aziz

Geebus, that was ten years ago. I'm freaking ancient.

Whole post season, yes, but that 03-04 series against Toronto is still the single best playoff series I've ever seen. Was a complete war. Go Esche and Burke!

True. That was some of the best cobbled together goaltending I've ever seen. These guys are all terrible, but look at them go! The Flyers were outclassed in so many situations, it was only above-class goaltending that got them that far. They ultimately buckled, but the flyers don't make the finals with a "better" goalie. They lose game six against Boston with anyone other than Leighton, guy had it going on at exactly the right time.

I don't know if it'd work out like that. For all the (justifiable) crap Leighton takes for that final goal (and maybe the finals in general), the guy was special up to that point. He's a crap goalie, but found some serious mojo that spring. Not sure that Flyers make the finals that year with anyone but him. Goaltending is weird like that.

if the season started tomorrow, the flyers would be cap-compliant. with no wiggle room, but still, cap compliant. matter of fact, as things stand, they could add $1.8mil in cap hit between now and then and still be ok. not saying the flyers ought to enter the season like that, but they don't *have* to do anything.

well, no. not everyone. clever negativity is an end unto itself, in some cases. as for VLC. i do find it kind of....lacking in anything resembling perspective for people to be upset about a finesse forward "needing" to be put into a top 6 spot to be in any way worth his contract. like that is some kind of unusual requirement. big money + primarily offensive talent = top 6 icetime. how effective would giroux be as a 4th line center? what if patrick kane were given 7 minutes per night plus powerplay time? of course someone like VLC needs top 6 icetime to even hint at being worth his contract. anyone acting surprised at that --much less finding some kind of umbrage with it-- is letting a legitimate dislike of the player get in the way of basic common sense. you are paying a guy $4.5mil/year, and every single bit of his upside is firmly in the offensive arena, then yeah, probably need to give him 16+ minutes a night if you want that contract to end up doing anything for your team at all. and here' the thing: frankly, VLC is the best 2nd line center option, with schenn moving up to 1st line LW (i'm a fan of umberger, but he has no business on the 1st line). and at that point, VLC is a good thing, and the flyers would have a tough to fill hole without him. and if, say, evander kane makes his way to the team without VLC going the other way, schenn would just slide over to the LW on the 2nd line. there is just no basis for all the "VLC is in the way" stuff. without him, schenn is the 2nd line C, and i don't think there is a worse matching of skill sets to position in the league than brayden schenn as a center. so, yeah. the whole "VLC is a problem" thing is a little overblown, and the indignation at him requiring top 6 icetime is more than a little silly. if someone comes in and proves they are a stronger second pivot in a year or two, then yes, there is cause for heartburn. right now, as the roster currently stands? none.

@brelic i think the question is: can the flyers promise him top 6 ice time? sounds like that was the issue with chicago, he doesn't want to have to work his way up, and chicago is deep up front. aside from not knowing if he can legitimately bump simmonds from the 2nd line (presumably he isn't kicking voracek out)....i can't say i'm real impressed with a player who has never played a professional minute demanding to be *given* top 6 minutes. if he is actually unwilling to earn a spot, to the point where he'd refuse his first NHL contract, refuse to even show to a prospect camp...do you really want him on your team? imagine how entitled a kid has to be to say, "no, NHL team, I don't want to come and show you what i can do, much less earn my way up the ladder. i want to go straight to the top of your depth chart, or i'm not interested." i gotta say pass.

i believe that in both cases, the signing bonus is part of the total value of the contract. how that actually works, math-wise, with a buyout or trade, i'm not sure. i would assume that since a buyout specifically involves the remainder of the money owed, it wouldn't factor in, as it has already been paid. i would think, however, that it is part of the ongoing cap hit, as the cap hit is the total value of the contract divided by the number of years....so, if traded, some portion of that signing bonus sits as part of the cap hit, and could be absorbed by the flyers, if they so decided. this is all predicated on my not thinking signing bonuses are counted in the same way as performance-based bonuses. i.e., i don't think year end bonus cushions can accept signing bonus overages. i'm not positive, though.

That's the difference between a no movement clause and a no trade clause. NTC, he can be sent to the minors, just can't be traded without input. NMC, can't do anything but leave him on the roster.

Ah, true. Still.

i dunno. stand in your drive way with a stick and a tennis ball, showing off your sick skillz, and who knows? dump truck of money or google street view car, either way is a win.

honestly, i can't think of another clearly NHL-caliber RFA who was just allowed to walk as a UFA. i'm sure it's happened and i'm just forgetting about it, but still. the level of "get the f#@k out" required to let that asset disappear with no possibility of return or compensation is intense. that's where my bad feeling is coming from. he is definitely a talent, definitely has upside, and if the price is right, could be worth a go, but...that's two teams over the course of 6 months that wanted him gone no matter what was or wasn't coming back. that's a pretty amazing thing.

well, there's the double edged sword of the offensive defenseman. subban had more even strength TOI during the regular season than markov, and about the same PP time...but subban doesn't kill penalties. not a good idea to have a guy who likes to dangle at his defensive blueline, trying to beat three forecheckers singlehandedly, while your team is down a man. markov's extra PK TOI (2:30 versus 0:40) pushed his overall above subban's. i don't know what's been offered or what has been demanded. i'll be real surprised if subban actually gets to a hearing. imo, this was a way for montreal to remove the threat of an offersheet while they come to terms. the dump truck full of money will be showing up in the next few weeks.

from what i understand, he had problems with tortorella, and then vigneault, and finally trotz. i don't know, i didn't pay a lot of attention to the rags' internal dramas, but traded for crap (and rangers fans figure they won that trade, fwiw), then healthy scratched by nashville, and then allowed to just walk away at 24. nashville didn't even try to get a 4th round pick for his rights, they wanted him gone. sounds like a terrible thing to add to the flyers' roster at this point. maybe the most informative thing i saw was this posted in the comments of an article talking about how he basically needs to get on his knees and beg a team to take him at this point: erdrick68 - Jul 6, 2014 at 11:28 PM His biggest problem is a seeming arrogance. He refuses to learn from his mistakes. I have no problem with young players making mistakes, but they should be making new mistakes which indicates they have worked to fix past problems. Del Zotto since 2009 and he still makes the same exact mistakes he made as a rookie. The reason his rookie season was his best was because teams didn’t yet have a detailed enough scouting report to exploit the holes in his game, but even then his play tailed off significantly as the season went on. He still plays the game like he’s in junior and just being more talented matters. Crosby doesn’t dominate just because of talent, he also works incredibly hard every off season to improve a weakness in his game, such as becoming an excellent face off man after the criticism began to mount. MDZ is like Ovechkin, once a book became available for beating him, they failed to adjust. For most of his career Ovie had that one, outside-inside, move and after defensemen started to finally work to prevent it, he had to adjust his play (after his first down season). smells like disaster for the flyers, to me.

and traded straight up for kevin klein, and then 6 months later allowed to walk as an unqualified RFA. that is a pair of pretty spectacularly terrible comments on what the teams that have owned him thought of his game. guys, the grass is not always greener. how many 24 yearolds can you think of whose teams shrugged their shoulders and just let the kid walk away unqualified?

personally, i think he's always been like that. 10 years ago, a well built team could include offense-only players like alexei kovalev or VLC and still be successful, so long as the rest of the roster rounded out enough to cover. i think it is still that way, really, or can be, but it takes a REALLY strong roster to do it. patrick kane gets all dizzy when he crosses over his defensive blueline, but it doesn't matter, his teammates are more than up to the task of making it ok. the VLC you see today is what happens when that kind of player gets older, suffers an injury that changes his game hugely, and loses the edge to that something special that made the offensive contributions outweigh the defensive oversight.

@radoran Yup, not following you at all. It makes some sense to me that adding a pure finesse player to a team that already had Hartnell, Simmonds, the two Schenns, Grossmann, couturier, Rinaldo, etc could be a goal. Not at all sure what you are getting at.

For what it's worth, I think that was the point of adding him. Mix it up and add some offensive flare, avoiding the truculence trap Toronto and Calgary have fallen into.

What if the LW was also 22?

The only issue I see are where he calls Schenn out, might make for an awkward camp.

You think? Seems to me they are back to having no actual top 6 wingers, Crosby is still incapable of maintaining focus in a 7 game series (and Downie is only going to make that worse), they've doubled down on an offense-only defense, and fleury is still in net. 110 points in the regular season, maybe. They're a worse team now than they were last season, though, more top heavy and more one dimensional...I have a tough time seeing them do a whole lot extra in the playoffs.

Yeah. They could have bought him out, but the window for buyouts closed Monday at 5pm.

I refuse to ever feel like the Flyers lost out on trading pitkanen.

@Irishjim i gotcha. i just think that "deep draft" means that the first 15 draftees have a good chance at being NHL players, rather than just the top 5. rounds 2 and 3 are the same old "probably not", and 2nd round picks can be grabbed for cast offs at the deadline. as for media hype, i'm not entirely sure it applies in this case. the kid really did put up 40 points as a rookie dman, and then really did lead all bruins in postseason scoring. that starts to not be hype and just be what he has done, you know? the really crazy thing is he went undrafted. all of this underscores my thought that the draft is a giant blackjack table, and the draft order is the seating position, right to left. i'd give up my seat at that table for a $10,000 chip in hand.

then again, this is exactly the kind of player you'd hope to draft with those picks. so, on the one hand, you have a, what, 33% chance of drafting an actual NHL player, and on the other, you have an actual NHL player who looks like he might become one of the best at his position. 33% chance of someone who can take a regular shift in the NHL versus an established NHL player with a better than even chance of becoming an NHL standout. dunno how you go with the 33% chance.