Never a Dull Moment

I've said it before, but being a Flyers fan is just fun sometimes.  Whenever anyone of note becomes available, the Flyers are sniffing around.  Maybe always chasing the big move, the short term fix, has hampered the Flyers ability to win a cup.

Regardless of whether this is true, the Flyers are consistently one of the best teams in the NHL, and made deep cup runs in 95, 97, 2000, 2004 and 2010.  On top of that, there's always something to talk about, and rarely a forgettable season.

Tonight's signing of Lecavalier is a show-stopper and continues the tradition.

Now first, it's important to realize Lecavalier's days as a superstar are behind him.  Since his days as the #1 pick in 98, when then-TB owner naively labelled him the Michael Jordan of hockey, there's always been a superstar aura around him.  Truthfully, he only performed at that level for a brief period of time, and TB signed him up to contract with a cap hit of $7.7m/season under that spell.  Now 33, he hasn't hit 30 goals in 5 seasons.

With all the wonderful weirdness of this offseason and the compliance buyouts, the Flyers can look at him purely as a second line center.  While adding a big name forward seemed low on the priority list for the Flyers, a big issue with last season's team that no one talks about was terrible secondary scoring (meanwhile, the goaltending that everyone talks about was actually fine).  The team put a heavy burden on Couturier and Schenn to develop quickly into scoring roles, and it didn't happen last season.  This move does NOT mean they are giving up on either of them, but it does relieve that burden.  Additionally, the Flyers wanted to get bigger up front, and Lecavalier is 6'4".

Lecavalier's contract is reported to be at $4.5x5.  This is decent cap hit.  It's not without risks, going to his 38th birthday for a player who will decline over the life of deal, but consider the comparables of contending teams' second line centers.  Boston is paying Krejci $5.25m for his 33 points last year.  LA is paying Carter $5.27m for his 33 points.  Pittsburgh is paying Crosby and Malkin each ~$9m.  Lecavalier's 32 points at $4.25m looks pretty good.

Nor does this signing put the Flyers in an onerous cap position.  With some simple moves, the Flyers current cap picture looks like this:

The Flyers could easily sign a platoon goalie and put that lineup out there.

More likely some more tweaking will be done to this lineup and a defensemen will go.  The Flyers could either move Meszaros in what will basically be a salary dump, or they could try for a significant return for Coburn (and even now have the freedom throw in Schenn or Couturier now that Lecavalier is on board and Laughton is coming up).

Presuming the simpler transaction of dumping Meszaros, and running with some rumors about potential signings, the Flyers opening day lineup could very well look like this:

That lineup is clearly better than last year's team, and quite honestly better than I thought the Flyers could put together this offseason while being comfortably under the cap (although the defense is still underwhelming).  Either way, next season would be a lot of fun.