Flyers Need Self Evaluation and a Plan
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.
First, the Flyers will play with the core they have. Fletcher and Scott have the players they want, it would be fair to give them a chance to play together and hope for a season of relative health. This approach would require that the Flyers can’t trade for veterans to enhance this core. The team can’t withstand another trade where they lose two players and four draft picks for players like Rasmus Ristolainen.
The team will sink or swim with the mix of veterans and youth they have now. Though more of an imperative than a choice it would seem fair to give Fletcher’s team another chance with healthy players. Moving players with these wretched contracts under Fletcher’s watch may leave the draft pick cupboard completely empty.
The Flyers will need to keep Couturier, Ellis, Ristolainen and Hayes for the next three seasons. It would make little sense to make a deal similar to the Gostisbehere trade to clear cap space, not that his deal made any sense. Fine tuning will not make the difference on this team, the franchise must adopt a long-term view like Hextall had.
Selling the head coaching job for the Flyers will not be easy, since there will be little help coming in the way of better players. Further, there will need to be an understanding with the new coach that this team will be given a brief window to prove they can compete. This evaluation needs to be done quickly, if the Flyers are floundering, out of a playoff spot, by December it would be time to shift focus from winning this year to rebuilding as quickly as possible. That will require a change in the coaching staffs’ approach.
The top priority then becomes making expiring assets as attractive as possible to other teams. This means JVR and Sanheim will need to get heavy minutes and a lot of PP1 time, even though it will not necessarily translate to wins. It is a beauty pageant for assets you hope to unload at the trade deadline. The new head coach needs to understand this and buy into program, which is much easier said than done. Once the fire sale is complete, the team must focus on developing its’ youngsters, which means the kids will need ice time.
Speaking of the trade deadline, someone else needs to negotiate the trades. Maybe Briere, perhaps another unknown person, just not Chuck Fletcher. He is constantly getting the short end of the stick in trades and the team must stop hemorrhaging assets, immediately. The Flyers must start maximizing value of all their assets. They need to take the best deals they can, even if it is in the division or if it means helping a mortal enemy.
Focusing on the future is probably the best the team can do over this next season and while it does not get the team out of the hole, it takes away the front offices’ shovel and should prevent them from digging it any deeper. The following offseason, the Flyers will have $11 million in cap space cleared minus the Sanheim and JVR contracts. This gives the team a chance to reload, or continue the rebuild by taking unwanted contracts for prospects or picks.
It is pretty clear that this team will struggle to be competitive for a few seasons, and the fans will not be happy. This time, perhaps, the Flyers and their fans will learn that some things can’t be rushed.