Update: Hall Gill has signed for a one year, $700,000 deal.
SHOULD FLYERS CARRY EIGHT DEFENSEMEN THIS SEASON?
The Philadelphia Flyers currently have the NHL's most expensive defense corps. Entering the 2013-14 season, the team's top seven defensemen --
Kimmo Timonen,
Braydon Coburn,
Luke Schenn,
Mark Streit,
Nicklas Grossmann,
Andrej Meszaros and
Erik Gustafsson -- eat up a combined 43 percent ($27.85 million) of the NHL maximum $64.3 million salary cap ceiling.
That figure does not include the $4.9 million cap hit that
Chris Pronger carries or the $100,000 penalty the team carries as dead space on the cap for the buyout of
Oskars Bartulis in June 2012. Pronger was placed on long-term injured reserve yesterday in order to give the team the ability to add to the 21-man roster that was submitted to the NHL yesterday.
When you add the Pronger cap hit and the Bartulis buyout, the portion of the team's cap that is tied up in defensemen rises to $32.85 million, or 51.1 percent of league salary cap maximum for this season. That is why the Flyers find themselves relying on LTIR allowance to do something as simple as carrying a 13th forward (currently they have just 12).
During the summer and the preseason, the team tried unsuccessfully to trade a veteran defenseman to free up some bankable cap space and avoid the situation they currently face. Now that Pronger is on LTIR, however, the team has the ability to add both a 13th forward and an eighth defenseman to the roster.
The 13th forward is likely to be veteran
Adam Hall, who cleared waivers on Sunday and was assigned to the Adirondack Phantoms yesterday along with veteran defenseman
Bruno Gervais prior to the 5 p.m. deadline for submitting a cap-compliant roster to the NHL offices. Once that deadline passed, the Flyers and other teams were permitted to designate players for long-term injured reserve.
Apart from recalling Hall, the Flyers' next move may be to sign 38-year-old veteran defenseman
Hal Gill to a modest one-year contract. The 6-foot-7 shot-blocking and penalty killing specialist would become the eighth defenseman on the NHL depth chart and serve much the same locker room leadership role that forward
Mike Knuble served last season.
While adding an eighth defenseman to an already bloated blueline may not be the wisest move from an ongoing cap management perspective, keep in mind that Pronger's LTIR allowance is not bankable for later in the season (rather, it's a use-it-or-lose-it option). Also, given the rate at which defensemen leaguewide -- Flyers defensemen in particular --get injured, having two additional defensemen on the roster might not be such a bad idea after all.
Another way of looking at it: The Flyers could have both a mobile puck-mover (Gustafsson) and a big-bodied stay-at-home defender (Gill) at the ready.
Gustafsson entered the preseason with a starting six job to lose, and probably now finds himself as the number seven defenseman between his own mediocre preseason and the team's inability to trade a veteran. At some point this season, however, there is bound to be at least one blueline injury that will provide him an extended opportunity to show that his strong play and heavy ice time in the final 10 games of the 2012-13 regular season and the 2013 IIHF World Championships were not an aberration.
If Gill is carried as an eighth defenseman, he will be the substitute in case one someone such as Grossmann or Luke Schenn is lost to injury. Gill really doesn't have much contract negotiating leverage at this point of his career. Assuming he can be signed for about what Knuble made last year ($750,000), that's not a bad insurance policy to have.
During the preseason, the Flyers tried to get a sense of whether
Oliver Lauridsen, who was a pleasant surprise in a late-season callup last year and also held his own at the 2013 World Championships, was ready for a full-time NHL job. If he was, the club might have had more flexibility to trade Grossmann for cap space. Lauridsen struggled pretty badly in the exhibition games he played, so the answer about his immediate NHL readiness was a no. He has returned to Adirondack, and will be in the callup mix during the season.
Meanwhile, with no recall waivers to worry about anymore, the team also has option of recalling Gervais if it needs another veteran at the NHL level. Alternatively, the club could also try turning to the younger
Brandon Manning,
Matt Konan or well-regarded rookie
Mark Alt if the injuries once again pile up at the NHL level.
Does the talent level on the Flyers' blueline match the amount of money being spent on it? Probably not, although I have much greater concern about whether the mix of players is right than I about whether any are individually competent enough to deserve starting spots in the NHL.
On a one-by-one basis, the Flyers do not lack for decent NHL defensemen, but is there collectively the right mix of mobility and muscle, puck movement and strength down low in the defensive zone, and of positional savvy and physicality? Based on what was displayed in the preseason, I'd have to say the answer is still no.
In particular, I still question whether this is the right group to manage and move the puck in Peter Laviolette's system, especially in light of the average-at-best defensive traits of much of the top half of the team's forward corps. There is still questionable cohesion between the forwards and defensemen, and the addition of Streit and the start of a new regular season aren't going to be magical elixirs on their own.
As things stand now, what the Flyers have done since last year is subtract Gervais (and
Kurtis Foster) from the starting mix by adding Streit and having a hopefully healthier Meszaros return for the start of the final year of his contract. On paper that's an upgrade, but in reality that depends on Meszaros returning to something resembling the form he displayed in 2010-11. From a depth standpoint, I think the Flyers are fairly well-girded to withstand injuries.
I don't think anyone would argue that the Flyers defense corps, one through seven (or eight), ranks among the best in the NHL despite its collective price tag. On the other hand, if the club as a whole would buy into and execute the concept of team defense with a semblance of consistency -- there is considerable room for improvement in back checking, gap control, puck support and breakouts -- goalies
Ray Emery and
Steve Mason might have a chance to improve the team's goals against average and save percentage.
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TUESDAY QUICK HITS
* Defense prospect
Robert Hägg is in SHL action for Modo today, as the team (which has been in an offensive slump of late) heads south to take on HV71 Jönköping. Hägg has been playing on the third pairing for the last few games after opening the regular season on the top pairing. He's had some good and not-so-good outings among his six games thus far, which is often par for the course for young defensemen. Statistically, the 18-year-old has two assists, two penalty minutes, eight shots on goal and an even plus-minus (+3,-3) while averaging about 18 minutes of ice time per game. A stream of today's game will be available
here. Game time is at 1 p.m. eastern U.S./Canada time.
* Defense prospect
Valeri Vasilev was bumped up from the third to the second pairing for the start of Spartak Moscow in yesterday's game against Ugra. At the start of the game, Vasiliev was paired with former Flyers second-round pick Denis Bodrov, an ex-Phantom. In the second period, Vasiliev was skipped over on several shifts for unspecified reasons (he skated only four shifts in that period for a total 3:30) but he resumed regular ice time in the third period to finish the game with 12:58 of ice time over 17 shifts. Spartak lost, 1-0. For the season, Vasiliev has one assist, two penalty minutes, an even plus minus and an average of 14:26 of ice time per game in seven games.
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Today in Flyers History: On this date in 1992, the Flyers acquired winger
Brent Fedyk from the Detroit Red Wings in exchange for a 1993 third-round draft pick (Charles Paquette). Wearing uniform number 18 Fedyk ended up skating on Philadelphia's top-line for parts of the 1992-93 and 1993-94 seasons as one-third of the Crazy Eights line, along with
Eric Lindros (#88) and
Mark Recchi (#8). With the emergence and eventual first-line promotion of
Mikael Renberg as a rookie in 1993-94, Fedyk moved to other lines, primarily with the likes of
Rod Brind'Amour and
Kevin Dineen as his linemates.
When
Terry Murray became the Flyers head coach, Fedyk was in and out of the coach's doghouse during the lockout shortened 1994-95 season. He also dealt with a significant neck injury that knocked him out of action for 13 games. Fedyk opened the 1995-96 season as the Flyers' second-line right wing on a line with Brind'Amour and
Patrik Juhlin.
After a big opening night in Montreal -- every member of the Legion of Doom and every member of the second line scored a goal in a 7-1 shellacking of Patrick Roy and company -- both Juhlin and Fedyk rapidly fell out of favor despite Fedyk posting a respectable 10 goals and 15 points in 24 games. In December 1995, the Flyers traded Fedyk to Dallas in exchange for
Trent Klatt.
For his Flyers career, Fedyk produced 59 goals and 124 points in 200 regular season games. He dressed in nine games during the team's run to the 1995 Eastern Conference Finals, posting two goals and two assists. Both goals came in the team's five-game victory over the Buffalo Sabres in the first round of the playoffs.
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