dilbert719

Fair. But Holmgren has only himself to blame as far as the current state of the Flyers. ... Bryzgalov and Pronger...

Unless I'm missing something, the Bryzgalov signing was an ownership mandate, not Holmgren's decision, so I don't see where he should take blame for that. I'll grant you the botching of the Pronger contract, but acquiring Pronger the player was the right call, and he probably still would be quite good if his eggs didn't get so thoroughly scrambled.

Homer has been a very good GM, by and large, and he's had a lot less to work with than Shero. Doesn't mean Shero's not good at what he does, and it doesn't necessarily mean Homer's better than he is, but it does make it hard to compare the two.

"You Gotta Have Heart: How Grit, Dedication, and 60-Minute Effort Saved Our Season" - Peter Laviolette

You are correct, sir!

Good guess, but no.

If anyone's interested in a hint, let me know and I'll provide one, but for now, I'll let it go a bit.

Cool. So, let's see...

I fully expect this one to be one-shot, but it was the first mask that came to mind.

That's Robert Esche.

http://flyers.nhl.co...s.htm?id=640084

https://twitter.com/...643033447907328

Don't know how much this cost the team, but I'm certainly happy to hear that we locked him up.

Edit: Anthony SanFilippo's said that he's hearing $33M, $5.5M cap hit.

Also Edit: And Panaccio's saying $28.5M, $4.75M cap hit. I like his numbers better.

Eventually, he will. If not before then, once he reaches free agency, we will sign him. Until that point, it depends on whether or not Anaheim wants too much in return for him.

No, they don't. Once an offer sheet is signed, Weber cannot be traded anywhere. If Nashville declines to match, they receive four 1sts/can work out a deal with Philly to return some of them for other compensation, but the only teams he can play for now are the Flyers or Predators, if they match.

Trading of rights is only relevant in the period before FA opens, when a team can acquire the rights of an impending UFA to allow them an exclusive pre-FA negotiating window.

Just saw this on hfboards:

Weber: "I signed long-term with the Flyers because I want to win a Cup, and this seems like the easiest way to wind up doing that in LA."

I don't care who you are, that's funny right there. [/LarryTheCableGuy]

You might want to find another measuring stick other than one of the best defenseman of all time.

What are the appropriate measuring sticks for the best defenseman active today? The previous best defenseman seems a logical one to me.

On a vaguely related note, I fully expect the new CBA to modify the 35+ contract thing. Instead of contracts signed over age 35 not coming off the cap, I think it'll be contracts that take players past age 35 won't come off if they retire. Basically, shift the provision from date of signing to the end of the deal. That'd probably help put the kibosh on ludicrously long-term deals without outright putting a max years limit on them.

Bryz is about a 2 week span away from being a total loss (1 bad year I can cope with, anything beyond that is a big problem).

Put Shea Weber in front of Bryzaster for the next 8 years, and that'll go a long way towards fixing his problems.

How about Bruno Gervais? According to Sam Carchidi, the Flyers are going to sign him.

Guesswork. It's a crappy way to do it, and I'm sure they'll push to get it installed sooner rather than later. Just not sure how far apart the groups are. I doubt anyone wants a stoppage like a few years ago.

The other thing that seems plausible is for the two sides to come up with some mechanism that enables a transition from one cap to the other. Similar to the 23% rollback from the last cap, though that didn't work as well as they intended. Maybe it'll be something to the general effect of any contract signed under the previous CBA shall remain in force at a cap hit of the average annual value - x%, where x% is the difference between the cap as of the expiration of the old CBA and the cap enforced by the new one. Probably also an element where for each year the new CBA is in force, there would be a reduction in allowable savings, so that players' contract value eventually will be enforced in full, but it won't take up massive chunks of the cap all at once.

That way, teams have some transition time, as players under longer-term deals would slowly reach their full cap value, and they'd have more room under the cap to make it all fit.

With Timo and Mez out, Walker too expensive, and Bart and Bourdon hurt, if they must call someone up, we're looking at someone from the pool of Blake Kessel, Brandon Manning, Oliver Lauridsen, Tyler Hostetter, and Dan Jancevski (The only remaining defensemen on our 50-man.)

We'd probably either take Lauridsen if they think he's ready for NHL minutes, Jancevski if they want a veteran to step in, or play a forward out of position, which might actually be our best bet. Either way, this only comes up if yet another defenseman gets hurt before someone comes back from injury.

Kane is mentioned but not compared, why?

At a guess, JVR, Couture, and Benn are all of similar height and weight, and play somewhat more similar styles to each other than any of them do to Kane. Comparing any of them to Kane is like comparing Wayne Gretzky to Mark Messier. Messier would come off worse in the comparison from a purely statistical standpoint, but his role on the ice and off is entirely different, and if Gretzky were asked to play Messier's game and vice versa, the two would be substantially lesser for it. It's more accurate to compare like to like, so Kane was kept out of it.

Something is cooking and cooking hot. Just heard from someone I know Homer and his team has been actively on the phone basically since 7 AM, mainly with 3 teams: Colorado, Vancouver and Columbus. A 3-way deal is a real possibility. Edmonton and Tampa are also mentioned. No furtehr details but stay tuned.

My only question is what the crap we'd want from those teams. Obviously, Vancouver has Schneider, Colorado... all I can think of is Giguere, and Columbus, we're not going for Nash I don't think, and Mason's pretty terrible. Pahlsson, maaaybe?

Anyone have ideas?

. . .and Dustin Brown (LA) just became available.

C'mon, Homer - that kid was born to be a Flyer. Make it happen!

This leaves me wondering idly what the cost might be for a Brown/Bernier package to come Philly's way.

Bryz is an emotional guy. Philosophize with him about his place in the universe, and I'm sure it'll be a moving conversation.

If you want to trade him, though, good freaking luck.

Oh, no, that's terrible!

Is the puck OK?

Well, hopefully someone over there knows what the Philly media is like. They won't take it so hard if they realize that it was the lowly Sam Carchidi slagging them off, instead of someone worthwhile like Meltzer.

As mentioned before, Rick Nash isn't the player we need to be considering trading one of our two young guns for. However, the more general point you're going for is "if trading one of the two is mandatory to bring in a superstar, which one goes?" Changing that superstar to the far more logical and useful Shea Weber probably cuts off the whole "why would we trade for Rick Nash" argument that derails the thread.

So, if trading one of them (and some other pieces) gets me Shea Weber, I tend to agree with the general consensus: Couturier is the guy to keep. For a team with as shaky a goalie situation as we've had since Parent retired, the stouter our defense in front of the goalie is, the less likely he is to hurt us. Couturier's going to bring less offense than Schenn does, but is going to be a lot more help on the back end. High scoring games are exciting, but winning trumps that, and the better team defense you play, the more likely you are to win.

It is called critical thinking, not baseless. Carle is a little pricey, and the Flyers are over the cap. The Flyers just acquired two defenseman. Something has to give.

Try thinking for yourself one day, if you can get away from being an *** for a few seconds.

Hrm. I think you might have misunderstood me. I was calling my own speculation (Carle to NYI) baseless, not yours. Self-deprecation, and all that. Unless, of course, you were calling me an *** for making fun of myself, in which case, by all means go ahead.

Carle might be gone I would think.

Baseless speculation ahoy!

Exhibit A: our goalies suck.

Exhibit B: we added 2 defensemen in, what, 48 hours? Too many defensemen, not enough time.

Exhibit C: we are over 50 contracts, therefore must package players.

Therefore:

Islanders get Matt Carle, Jon Kalinski (or some other schlub)

Flyers get Evgeni Nabokov and whatever else.

WARNING: Baseless, sourceless, almost certainly truth-free content. But what the hell.