still say go free agent for goalie.

The Goalie Options

I've made clear my opinion that the Flyers must do something to stabilize their goaltending this offseason.  They have basically no cap space to work with, so sacrifices will have to be made.  Either way, here are the options (name, age, last season's numbers)

The most proven options

-Tomas Vokoun, 34, 22-28-5, 922 save percentage, $5.7m cap hit

Vokoun has consistently performed well for several season, compiling an impressive 924 save percentage over 4 years in Florida.  The thing is, he has been toiling for mediocre teams for years, so he's never seen the second round of the playoffs, so he may be an unproven commodity in the playoffs.  He likely will take a pay cut, but he will still cost you.  The Flyers would have to dump salary elsewhere to compete in the bidding for him, but it's doable without taking a hammer to the nucleus of the team.

Ilya Bryzgalov, 30, 36-20-10, 921 save percentage, $4.25m cap hit

-Bryzgalov is, in my opinion, the only real number one goalie available in the sense that he will command a long term, high salary contract, and should be entering the prime of his career.  Unless the Flyers move a Richards or Carter, they can't compete with those offers.  If there was no salary cap he is the guy I would target (I'm not troubled by his poor postseason this year), but that's not the world we live in.

Wild cards

-Dwayne Roloson, 41, 24-25-5, 913 save percentage, $2.5m cap hit

Roloson is old, and he looked like a career backup when he was 30.  He blossomed in Minnesota, and he keeps defying expectations, particularly this season with the Lightning.  He's got to retire sometime, but I suspect he'll keep playing as a long as teams will give him one year offers.  His price should be reasonable, and offering him a short term contract would work well for the Flyers if they want to leave the door open for Bobrovsky to seize the job in the next year or two.  This is assuming of course that the Lightning don't resign him, who may be eager to reward one of the catalysts for their season.

-Evgeni Nabokov, 35, 2010 numbers-44-16-10, 922 save percentage, $5.375/570k

Nabokov is a very interesting option.  One of the top goalies in the league for years, he recorded three straight 40 win seasons (only the 2nd time in NHL history someone has done that), then left for Russia last season.  He came back at a cut price with Detroit, but the Islanders claimed him and he didn't report.  There is some question about his contract status, but it appears the Isles will have him at their disposal this season at an appallingly low price of $570k, who presumably will be fielding offers from teams exactly like the Flyers.  Unless you think his skills fell apart by one year off, or that he is lazy and worthless, there is no doubt that he is a premium NHL performer.  The Flyers also reportedly made their best effort to sign him at the last draft, but Nabokov decided to go back to Russia, as presumably the Flyers didn't have the cap space to meet his demands.  All in all, I think the Flyers would be crazy not to take a stab at a goalie with his track record and at a price that would make him one of (if not the absolute) lowest paid goalies in the entire league.  There's also the Russian factor, being an experienced Russian-speaking NHL player for Bobrovsky to lean on.

Ray Emery, 28, 7-2, 926 save percentage, $500k

-Three years ago it was his attitude, and last year it was a career threatening hip injury (think Bo Jackson).  No one really doubts his ability, but there's always been something holding Emery back.  His comeback was impressive this season for the Ducks, though such a limited audition will mean he likely won't be able to command big dollars or a long contract.  This puts him in within the reach of the Flyers.  Are the Flyers up for another ride with Ray?  They were reportedly one of 3 teams Emery was negotiating with this spring, as discussed here.

Fading stars

-J.S. Giguere, 33, 11-11-4, 900 save percentage, $6m cap hit

Seems like a long time ago Giguere was a playoff hero for the Ducks (leading to that huge contract, which is finally expiring).  He's not that old, but hasn't performed at that high level in a few seasons.  I don't think he'll regain that form (which hasn't been seen for 3 years), and I think he should be no better than plan E or F for the Flyers.

-Marty Turco, 35, 11-11-3, 897 save percentage, $1.3m cap hit

Had several good season in Dallas, but a spotty playoff record there and is coming off a very disappointing year for Chicago.  He was supposed to be a bargain at that price--instead he lost the job to a rookie (who admittedly turned a lot of heads in the playoffs).  I see him in a similar light to the prospect of signing Giguere.

-Jose Theodore, 34, 15-11-3, 916 save percentage, $1.1m cap hit

Coming off a strong season, but nowhere near the goalie that won the Vezina in 2002 with a gaudy 931 save percentage, as that season has proved to be an anomaly.  Personally, I don't think very highly off him and feel comfortable just saying "no thanks."

-Pascal Leclaire, 28, 4-7, 908 save percentage, $3.8m cap hit

He was supposed to be a star for Columbus, being the #8 pick in 2001.  For a while he seemed on that track, but he lost his job to rookie phenom Steve Mason (who has himself faded).  He was shipped off to Ottawa with hopes of claiming the #1 job there long term, but disappointed.  The mediocrity of his last few seasons are probably enough to keep the Flyers away, though I wouldn't be shocked if he has a career revival.  I'm not really interested in the Flyers having another "hope-and-pray" goalie though.

Conclusion

I don't really like any of the fading star options, and I think the first options for the Flyers should be Roloson and Nabokov.  Both are proven winners (though aging), and both are affordable and will be on short term contracts that fit in with the Flyers hopes for Bobrovsky to be the long term solution.  Nabokov even has the Russian intangible in his favor.

If I were the Flyers, I'd be pushing hard for a trade with the Isles.  The Flyers don't have many prospects to deal to a young Isles team, but Matt Carle would be a start in trade discussions.

If the Flyers can't trade for Nabokov or the Lightning re-sign Roloson before he hits the market, I would sniff around Vokoun or consider Emery round 2.  Obviously the Flyers still like him somewhat based on their interest in February.

Lastly, the Flyers could trade from someone like Cory Schneider in Vancouver who looks very good but is likely stuck behind a big star for playing time, but that opens a can of worms of candidates and the trade assets required to complete a trade, so I won't go into that.

My goaltending manifesto

Goaltending has been by far the most talked about subject for the Flyers this year.  I have been very concerned about it, and at no point this season was I convinced that the Bobby Boucher tandem would be good enough to win in the playoffs.  Once the playoffs arrived, their performance was abysmal.

You can say lots of things about the role of a goaltender on a hockey team.  I would agree that you don't need a top-notch goalie to win the cup.  That said, goaltender is an important position.  IT IS NOT AN ON/OFF SWITCH, where its either on/"good-enough" or off/"not-good-enough".

Like everything other aspect of hockey, there are many degrees to the quality of a goalie's performance.  It can be great, terrible, and everything in between.  The worse your goaltending slides down the scale performance-wise, the better your team offense and team defense have to perform to compensate.  Just like a team with obvious holes in their team offense or defense will struggle to win, so will a team with a glaring hole in goal.  I don't know what percentage of importance you could assign to goaltending overall, but it's more than 0%, that's for sure.

Teams with great offense but so-so defense can win, and vice versa.  Teams with great offense but awful defense (and vice versa) cannot succeed in the playoffs.  Goaltending is not any different; no level offensive of might will render the position irrelevant.

Perhaps the only aspect of this that makes goaltending different from other aspects of the game is that goaltending needs to be a 60 minute effort.  You can step off the gas pedal on offense for stretches of a game for instance, but 58 solid minutes of play by a goalie can be destroyed by 2 bad goals allowed.  It's an intangible quality that is hard to quantify, but basically you just need your goalie to avoid soft goals and make some timely stops.  Seems unfair to the goalie when you put it this way, but that's the way it is for goalies.  A goalie can play pretty well for 50 minutes, but 10 shaky minutes with 2 or 3 goals allowed (a common occurence for Bobrovsky this season) amounts to a mediocre game when viewed as a whole.

The unfortunate truth is that the Flyers goaltending this season (and particularly down the stretch and playoffs) is hovering around the 'awful' category.  You can deceive yourself with stats or over-analyze every goal allowed and how it wasn't their fault, but most simply neither Bobrovsky (right now) nor Boucher are NHL starter-quality goalies;

-Bobrovsky is 22 year old rookie who never played in North America and is clearly not a finished product at the NHL level and was slated to spend the entire season in the AHL.

-Brian Boucher, who aside from his three stints with the Flyers, has played for 5 other NHL teams, all of whom deemed him no better than a backup and let him walk as soon as his contract was up.  He is 3 years removed from having NO NHL offers and playing for the Flyers' AHL team.

The Flyers pulled their starting goalie due to poor performance 5 TIMES in two playoff rounds.  That is staggering, I've never seen anything like it.  Other factors can contribute to that, but there is no way that can occur unless the goaltending is incredibly poor.

The Flyers must upgrade in goal to compete for the big prize.  That doesn't mean they must break the bank on a big name goalie, but the Flyers cannot ignore the position or offer half-baked solutions, just as a team with perennially bad team offense or defense must meaningfully address the issue.  They're an exciting team, but they're not so good that can cede a large mismatch in goal against most opponents and still expect to win.  Like everybody else they need to look for maximum cap value in acquiring a reliable goalie.

It's officially over

As expected, the Bruins series ended promptly this year.  It was a comprehensive thrashing.    There's really not much else to say about it, other than that it shouldn't be all that surprising given the way they looked at the end the season in general; disorganized defensively, tentative, physically unassertive.

I wanted to believe the Flyers would shape up and return to midseason form after some inspired play against Buffalo, but that proved to be a temporary flash against an inferior opponent.

Quick season review:
What went right?
-Giroux emerged as the best player on the team.

-JVR took a big step forward, and should be a key player next year.

-The Meszaros transaction worked out great, being the team's best defense from start to finish this year.  He is signed for 3 more years at $4m per and looks to be the heir apparent to leading the defense as Pronger's and Timonen's ice time declines due to age.

-Bobrovsky showed a lot of promise, with his best hockey coming in November.  That said, I strongly believe his NHL game is not a finished product, and there's no way I'd enter next season with him as the undisputed number 1.

-Nodl's first half.

-The defense was much stronger 1-6, at least when the roster was healthy.

What went wrong?
-Pronger had a mediocre regular season, had injury problems, and essentially missed the end of the season and playoffs.  Honestly I didn't care too much about his regular season because he's a playoff player, but that didn't really work out this year, did it.

-Timonen had his worst season as a Flyer, particularly in the playoffs.  Along with Pronger, questions have to be asked how much their skills will diminish in the next season or two and if they are breaking down.  Timonen is 36 years old and said it himself that he only has so many season in his "stumpy legs."  Maybe he was just playing injured in the playoffs...we'll have to see.

-Richards had an uninspiring regular season, and a particularly disappointing playoffs.  I still say he was injured/out-of-shape.  I hope for his sake it was injured and not the latter.  There's also a lot of chatter about his lack of leadership, but I know nothing about what is really happening in "the room", so I can't speak to that.

-The Versteeg trade is looking like a real dud.  He played a little better in the playoffs, but never contributing in any significant way.  He will have to do better next year to earn the $3m cap hit, or the Flyers should start looking to remedy the mistake of acquiring him in the first place.

-Nodl's second half, the return of Andreas No-Goal.

-Goaltending was not good enough.  It was rendered irrelevant in the Boston series, but the Flyers eeked by a much inferior Buffalo team after what was, taken collectively, probably the worst goaltending performance in a playoff series I've ever seen.

-The power play was really bad, somewhat inexplicably so.

-The Hartnell-Briere-Leino line lost its mojo in the second half of the season.  For last year's playoffs and the first half this year, they were pretty easily the Flyers best 5v5 line, manufacturing scoring chances and pinning in the other team.  Just as an example, Leino's 6 points in 11 playoff games this year is a far cry from his 21 in 19 games last year.

-100 straight games without a shutout.  It's hard to pin down the exact reasons for this, but I say roughly 2/3rds goaltending and 1/3 poor defensive zone coverage and lapses.  Much of a shutout is solid defense combined with a flawless performance by a goalie.



There is really no clear path forward for the Flyers.  That's not to say they're all of a sudden a bad team, I just mean that management could go in several completely different directions.  The only move I think they HAVE to make is a meaningful solution in goal.  What they should do with the skaters however (and if they should shake up the lineup) is very subjective, but almost nothing is off the table.

Trainwrecked

I didn't need to see last night's game to know the Flyers got bulldozed.  All of their flaws were on full display; terrible defensive zone coverage, soft goaltending, lack of hitting, not generating shots from the slot...  The Bruins have comprehensively demolished the Flyers this series.  Of all those factors though the defensive zone coverage and constantly yielding the slot and crease to attackers is the most disappointing to me because you'd think that would be easy to identify and fix.

Ending this series is just a formality at this point.

Other notes:
-Carter played a lot more minutes than expected.

-Goalie pulled for the 6th time in 11 games.  Amazing--not that last night was about goalies anyway.  I think every Flyers fan wanted so badly to see Boucher succeed, but he's just not that good of a goalie.  Does Bob start game 4, just to get the experience?

It's hard to make heads or tails of this Flyers team.  Are they the team that barely qualified for the playoffs last and got bulldozed by the Bruins, or are they the team of last year's cup run and phenomenal first half of this season?  There's many directions Holmgren could go in the offseason, but I guess I'll wait until their season is at least officially over before laying out options.

Quick Boston Game 3 Preview

So I won't see the game live tonight (I know, I know, I'm a bad fan), some thoughts going in...

I could see the Flyers winning a low scoring game, but they're going to have to keep the Bruins to 2 goals or less I think.  That means playing better in the defensive zone, and stopping the Bruins from feasting on rebounds and deflections as they have been doing.  The Flyers quickly blew their 2-0 lead last game due to not protecting their slot and crease.  Hopefully, being on the road will lead to a more a more focused effort defensively from the Flyers.

Also sounds like Carter may play, but reports from practice today was that he didn't look ready at all.

tpanotch Tim Panaccio 

I don't see how carter can play. Looks stiff out there and he's not even 3/4 speed in drills

chuckspuckcom Chuck Gormley 

Jeff Carter participates in morning skate, Pronger does not. No way Carter is close to 100 percent. Should sit out tonight and play Game 4

Probably limited minutes, but I guess Shelley and Rinaldo have only been playing 3 minutes or so on the 4th line anyway.

Laviolette was right--the pressure is off the Flyers now.  Still, if the Flyers lose tonight, all but time to pack up the bags, so the team should show something tonight.  Let's not go out with a whimper.

Bruins Series Game 2 Review

My standing prediction for the game tonight was 3-2, but I wasn't sure who would be on right side of that scoreline. Apparently it was the Bruins.

Total gutpunch of a loss.  Great start, thrown away by flat-footed defense and soft second goal in the span of a minute and a half.  Bruins were good in the second period, but the Flyers onslaught was relentless in the third, setting franchise playoff records for most shots in a period and most shots in a game.  The longer the 3rd period carried on without a goal to show for it however, you knew the chances that the game would slip away from the Flyers would increase.

I'd like to say "wow, the Flyers played great, obviously they can come back on the Bruins."  More likely though, is that the Flyers were facing a must-win game, gave the Bruins their best shot, and still lost.

It's pretty indisputable that at least tonight, the chasm in goaltending between the teams cost the Flyers.  The Bruins put out one of the league's best, the Flyers a streaky career backup.  Good goaltending isn't often going to win or lose a series on its own, but when you have two good teams playing each other, which is essentially always the case in advanced round of the playoffs, it will decide series.

Even if goaltending incompetence does not directly cause a Flyers loss (like tonight), the simple fact is that the Flyers are have been vastly overmatched at the position and it makes the job that much harder for the rest of the team to win. You can't expect the Flyers to score 4 goals every night against good teams.

Still clinging to some hope, but things look pretty bleak from where I sit.

Notes and other deep thoughts:
-Great game for Thomas (52 saves!!  22 in the 3rd period!), but you can't ignore how much more effective the Bruins defense was at preventing rebound chances---something the Flyers have done pitifully this series.

-Was there any doubt the JVR was the best player on the ice?  The guy was everywhere.  They flashed a stat on the broadcast, that after 9 playoff game JVR has the 2nd most all-time shots, only trailing Alex Ovechkin in 2009.  Oh yeah, he has 7 goals too, though at some points it looked like he might get 7 tonight alone.  He's doing the same power move over and over, but with his combination of size and skating, no defensemen seems to be able to do damn thing to stop him in one-on-one situations.

-No Pronger.  Bad back?  Bad hamstring?  Who knows.  Neither of those injuries are ones that tend to get better overnight.

-Carter is nowhere to be found at practices.  Do the Flyers try to rush him back now?

-The Flyers continue to have trouble rounding out the 4th line.  Shelley only played a few minutes and took a foolish penalty.  Who knows who we'll see in the lineup for game 3 in that slot.

-Do the Flyers change goalies again?  Not that Boucher was remarkably bad, but do you give the team another kick in the butt?  Probably not, but who knows with this squad.