King Knut

I think the idea of a rental to make the playoffs comes with the contingency that they'd be signing someone more long term in the off season. But I too would rather see them lock in someone now. Kapanen is the wrong side and scoring way too much for Toronto to give up right now more than likely, but Toronto has a pretty glaring D man problem in that they only have one guy under contract for next season and he's currently on LTIR. A cap neutral trade of a fwd for a top 4 D man and a potential PP specialist to boot is a relatively smart move for them even if they lose the signing bonus. Toronto and the Flyers (Toronto even more so) have to worry about the cap far more than actual dollars spent. I think that's only true if they come out winning most of them. I genuinely don't think that if they lose 4 or 5 of the 7 away games add win 3 or 4 of the 5 home games, I won't be surprised and they'll be following exactly the same pattern as they are now because they haven't done anything to address the easily apparent problems. They won a hard fought game IN St. Louis. That's a sign that they can do it... but expecting them to be able to suddenly overcome a roster flaw without addressing the Roster Flaw in any way isn't a terribly good way to assess the potential of the team. It just shows you that the roster flaw you saw at Christmas and did nothing about remained a roster flaw at the deadline. We'll see. The Penguins game feels ominous. It's in Pittsburgh, they kinda handed it to the Pens before the break and the Flyers absolutely suck coming off long breaks.

I'm okay with this, but honestly, if they don't at least try putting G on the left side of the PP with Ghost back on the point (when Ghost is better obviously) and see if they can't make that work, then I don't know what the hell to do with Therrien. IF they can't improve the middle 6 (there's a good chance that guys like Ruby and NAK will just get better at it as they play more) then they have to AT LEAST try to fix the PP. Ultimately, AV and company really SHOULD be able to figure out how to make it so GHOST can help this team win more games. That said (and I've been saying this for a few years now since maybe Hak's 2nd season) if they're not even going to try to have Ghost help him, then they should damn well trade him for something they can use to help them. Hanging onto the guy and not utilizing him isn't going to help this team do anything. As far as I'm concerned, if Toronto is at all amenable, AV and Therrien have three weeks of games until the deadline to make Ghost more valuable to the team or I'm seriously considering Kapanen or Johnsson.

No. That was just stupidity. I said so at the time. I was FURIOUS with Clarke and Hitchcock for letting that go down. As I've said throughout this thread, I'm not crazy about moving Ghost either because the PP isn't good enough right now and Therrien has pretty much given up on Ghost at the point and Giroux down on the left side. It's a little crazy to me to trade Ghost when you're not even trying to utilize him the way he worked best. But I feel like this exchange is about "what if we traded Ghost? What would be best?" and to that ends, getting a LW or a C at middle 6 quality to help even out the bottom 6 is the only thing worth trading him for. I'm not so concerned about getting a longer term guy out of it for him right now because I feel like you can get that guy in UFA this summer, but if they can trade for an RFA type guy (Kapanen, Johnsson) then that pretty much solves that. I'd just hate sending Ghost to the Leafs, but it might be good for him too. That's the difference. I actually genuinely do wee them upgrading the middle 6 (and hence the bottom 6) as about as definitely as anyone can say, making them at least a second round playoff team. The bottom 6 being as weak as it is right now (almost exclusively because of Patrick and Lindblom and their improbable ailments) as being the thing that is keeping this team from being second in the division. Their pts.% at home is at .760. That's tied for second in the league. Their Points % away is at .440 which is an appalling contrast. If it was merely moderately worse at .600-.666 than their home record, they'd be the 2nd best team in the league. When they are away, the bottom 6 gets scored on and the top 6 are easier to shut down. We can talk on this board about intangilble perceptions like "guts" and "fire" and "compete", but the solution is simpler. The bottom 6 are predominantly inexperienced, AHL level talent. The "good" bottom 6ers like Raffl, Laughton and Pitlick have been in and out of the roster with injuries that have also coincided with big road trips. It's been a perfect recipe for road disaster. We still have a damn year until Seattle and the CBA expiration (and any hope for complicity buyouts) is another year after that. So Short of a miracle, we're stuck with JVR for at least another year, maybe two, so signing and keeping any top 6 talent before then is nigh on impossible. You might convince someone to take JVR for someone a little better than JVR if you toss in a Ghost. Other than a deal like that, the most realistic option for improving this team for both THIS YEAR and the next Two years after that is to trade Ghost or another D man (If it's Myers or Sanheim or Provo, I ain't listening) for a decent middle 6 forward. The more I think about it, the more someone like Johnsson or Kapanen from Toronto make sense. Can anyone think of another player like on a similar contract someplace else?

Change of scenery might help him and he might help Hayes on the 3rd. Could move Laughton back to Center and get Bunny back to the minors. Next year is next year. If we get a healthy Oskar back, I will gladly deal with the problem of too many LW's.

Moving Jake for Kapanen would defeat the purpose. We need our 3RW to be better than it is. He's having a pretty off season. Might not take Ghost.

I would love that, but it would have to be Jake or JVR. Jake's the better player and far more difficult for Fletcher to replace with Pageau, JVR has a slighty easier contract to unload, but... you know... he's JVR. I'm not sure what team is going to take either though as I'm not sure what team out there will have 7-8 million and is a Jake or JVR away from where they want to be.

I can deal with Kapanen. Especially on the Contract he just signed.Toronto might go for that. I honestly expected Fletcher to make a trade with Toronto for Ghost before the season started. I wasn't sure what we'd get back at the time, but I was surprised it didn't happen. Tucson83 mentioned Pageau and I like that because he's a center, but as a pending UFA, he'd just be a rental we likely couldn't afford to resign. Toronto isn't as deep on the right side. They may push for a NAK or someone for their trouble.

In hindsight, it really seems that Fletcher knew exactly what was going on with Patrick at the end of last year and he knew he needed Hayes. At the time I was mortified at the contract they gave hayes, but if you know you're down your prospective 2C and 2nd overall pick from two years ago, you kinda have to take care of business and Fletcher did the right thing in Hayes. I'd take Pageau in a heartbeat, but they've been reticent to trade within the conference in the past.

Frost and Farabee and a few others are the replacements in the pipe. Lindblom and Patrick aside, I still believe there is something to the thought that there is a Jake and G window closing. It's easy to say we're not inches from a cup because there are some big holes, but I think the team knows what they are (or at least I do and most of the covering press does) and they're actually kind of fillable. To think that there's no point in trying for the next three years when the team has handled the Caps, Penguins, Bruins, & Blues quite adeptly and competitively is a little defeatist IMHO. I don't know that I think Getz is the answer for this year or net, but I do know that if there's a way to include JVR, it gets 11 million off the cap by the end of next season and improves our 2C/3C significantly in that time. I just don't see how Anaheim does it in a way we'd like. I'm not sure you're going to get to move up high enough in a ghost trade for a pick in any event. If someone really solid is out there, no team who is a "ghost away" would trade it for a middling pick and Ghost... otherwise Ghost would be valuable enough to keep. I don't necessarily have the answer and I don't know how to ensure that Seattle takes JVR off our hands, and I STILL think it's pretty sad Therrien can't sort out how to get the PP going with Ghost at the point, G lower left and Jake on the right... BUT all that said, I do kind of almost think that the Flyers are a Lindblom and Patrick away from being pretty damned competitive right now. It's incredibly difficult not to think about "what if" especially when those two kids are going through what they are, but out of respect to them, I can't let myself do that. That said, it really shouldn't be impossible to pick up a bottom 6 piece or two that can truly help this team improve on the road... which is really where the problem lies.

This is one hundred percent accurate. It was so pervasive that it spread around the league. To the point that they had to have several league summits and "rules changes" -which essentially meant enforcing the rules that were already in place- over the 2000's. By 2008, the likes of the Penguins had successfully weaponized this crack down of existing rules to the point where they could evoke a PP at the drop of a hat in a close game by simply holding your stick and you'd get called for hooking. The league and the refs did it to themselves out of spite and bitterness. Today things are the most fair (which albeit isn't saying much) as I've seen since the late 80's. For my money, the game today is cleaner (meaning more fluid and less frustrating) and more enjoyable to watch as pure competition and sport than I'd say since 1994. I say that with the one caveat that I do believe the one area that has backslid is protecting the goalies. You're allowed to get away with infinitely more physically against a goalie than at any time in my lifetime. You can literally cross check a goalie in the crease and if enough time passes before your team takes a shot, the refs won't call anything. I'm of the mind that if you end up on top of my goalie after a play, then I pick you up and beat the living hell out of you. Except in today's NHL, I'd get a major and you'd score a PP goal for trying to break my goalie and getting away with it. This is a problem that needs to be addressed.

They'd have to take JVR back for that to be remotely possible. He's producing just fine offensively as well and his contract is only one more year, so it's not like he'd be a cap liability for long. I guess it could benefit both teams, but the Ducks aren't long on centers, so I'd assume they'd be fishing for Laughton or Patrick as well at which point it stops making much sense for the Flyers.

The other half of it is that Lindros directly lead to the clutch and grab era of the 90's that the NHL spend 15 years trying to undo. That was the only other way teams could slow him down and in the case of the Devils and the Redwings, it successfully lead them to multiple cups... except they called it "the trap" and got away with it. What it really was was assigning your biggest D man to grab onto Lindros whether he had the puck or not and not let go until you got the puck back.

I think this is a big part of things. Refs and the league didn't have their attentions necessarily forced onto it because cheap shots and dirty hits that would have taken Gretzky or Lemieux or someone out for a few weeks kinda just bounced off Eric. Things progress though and guys keep getting away with harder and dirtier crap and eventually they start to do real damage to the point that he's blowing knees taking mid air WWE style elbows to his head and vomiting yellow fluid from a collapsed lung. But nah... that was because he was soft and prone to injury. Such utter B.S.

Mom not the one who brought him up. I think someone did just as hyperbole to get us going. Obviously that’s not realistic. Unless for some reason Barzal or Peterson is on the table.

Made we still talking about Toffoli? I think we get him and a low pick for ghost. Easily. Unless someone else is crazier. They’re out. They know it. They’re collecting assets. If they can resign him, then they can still resign him (they probably can’t regardless). They’re not losing anything, they can only gain. But i’m Just not sure. As pointed out elsewhere ghost for a rental seems weak.

Yeah, like with Hayes and Saad.

He’s never produced top line numbers. He’s not a top liner. Just because the Kong’s don't have a more viable RW doesn’t change that. But whatever. Moving Frost for him is ridiculous.

He’s never produced top line numbers. He’s not a top liner. Just because the Kong’s don't have a more viable RW doesn’t change that. But whatever. Moving Frost for him is ridiculous.

Toffoli doesn't even have Hayes' numbers to tout let alone to ask for more. He's listed as a C sometimes, but if he's predominantly a RW as you suggest, he also doesn't get the "well he's a center" benefit of the doubt. There's no way he earns a Hayes sized contract let alone a Duchene one. Saad does help the bottom 6, which is the largest problem for this team, but the larger problem with Saad is his salary. Who else do you move to fit him in and how does that damage the team? Toffoli and Staal are much closer to fitting straight up.

As long as he waits until he needs it. Maybe just as a tool to shorten the cold streaks in between the hot.

Both Tkachuks make the list, yes.

Both should be banned or beaten to a pulp.

I think I kinda like it. There were rumors back when the Kings were in town that they were talking Carter, but I don't see how that helps much other than getting Giroux back to wing maybe... but if the alphabet soup line keeps producing, I don't see them trading JVR or moving GIroux off the wing. I just wish there was a realistic way of flipping Toffoli for JVR for next season, but no one has that cap space. If they did, they'd just sign Toffoli.

Toffoli? Won't be able to resign him unless they move JVR, but the age is right.

Toffoli maybe?