Flyers Need To Go All In On Dougie Hamilton
The hottest commodity of the summer among defensemen this year is Dougie Hamilton, and for good reason. The 28 year-old right handed defender posted 10 goals and 32 assists in 55 games while managing a +20 rating, a 58.7 Corsi-For Percentage, and a 103.3 PDO for the Carolina Hurricanes this past season.
Hamilton is a player that teams are salivating at the opportunity of potentially signing, and the Flyers should wholeheartedly be at the top of the list for his services after how much they struggled along the blue line in 2020-21.
Defensive Success in 2019-20
The Flyers clinched the Eastern Conference’s top seed in the round-robin tournament ahead of the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs and won a playoff series for the first time since 2012. They lost in the second round in seven games to the New York Islanders. They trailed the series 3-1 but fought all the way back to take the Islanders to the brink before losing in the decisive seventh game.
A lot of the Flyers’ success in the 2019-20 season was attributed to general manager Chuck Fletcher’s acquisition of veteran defenseman Matt Niskanen from the Washington Capitals. Niskanen was able to alleviate the defensive workload from young standout Ivan Provorov and help bring balance to a defensive group that featured developing younger players like Travis Sanheim and Phil Myers. Veteran Justin Braun was also brought in, and defensemen Shayne Gostisbehere and Robert Hägg had up-and-down seasons.
Defensive Nightmare for the 2020-21 Flyers
Fast forward to the 2020-21 season, when Niskanen was no longer with the team as he abruptly announced his retirement shortly after the 2019-20 season. The Flyers made virtually no changes to the blueline with the exception of signing offensive defenseman Erik Gustafsson, a.k.a. Swedish Shayne Gostisbehere, and things went nowhere near according to plan. The Flyers suffered perhaps their most disappointing season in franchise history considering the expectations that were laid upon them.
The Flyers started the season very well, as they accumulated a 8-3-2 record through the first month and were contending for the top spot in the East Division, but their play began to drastically slip. After a historically terrible month of March where they went 6-10-1 and allowed a whopping 75 goals against, the most in a single month in the franchise’s 53-season history, Philadelphia found themselves on the outside looking in in the playoff hunt and could never recover. The Flyers were sellers at the trade deadline, ultimately finished 6th in the division, and missed the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs to make it yet another excruciating year of alternating between making and missing the playoffs.
The Flyers’ issues could never be pinpointed to one specific factor, but their defensive shortcomings were the most glaring of their problems. Philadelphia did not properly address their defensive issues in the offseason at all and ultimately paid a major price for it, but this offseason they can try and make up for it.