No one should be surprised by yesterday's revelation that Matt Carle will test the open market when free agency starts on Sunday. It does not necessarily mean that the player will play elsewhere next season. What it does mean, however, is that the cost for re-signing him has gone up.

Things change in a hurry in hockey, especially when it comes to business dealings. The massive contract that Calgary signed Dennis Wideman to on Wednesday changed the landscape and almost certainly drove up the market value of Carle, who is a superior all-around player to Wideman and somewhat comparable offensively.

It is not the responsibility of Carle's agent, Kurt Overhardt, to be the guardian of the Philadelphia Flyers' salary cap. It's his job to get as much money as possible for his client (and, in turn, himself) from interested teams and for Carle himself to ultimately decide where he wants to play.

The Flyers have insisted all along that they are on the same page as Overhardt and Carle and believe they can get Carle re-signed at below market value. That may still be the case, but that market value has gone up -- perhaps by $1 million or even more.

The next step will be for Overhardt to turn a theoretical market value into a real one. After he fields contract offers for Carle from other teams, he will come back to the Flyers and tell them to get within a certain range of the highest offer. It will then be up to be up to Paul Holmgren (and Barry Hanrahan, who is the Flyers' cap-managing assistant GM) to determine if it makes sense to meet that price or allow Carle to depart.

The player himself has indicated that his first preference is to stay in Philadelphia. That does not -- and should not -- mean that he's not willing to explore other options. Loyalty only goes so far in business, especially one as cutthroat as professional hockey.

It's also a two-way street. The Flyers and every other team are only loyal to their players up to a certain point, both in terms of hockey and financial decisions. Why, then, should a prospective free agent place the needs and desires of the organization above their own?

The problem now for the Flyers is that the Carle camp now holds more power than they do. With the exception of Ryan Suter, there really is not a better alternative option on the relaticely weak free agent market for the combination of skills that Carle brings: puck movement, a bankable 35 points per season, breakout passing, durability, shot blocking (mostly of the stick-block variety) and somewhat above-average play in his own of the ice.

Certainly, Carle has his flaws. He is not physical. He turns over his fair share of pucks. He is not a true shutdown defender. He doesn't shoot hard or with tremendous accuracy. Nevertheless when the total package is weighed, he is somewhere a bit north of the middle of the pack among NHL defensemen. He's not an All-Star but he's closer to that than he is being a dime-a-dozen player who can be easily replaced in the lineup.

There is no shortage of defensemen on the market who are more physical than Carle. There are at least two -- Florida's Jason Garrison and Vancouver's 37-year-old and oft injured Sami Salo -- who possess much more fearsome shots from the point. But there are none outside of All-Star Game participant Suter who bring the array of skills and could easily step into Carle's role.

Of course, there also has been an upper limit on price. Suter, who appears unlikely to sign with the Flyers (but you never know what can happen), will set the top end of this year's market. He will likely pull in something a little bit above $7 million on a long-term contract. It would not be a stretch to expect Carle, in a bidding war scenario, to pull in offers of over $6 million, especially in light of what the Flames just paid Wideman.

Any hopes that the Flyers could re-sign Carle for under $5 million are now out the window. The club will now be lucky to get him for under $6 million. Overhardt knows as well as the team does that the blueline is weakened without his client.

Unfortunately, I don't think the Flyers are in a great position to go much above $5 million for Carle while also accomplishing their other offseason goals. They are vulnerable to another team blowing them out of the water on Carle, while also driving up prices on alternative options.

There has to come a certain price point the Flyers won't go beyond for Carle. Be clear on one thing: No matter what they do, they're going to end up overpaying. It doesn't matter whether it's re-signing Carle or signing someone who comes at a lower price. Relative to what the player brings on the ice, the price tag will be excessive.

The choice right now is to pay a good-but-not-great Matt Carle like he's a perennial All-Star or to pay someone else with his own set of limitations about what they had initially hoped to pay Carle.

In terms of cheaper alternatives within the Flyers' system, Erik Gustafsson is about the only one with a game similar to Carle's. But I doubt the Flyers would be comfortable with banking on Gustafsson to step into that big of a role. Nor should they.

When everything is weighed, the late-blooming Garrison may be the best available free agent alternative. The 27-year-old does carry some risk, however, because he pretty much came out of nowhere offensively last season while being paired with Brian Campbell.

Originally an undrafted and unheralded rookie free agent out of the University of Minnesota Duluth, Garrison only made $675,000 per season on his about-to-expire contract. That contract alone shows how far he's come in his mid-20s.

Garrison never carried much offensive responsibility until recently. His big offensive season (16 goals, 33 points) in 2011-12 may have been a fluke. However, he has been reasonably solid in his own end of the ice for the last few years. He is not as mobile or as good of a passer as Carle, but he's big (6-foot-2, 218 pounds per NHL.com) and doesn't take a lot of penalties. Garrison was credited with 127 hits and 124 blocks last season for the Panthers.

Some folks have expressed concern that Garrison will turn out to be a one-year wonder like Jeff Finger. I think he's a better player than Finger ever was, even in Finger's cash-in 2007-08 season that he turned into a big free agent contract that the Toronto Maple Leafs soon regretted when they realized Finger was, at best, a sixth or seventh defenseman now being paid $3.5 million per season for four years.

I view the worst case scenario with Garrison being more like that of paying a fourth-defenseman caliber player as if he's a bonafide top-pairing player. I'm not sure if he'll score that many goals again in a season but I do think he'll be a decent two-way defenseman wherever he goes.

A British Columbia native, Garrison has expressed interest in playing for the Canucks if he does not re-sign with Florida. Of course, as previously stated, things can change in a hurry in the business of hockey. That goes for Garrison and even Ryan Suter as well as it does for Matt Carle and their current and prospective future teams.

A few weeks ago, prior to the James van Riemsdyk trade to Toronto, I presented another possible alternative: exploring the availability in trade of Winnipeg's Tobias Enström, who can become an unrestricted free agent after the 2012-13 season. The cost would be high, both in terms of trading assets and the expense of a contract extension. Enström could be the second most-coveted UFA defenseman next summer after Nashville's Shea Weber.

The benefit, however, would be that the Flyers could get a player who is a legitimate upgrade on Carle at a cheaper one-season cost ($3.75 million) than Carle will get for next season. Even if Enström is signed to a massive contract extension that takes his cap hit above the $7 million mark, the big jump won't kick in until the 2013-14 season, by which time the aging Kimmo Timonen's $6.3 million cap hit comes off the books.

Unfortunately, with JVR already traded to Toronto for Luke Schenn, the Flyers realistically have less to use as trade bait for someone such as Enström. They aren't going to deal Brayden Schenn or Sean Couturier. So what does that leave? Players such as Matt Read and Wayne Simmonds are desirable to most any team, but they aren't the types of young players that can be used as the biggest lure of a trade package.

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Yesterday, the Flyers officially announced the schedule and roster for their 2012 prospect camp at the SkateZone in Voorhees. The schedule is as follows:

Monday, July 9: 9:00 am – 12:15 pm
Tuesday, July 10: 9:00 am – 12:15 pm
Wednesday, July 11 Trial on the Isle (Stone Harbor, NJ)
Thursday, July 12: 9:00 am – 12:15 pm
Friday, July 13: 9:00 am – 12:15 pm
Saturday, July 14: 9:00 am – 12:15 pm
Sunday, July 15: Camp Scrimmage – 9:00 am

Most of the Flyers' top prospects, including 2012 first-round pick Scott Laughton and forward prospect Nick Cousins, will participate in the camp. All of the club's 2012 draftees with the exception of Valeri Vasiliev are slated to participate.

Goaltending prospect Niko Hovinen will not attend because he is still rehabbing from hip surgery. He should be fine for training camp in September. Forward prospect Marcel Noebels is also not attending.

As with most summer prospect camps, the Flyers have also invited a host of unaffiliated players (undrafted and/or unsigned by the organization) to take part in the camp along with their recently drafted and Phantoms-affiliated prospects.

Among the free invitees scheduled to participate are numerous young players with family ties to current and former members of the organization, including Trevor van Riemsdyk (JVR's brother), Greg Coburn (Braydon's brother), Chase Hatcher (Derian's son) and John Stevens (son of the former head coach). Also attending are 2009 Flyers draftee Nick Luukko (son of Comcast-Spectacor president Peter) and Kyle Mountain (son of Steve, a longtime NHL agent based out of Bryn Mawr).

Chase Hatcher, a left winger for the OHL's Peterborough Petes, was ranked 174th among North American skaters by Central Scouting prior to the 2012 Draft. He went unselected. He split last season between the London Knights and Peterborough, registering a combined 5 points (1 goal, 4 assists) in 35 games. Previously, the younger Hatcher played hockey locally for Team Comcast.

The one unaffiliated invitee who may have a legitimate shot at a tryout invitation to the organization's more formal training camp in September is Blainville-Boisbriand Armada (QMJHL) left wing Chris Clapperton. Ranked 199th among North American skaters, Clapperton also went unselected in the 2012 Draft.

However, the 18-year-old is coming off a strong rookie offensive season in the QMJHL, in which he tallied 55 points (18 goals, 37 assists) in 56 regular season games and nine points in 11 playoff tilts. The reason why Clapperton was not drafted: he stands a mere 5-foot-9 and weighs just 166 pounds.

A year ago, undersized Tomas Hyka impressed the Flyers in a preseason tryout after going unselected in the NHL Draft. The club was interested in signing him to a free agent contract but Hyka turned out to be ineligible because he had played the previous season in his native Czech Republic. In Clapperton's case, the player would be eligible for an entry-level contract (which would not count against the reserve list limit under the "slide" rule) if the organization is suitable impressed.

Incidentally, Danny Briere and Ian Laperriere are both minority-share owners of the Armada club on which Clapperton plays.

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