Darren Dreger, James Duthie and Pierre LeBrun spoke quite a bit tonight about the Flyers on Insider Trading on TSN. With Tim Gleason signing a four year, $16 million extension with the Carolina Hurricanes, the trade options at the Flyers’ disposal have now shifted.
The trio suggested the Flyers could pursue Ryan Suter of the Nashville Predators (duh), Niklas Grossman of the Dallas Stars (which “Eklund” of HockeyBuzz suggested months ago), Hal Gill of the Montreal Canadiens and Luke Schenn of the Toronto Maple Leafs. They also threw out the names of Bryan Allen and Jaroslav Spacek, future UFAs from Carolina.
With regards to Suter, they suggested that the asking price for the All-Star defenseman was an NHL player, an “A” prospect, a “B” prospect, and a 1st round draft pick. As stated before, that’s a high asking price for a player who could be available for nothing on July 1.
On Grossman: “Maybe a name from left field, he’s a UFA at the end of the year. The Stars are trying to sign him, they haven’t yet, and if they don’t, and they fall out of it, Grossman could be in play and I think the Flyers have some interest in him as well.”
Grossman, 26, is a relatively young defenseman who has a career average-time-on-ice (ATOI) of 17:48, according to Hockey-Reference.com. In five seasons with the Stars, he has 3 goals and 38 points.
On Gill: “Gill’s a guy who’s won a Stanley Cup, a lot of experience, shot blocking, PK, so that’s a guy they’ll keep an eye on in Montreal when the Canadiens finally decide to pull the plug.”
Gill, 36, does have a lot of veteran experience and comes with some grit as a 6’-7” shot blocking defenseman. His career ATOI is 19:22. Gill will be a UFA at the end of the season.
On Schenn: “You can’t forget Luke Schenn ‘cause we know there was some talks there a few weeks ago…”
My thoughts on Schenn can be found here, but essentially, he’s another defenseman for whom the asking price is going to be very high just because Brian Burke is Brian Burke. He sells more lemons than a used car salesman.
What do Grossman, Gill and Schenn all have in common?
They each rank 8th on their respective teams in Corsi rating, which indicates whether more shots are directed at their own net or their opponent’s when they are on the ice. They each, in fact, have very negative Corsi ratings.
Unless the asking price on February 27 drops to a 6th round draft pick (which isn’t out of the question for the 11th place Canadiens), none of these trades is worth it when one looks at the bigger picture of the Flyers organization in 2012.
Although I don’t believe it has ever been formally stated by the front office, the Flyers are currently in the middle of a rebuild. Through their offseason moves, they have addressed to varying degrees of success their dearth of cheap, young offensive prospects and their inconsistent goaltending.
Leave it to Philly to rank 5th in the NHL during a rebuild year, but that’s the honest truth. Trading assets away only makes sense when you have a team that is a legitimate Stanley Cup contender before a trade, and adding depth is just to put you over the top.
The area that the Flyers will need to address the most in their second year of the rebuild is the defense. Assuming Chris Pronger does not return to the NHL, Matt Carle is lost through free agency and Kimmo Timonen retires after next season, the Flyers have just Braydon Coburn and Andrej Meszaros under contract.
In terms of immediate depth, they have Erik Gustafsson and Marc-Andre Bourdon, but they are still question marks during their rookie seasons.
Who’s left with the Phantoms? Matt Walker, Oskars Bartulis, Kevin Marshall, Oliver Lauridsen, Blake Kessel, Brandon Manning, and Tyler Hostetter. None of these players projects to be more than a 5th or 6th defenseman at this point (though neither did Bourdon, so there’s still hope).
If the Flyers hold onto their draft picks this year, they have a legitimate shot of restocking the cupboard with future top four defensemen rather than continually “throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” so to speak.
Imagine the youth on this team in two years with young, homegrown top-four defensemen. Shouldn’t that be the goal instead of putting all of our hope in a trade deadline acquisition?
For the latest Flyers news and updates, you can follow me on twitter (@JoshJanet).
Who the hell down there in Philly is watching TSN??
I believe the Fly-boys will wind up with two new blue-liners. My $$$ goes with Grossman & Schenn. Where there is smoke there is fire. I kept hearing for the last several weeks of them making multiple moves & the same names keep coming up. It has always been Weber, Suter, Grossman, Gleason, & Schenn. Would be nice to get my boy Weber, but it is a little pie in the sky right now.
Josh, ESPN or Ecklund mentiond JJ. Would you trade JVR for Jack Johnson, straight up? I SURE would. After JvR’s raise kicks in next year, their salaries will be about the same cost for the same amount of time.
Can you imagine if they got Jack Johnson this year, let Carle walk and signed Weber or Suter??? GOLD
Kimmo-Suter
Johnson-Coburn
Mez-Gus
^^^ ’12 – ’13 ^^^