The 2021 offseason was filled with bold and audacious moves by the Flyers, going “all in” to ensure the team made the playoffs and competed for the cup in 2022. When the season ended, they found themselves in last place in their division, without Flyers’ legend Claude Giroux and very little cap space to make changes. The ledger would seem to indicate that most of 2021’s trades did not work in their favor.
Skeptical writers may have doubted the Flyers personnel strategy from the start (re-signing Scott Laughton rather than trading him) but being fair, if not generous, losing Ellis, Couturier and Hayes for large chunks of the season significantly altered Chuck Fletcher’s masterpiece for the worse. It is reasonable to ask if we ever really got to see Fletcher’s team play. But at this point, it is also fair to ask if it really matters.
The moment in time the Flyers were building for has passed. The team is much different than it was at the time of the Ellis trade. Gone are Braun, Brassard and Giroux. Ellis and his future in hockey are in question. Couturier and Hayes have suffered major injuries and there is no guarantee they will be as effective as they once were. Things have changed, and not much for the better.
The Flyers need to understand that whatever window they were chasing has closed and they are in a different circumstance. A roster without Giroux should make that obvious, but given the team’s recent personnel history it should be plainly stated, just to be safe. So where does that leave them?
The argument could be made that the 2022-23 edition will be even worse than last season’s last place team. There will be less talent on the roster, Giroux’s absence being the most notable. It is possible other key players will miss time with injury. The Flyers have proven that they lack depth to endure such setbacks.
There will be new inexperienced players in the lineup, who may make mistakes. It has been this regime’s mindset to show little tolerance for youthful growing pains evident by the departures of Aube-Kubel, Myers, and Patrick. This season they may have little choice beyond living with the mistakes and hope the youngsters learn from it. Sprinkle cap constraints and bad long-term contracts into the already depressing mix makes things look grim. But the real question is if the front office has done the same evaluation, or are they still chasing the dreams of the summer of 2021?
There are other perspectives and hockey is a strange game, and there is a possibility that the Flyers’ play better in 2022, but it is slim. If Ellis is healthy and provides Provorov his first competent partner since Matt Nisakanen retired, the Flyers could get 25 minutes of top tier defensive play each night. If Couturier and Hayes both return to form as bona fide 1Cs, it would give them strength down the middle.
If York, Zamula, Frost, Tippett and Allison all take giant developmental leaps, the Flyers would have youth playing well to compliment their veteran core. It could happen, but it is a lot that has to go right on a team with a history of things going wrong.
If the organization is disinclined to jettison the front office team of Fletcher and Scott and start fresh immediately, a plan can be laid out to start to resuscitate the struggling franchise. It will not be pretty but it would be a way forward.