Free Agency: Day 1 Recap

A slow, drawn out day was the opening of free agency 2012. Lots of talking. Lots of posturing. Not much action. As reported earlier on this site the Flyers jumped out right away and re-signed Leights to a one year deal. There’s no guarantee he will even be on the big club’s roster at the start of next season, but he is pretty solid veteran back-up. It was not a bad idea to lock him up just in case they can’t get anybody better and with Biron signed and Clemmensen and Mason getting scooped up earlier today Leights may be their best (and more importantly cheapest) option.

The most recent update out there that’s official is that Garrison is now off the market and will be heading to Vancouver for 6 years at $4.6 million per year. Wouldn’t of been a bad signing if the Flyers brought him in. That’s much cheaper than Carle will probably sign for. Although Garrison would not be used as the back bone of the defense here and Carle will play a much bigger role if re-signed so the money does balance out. 6 years is a mighty long time though to give a guy who has 1 good NHL season under his belt. And also had that great season in Florida. It will be very interesting to see how Jason handles Vancouver. And how Vancouver handles Jason. Other notable defensemen take off the market today are Hal Gill (to Nashville), Corvo (to Carolina) and Souray (to Anaheim).

The big news of the day is that there is no news on the 2 big free agents – Parise and Suter. The huge news for Flyers fans regarding those 2 is that we were (and still are) in on BOTH of them. Don’t ask where the cap room is going to from. Don’t ask how many players would need to be moved to bring these 2 monsters in. If it happened it would be nearly impossible not to be extremely excited, but on the other hand I don’t know what we will lose and how much we will lose if we brought those 2 in. This team was ripped apart and put back together last offseason and you can’t go doing that 2 seasons in a row. Chemistry is very important both on the ice and in the locker room and constantly re-shuffling the deck causes an interruption in both of those areas. According to Tim Panaccio the contract offers for both were 12 years in length and worth AT LEAST $80 million each. If both accepted (which is highly unlikely) the Flyers would likely have a flurry of trades ready to go in order to accommodate the ridiculous amount of cap space that would need to be freed up.

Unfortunately I actually believe the Flyers have a lot better of a shot at signing Parise than Suter. Plain and simple reason is that Suter does not seem interested in playing anywhere on the east coast. Parise no doubt would make the Flyers offense unbelievably better. He is a player I believe would actually fulfill a 12 year deal by playing at a high level for every year of that deal. The real issue is that the Flyers do not have to do this at this time. The Flyers offense was just fine last season and even though Jagr probably won’t return there’s no reason to shake up the forwards to bring in this kind of a player and contract.

There’s no reason to believe that the Flyers won’t sign Parise. The Flyers front office is a bunch of heavy hitters. They seek out the top guy and they do everything they can to bring him in. I will be the first person to celebrate the signing if it happens because Parise is a stud and an offense with G and Parise is just a deadly offense, but I just hope the roster moves that have to be made to bring him in are not too monumental. It does not seem that neither Parise nor Suter will make a decision tonight. Tomorrow seems to be decision day for them which also means Carle’s decision day will also be tomorrow. The losers of the Suter bidding will no doubt climb all over each other to get to Carle as he will be the defensive cream of the crop at that point.

Sam Carchidi tweeted at 8:15 that Homer said he was still at work could not meet with the media. Very interesting. Maybe the Flyers day is not over yet…Or they are setting up for tomorrow.

-John LaMarra

Twitter – @popesnipes77

E-Mail – lamarrajunior@yahoo.com