The Flyers had another sour loss the other night. Now I will raise my hand as one of the people seeing improvement under Berube. Their only win was not a great performance in my opinion, and while they have lost 3 in a row, they have all been credible performances with the team notably much better at 5-on-5. Of course there are still lots to work on such as terrible special teams (compounded by taking a ton of minor penalties), 3rd period swoons...
I have faith that those things will improve, but one also has to look at the roster and identify its shortcomings. It is easy for anyone to immediately identify that the team hasn't replaced Chris Pronger, in skills or leadership, but no one mentions Matt Carle anymore.
I probably fall into the group that didn't appreciate Carle enough when he was here, and I was ready to say good riddance at his current price of $5.5m, but I have to admit his absence is really hurting. Seeing Keith Yandle weave around the ice with the puck the other night reminded me of this, as he and Carle have very similar skill sets. Yandle puts the puck in the net more often with a much better shot, but the puck carrying and skating is similar.
The Flyers brought in Streit, with all his offensive talents, but no expects the smaller, older Streit, to play the 23+ minutes Carle used to play. This means the Flyers are still without a take-charge, high-minutes, puck carrying defensemen or can control the game tempo.
Holmgren is not an idiot. He knows the Flyers defense is inadequate, and that's why he's tried to acquire Ryan Suter and Shea Weber recently. Either way, they're not here, and something needs to be done. There is no easy path for Holmgren that I know about, but he needs to get creative in how he can change the chemistry of the Flyers' defensive group.
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