elmatus

i get what you’re saying. I’m not sure i agree with the idea they don’t give a fck though. I still think the most logical reason why these core players have led to nothing more than a bubble team at best over the last decade is that they’re just not good enough. put another way, it seems far more likely last season was an anomaly than assuming the one reasonable season out if the last ten was somehow indicative of this team’s ability. and even then, they were wrecked once they got to the games that actually mattered, which only reinforces the idea that last reg season was an outlier for this crew.

Last season P/PG (69 games max): Couts: 0.86 (59) Voracek: 0.81 (56) Giroux: 0.77 (53) AVG g/pg: 3.4 This season P/PG (56 games max): Couts: 0.91 (41) Voracek: 0.81 (43) Giroux: 0.80 (43) Avg g/pg: 2.9 The three players most expected to carry our offense scored at a higher clip per game this season than last. Those numbers were good enough to rank the team 6th in goals for last season and 19th this season. League-wide, teams appear to be scoring way more this season. So despite those three being more productive, we slid to being way lower down the list. The one very noticeable difference offensively is TK, who only had about half the p/pg avg this season he had last season. Is he just in a slump? Hopefully. Was last season an anomaly for him? Hopefully not, but it's certainly possible. Did something else happen to him to throw him off his game? Bad conditioning? Drugs? Covid? Who knows? And for folks who don't like stats, I've watched the Bruins/Caps, Habs/Leafs, and Panthers/Bolts to date, and I have zero doubt whatsoever that all of those teams are significantly better than our current Flyers roster. They're faster. They're way more skilled, and they pressure the puck in a way our team hasn't done in ten years. We need far far more than some 30ish vet dman to salvage this mess. And for the record, I would have taken an in-his-prime Lucic any day of the week, as would any true Flyers fan if we're being honest. I'm not sure he can skate anymore though, so he's probably not worth the effort.

I agree with you that a vet won’t make this current team relevant. That said, it’s definitely true that a good team can be aided by getting a veteran presence on the ice. That’s certainly not rare. Most times this happens in the form of rentals obtained at the deadline, and there’s any number of teams who go on deep runs with that. But yes, i agree with you that bringing in a vet won’t be enough for this squad. This team has far more important needs right now — needs that won’t be solved by getting some sort of grizzly vet. It’s also worth noting that it’s not like any vet can do what would be asked in this case. We have plenty of « vets » right now, but it’s not helping our major issues. We need firepower first and foremost, and we also need an improved defense core. A solid dman vet might help with the second point, but not the first.

I remember when MacKinnon played for the WJC team... he was amazing. There really was no doubt he was going to be a stud, and it wasn't surprising when he was picked first overall. There could be tons of reasons why a guy like NAK had more pts than a far more skilled MacKinnon. At the end of the day though, that's definitely not going to be a good comparison. If anything, all that proves is that potting a bunch in junior is not the only yardstick of note. Another player I remember owning the Q was Conor Garland, who put up amazing pts in junior. Despite that, he wasn't seen as a top pick, and he hasn't become any kind of franchise player either. He's alright, just like NAK is alright, but he's not going to anchor a team despite having been amazing in juniors. tl;dr version: Juniors can be an okay predictor of NHL success, but it's definitely not a straightforward comparison. The NHL is ripe with piles of players who were great in juniors and mid to bottom six once they hit the big leagues.

i think he should still be a reasonable replacement for Pitlick. He’s young and figuring things out. There’s definitely a danger though if the brass are overvaluing him. I don’t think they are mind you. My point in saying he’s not a major problem is simply because i don’t see him as a core player on an NHL team. Much like Pitlick, which i think is a fair comparison in terms of ice time and line placement. NAK should become a serviceable mid to bottom six player. If he can pot in a handful of goals in the process, great, but i’m certainly not going to expect too much of him. More importantly, until we get a proper core of good players, this team isn’t going anywhere. When i say he’a not a major problem, that’s pretty much what i mean. He doesn’t have the skill level to provide what we need most right now.

To be honest, I don't really see NAK as a major problem on this team. Sure, he can and will get better, but he's always going to be a supportive piece anyway. What we need are core pieces that can anchor a team. NAK can play well enough to secure a proper mid-six physical presence kind of role all he wants, but that alone won't be nearly enough to make this team into a contender. Again, I'm definitely happy to see he wants to get better. I just don't see his impact on the team being so significant really.

Welcome! I agree with much of your post. I would say though that two weeks is a small enough sample size to consider them as the anomaly and not the other way around. As far as firing AV goes, I'm not really sure I care either way. Fact is, AV was brought in to bolster a team that management felt might be on the cusp of being a contender. He has always been in those types of positions. AV has never been the coach of a subpar team (until now). It's entirely possible he doesn't want to be and may want out of his own accord as the team enters what should be a proper rebuild. If that's the case, then fine. It's likely not the best idea to keep a coach who doesn't want to be in his job in the first place. That said, if he does decide he wants to stick around and try his hand at a rebuilding club for the first time in his career, then we may as well keep him. He may be unproven in this role, but he's still a very experienced NHL coach. No coach is going to perform a miracle with the tools currently on offer anyway. I would definitely be rid of his entourage though -- therrien, yao, lappy -- all of them should be gone pronto.

Jones has only one year left. He'll either be asking for a significant raise or to be sent to a contender, and quite possibly both. There's a good chance he doesn't want to play for a team that struggles to even make the playoffs. He's on a team like that already and apparently wants out. I also don't want us trading away 1st round picks any time soon. We need to hit on one of these guys to give us some superstar potential going forward, and virtually all players who become truly elite are taken early in the first round. We're shooting ourselves in the foot if we start doing that right now. Honestly, this team doesn't need to get anyone as far as I'm concerned. They need to shed dead weight (Voracek), move players that still have value (Giroux), get rid of awful contracts (Hayes), and suck for a season or two, so that we can get a couple shots at landing some true top flight talent in the next bit. I've mentioned before how much I really like Jones a lot. If we were a Jones away from contending, I'd be all over it, but we're not a Jones away from contending. He's not going to start hitting 80-90+ pts a season. We need someone who will, maybe even two someones.

There was a rumour the brass was looking at Bernier. I'd be alright with that honestly. We're not going to get some sort of gamebreaker in a trade. He'd be good enough, likely wouldn't cost a fortune, and still has some years in him. Not sure what other options might be around, but I'd be fine with Bernier.

Narrator: They did.

I don't hate him, but it seems like a stretch that we'd land him. If he chooses to leave Carolina, he's going to have his pick of suitors. I can't imagine he'd be very interested in the Flyers with what we have going right now. I mean, he might if Fletch offers him some absurd overpayment, but at that point I'm not sure we'd like what we get for the money. He's a good player, and you described his challenges quite well. I'm just not sure this team is a fit for a guy like him right now. You're also about to take some flak for the fact he isn't a physical crease-cleaning kind of guy. Better get that s*** shield ready.

To be honest, I feel like we're agreeing on far more than not here. The only difference is maybe in what value Giroux and Hayes have, and what could be obtained in a trade. I'm of the mind a decent GM should be able to get a 1st round pick and a prospect for a guy like Giroux. And I believe we should do that, because this team needs a rebuild, and that to me starts with getting as many of those things as possible. Hayes won't fetch that return of course. He's not a 80pt playmaker and former team captain. I feel like maybe we disagree a bit on his skill though. I think he is actually a pretty good two-way mid-six centerman in this league, and I think he could be exactly that on a contending team. I think contending teams both want and need that kind of center depth, and that's exactly what he provides. He reminds me a lot of a Jordan Staal type, who was moved from *spit* Pittsburgh to fill a bigger role in Carolina. Now, unlike Staal, Hayes' contract is awful. So I've no doubt he'll be harder to move than Staal was at the time. But that to me is exactly what separates a good GM from a bad one. Hayes is a test for Fletch. Can he move him? If so, what can he get in return? Hayes won't fetch a 1st rounder or whatever like Giroux should, but he really doesn't have to. The problem with Hayes for me isn't that he's a bad player at all -- it's that his contract isn't what a team needs as they look to kickstart a rebuild. Get rid of the anchor now while you can and before we're on the hook overpaying for a player who is a fourth line checking center at best. Voracek is kind of between the two. With good linemates, he produces better than a guy like Hayes, but he's not as productive as Giroux of course, and he doesn't bring the other more defensive intangibles that Hayes does fairly well. As a result, he's not likely to fetch a great return. This is why I say he may just be worth keeping in the end. I don't see the point of moving him for some 3rd round pick or whatever. I'd rather have the 50pts or whatever he's likely to put up next season. I do get what you're saying about Fletch likely being unwilling to part with Hayes because of his pride, or to part with Giroux even, because he may hold on to some faint belief that this core is actually plenty good enough and just needs yet another season to figure it all out. On that note, I'll put it this way: Fletch to me has done well enough for a guy who was brought in to tweak the team into a contending position. I don't believe this team is going to be a contender with the tools currently available, so now we get to see whether this same GM Fletch is capable of assuming a new role -- that of a rebuilder instead of a tweaker. Like you, I have my doubts on that. If he doesn't assume that role though, that will probably be a turning point for me personally. If we enter next season with this same core of players, I'll be forced to deduce that Fletch is just a crummy GM. That may be the truth of it, but I'm willing to give him the chance to prove me wrong at least.

i agree completely. To be fair, I’ve actually found Hayes to be pretty good. He’s definitely not the weak link on the team imo, and i can definitely see him being part of a contender. That said, his contract was always bound to be an anchor at some point. I very much hope it ends up being an anchor on some other team and not this one, which to me means he needs to be moved pronto, while he still has value. I’m not convinced too many team will want to take on that ridiculous contract, but if it’s any possibility at all, it has to be this off season. In fact, if only one person is moved this offseason, he gets my vote for sure. I hope he’s not the only one moved, but he should be the top of the list. i can’t believe I’m saying this considering how often I’ve lambasted him on here, but i would even say Jake is the one i care about moving the least. Mostly that’s because i don’t think he would net such a great return, unlike Giroux, and his contract isn’t for much longer anyway, unlike Hayes. So, for me, Hayes is one, and Giroux is two. Those two should both go. And then Jake should also be shopped around to see what he might fetch, and if some GM is willing to overpay for him, move him also.

Yeah, I mean, all teams have had that same struggle for one thing. Also, the rest of my post was all completely pre-Covid. I guess my point is: Successful teams are rarely ever a collection of a whole bunch of very good players. They're almost always built upon a foundation of excellent players and then supplemented with some pretty good ones. We thought Giroux and Voracek could be that foundation, and it turns out they really haven't been. That's not just a last year thing -- that's an entire decade's worth of seasons kind of thing. I'll do you one better: If Giroux and Voracek were in their mid 20s and had just "emerged", signing big contracts say last year, there's a very good chance I would be preaching how we need to give them a chance and see if this season was an anomaly and if they just need time to settle into being the core of this team... but that isn't where we're at now. They're not just entering their prime and likely to get better -- just the opposite. So the question then becomes, do we have anyone else on the current roster who is likely to be even better than those two were? Well, I think Couts is already better than Voracek, but he's really more Bergeron and less Pastrnak. That's great to have, but we need a Pastrnak. Giroux on the other hand has been a great playmaker throughout his career, but there's no cup in Washington with just Backstrom and no Gr8. And at this point, it's reasonable to assume he's unlikely to have any more 90-100pt seasons even there. So the problem we have is that we lack any of those elite caliber players. And unfortunately, these aren't guys who are typically added via trades. If we're to get any such player, we're almost definitely going to have to draft them. We could get amazingly lucky with a Kucherov, but that would be being very very lucky. If we want to turn the odds in our favour, the only real way to do that is just to have top picks in the first round, as that is where the vast majority of gamechangers are found.

Were they? I dunno. I remember watching a team that could barely scrape together wins vs a 24th overall habs roster that really wouldn't have even come close to making the playoffs in any other year... and then collapsing entirely and getting demolished with little to no chance against an Isles team in what would have been the actual first round of a regular playoffs. In fact, there hasn't been a year in recent memory where the Flyers haven't sucked for a large portion of it. They have had some streaky runs, usually somewhere around the latter half or third of a season, but that's really about it. Their records going into the new year virtually every year have been either awful or bubble-worthy at best. I admire their ability in those cases to perk up mid way through, but it wasn't the most inspiring performance really. Moreover, over those same ten-ish years, they only made the playoffs at all about half the time. And when they did, they almost always just got wiped clean in the first round. I was very willing to jump onto the Giroux/Voracek train for a while, but the truth is it really has not panned out at all. Those guys were meant to be the pillars this team was built upon, and it has proven to be just not good enough. That's not to say they're awful players -- and that really isn't what I mean to say. Giroux is a great player. He's just not enough. Voracek is an above average player, but he's likewise not good enough. Couts, Hayes... same thing. These guys amount to a pretty solid supporting cast. What we need is a primary protagonist or two, which we do not have.

Yeah, this seems a fair assessment to me. More importantly for me is how do we address the challenges on this team. This team is not performing and frankly hasn’t been consistently good for a decade now. In my mind, that means the roster isn’t cutting it, and that we’re crazy to think they will magically get measurably better. A failure is only truly a failure if you refuse to learn from it. bottom line for me is this team needs a rebuild. They need more skill. They need more snipers. They need better defense. They apparently also need better leaders. So let’s stop asking the current group to be something they’re not. Let’s move players that can get us good returns and start addressing all of the above needs.

Yeah, I agree with you for sure. The main issue is that not many teams are giving up those star caliber players. But hey, if Boston decides they've had enough of Pastrnak, or Edmonton thinks having Draisaitl is just too much, or Colorado figures they have too much elite talent on their foolishly stacked roster, please get them on the phone...

I mean, your first question would definitely mean not giving up first round picks, which I noticed some people have mentioned. We're not going to rebuild anything if we start handing away our single best chance at landing elite players. Aside from that, a good GM should definitely be able to get more picks and decent prospects for trading away Giroux/Voracek/Hayes, who should all be moved imo in the off season. Someone might take a Flyer on JVR too, but I'm not quite as hopeful on that one personally. As for your second question, yeah I dunno man. I hope so? But you're right in that this org really seems to be allergic to proper rebuilding, so it's hard to tell if they'd ever even bother trying, let alone be any good at it. The jury's definitely still out on that one.

I’d love to have Jones, but i don’t think I’d want to give away too much in terms of proper rebuild pieces. We need far more than just a guy like Jones. and i love Jones. He’s very near the top of my list personally.

You're not wrong about this, except the missing pieces includes not only a major upgrade on defense, but also about two full top lines. That's a lot to try and pick up in just an off season.

They're definitely going to be the biggest disappointment here on this forum. Individually, the feelings of disappointment will largely relate to simple expectations - reality. The more you felt this team might actually do well, the more disappointment you're likely to be feeling. For my part, I was pretty cautious about my optimism honestly. I won't say I'm not disappointed -- I am -- but I feel like I may not be quite as surprised as others around. The truth is, this team has been about the same for a while now. They have decent spurts, but that never seems to translate to real consistency across seasons. And then we have a now aging core of vets to boot, which doesn't exactly spell success as a formula. So yeah, I'm disappointed, but not super surprised really. I think the watershed moment for me was somewhere around 2-3 seasons ago. In my mind, that was about the time when the whole Hextall rebuild should have been hitting its stride. If that whole thing was to work, we should have seen some noticeable improvements around that time and going forward. That didn't happen though. Instead, all we've really had is more of the same mediocrity. That was a sign things probably weren't going to just magically work out. This team needs better talent. Full stop. We have some reasonably good supporting characters, including some more in the pipeline too, but that's just not enough to be truly competitive in this league. Without the addition of true top flight talent, I'm afraid we're doomed to some disappointment.

I think Hexy did what he could. He got some nice returns on guys like TK and Farabee. Frost may turn out decent too, and there are a couple others who should have a shot at a mid to bottom six spot in the next bit. He never really had early enough picks to mess up too badly. Even Patrick -- the only top pick we've had in the last ten years -- is almost certainly going to be the most disappointing 2nd overall in over a decade. He can't really be faulted for making the pick though. Every other GM would have made the same. Part of the problem is Giroux, but not so much for the reason people love to talk about. The hate is piled on high of late, but Giroux is one of the best point producers of the last decade. Those points have been good enough to keep the team on the bubble, and leaving us out of getting top picks to land franchise-level guys we can build around. At the same time, he really isn't one of those guys himself, so we've gotten the short end of the stick both ways. Take him out of the equation, and we were probably a bottom dwelling team over the last ten years. That could have meant landing an actual big name player like a Connor McDavid or an Auston Matthews. How different would our team be right now if we had that kind of player around. How about a Leon Draisaitl? MacKinnon? Barkov? We've never even had a chance at landing any one of those gamechangers because we've had Giroux throwing up ppg totals his whole career. That sounds like an awful thing to complain about, but the fact is having just that guy isn't enough to build a contender... it IS enough to "make the playoffs and see what happens though", and that has been the modus operandi of the team over this time span.

I can see where you're coming from. I do think having a proper sniper or two would have been very useful. Giroux in particular has been forced to make due without a proper sniper as a wingman over his tenure, and I do think the team has been measurably worse as a result. Again I think of a guy like Backstrom and what he would have been without Ovechkin firing in pucks. Not that any other team was going to have an Ovechkin really, but someone along those lines would almost certainly have helped a good bit. But we didn't have any of that. One big reason is simply because snipers are the kind of thing teams generally don't want to be rid of unless there's something sketchy about them to begin with. Every team places a high priority on scoring goals (for obvious reasons). Getting an elite sniper by way of trades virtually never happens, and that's for a good reason. I mean, the bankruptcy kid out in SJ was available, and I remember some folks talking about wanting to bring him on. He certainly doesn't shy away from throwing pucks at the net. He also appears to be textbook locker room cancer. So yeah, he's a sniper, but we probably would be worse off with him and not better. Those are the ones who actually hit the market while still in their prime. The far more tested and true way to get a guy like that is through the draft. I don't believe the lottery is rigged, and I don't think there's any reason to believe that. Moreover, any glancing at the outcomes of players over the last number of years shows that the vast majority of gamechanging caliber players are taken very early in the first round. Are they always that caliber? No, they're not. But virtually all of the names we might list off as being franchise level talent were taken in the top ten or even top five. That's not some sort of odd coincidence. I happen to think that type of player is highly needed in a salary cap world. Having even one guy who forces other teams to make a bunch of plans to contain is a massive advantage in a world where virtually every team has AHLers on the fourth line and new teams are handed out like candy at halloween, stretching out true talent across even more cities. There's a reason virtually all contenders have true gamechanging players on their roster (the vast majority of whom were drafted very very early in the first round). We don't have any such players. We don't have any in the pipeline right now either. And sure, we could try and get very lucky in nabbing a Kucherov somewhere later in the draft, but those are major exceptions to the rule. The draft is always a gamble, as you say, but it's one where the odds of success are much better near the very top. Not 100% as we all know (thanks Patrick), but nonetheless very good. I would love to come out here and talk about how what really let us down was the fact our scouting was awful and just didn't pick the right guy out of the three best players available. We really can't do that though, cause we've virtually never had a chance to get any of those guys.

Unless Hart starts churning out hat tricks, that just won't be enough. Besides, what we've seen from Hart so far is that he can be good and he can be bad. I certainly hope he's that level of goalie, and obviously he still has plenty of years to prove it, but we need to see more from him before making that kind of lofty claim I think.

I do think Giroux is worth that. He's a proven and consistent playmaking point producer who would make virtually any team's top six. I have no doubt there are teams who see their window being open right now who would absolutely love to get their hands on a guy like him. But yeah, the others that really need trading right now won't fetch that kind of return.