WILL FLYERS CARRY SEVEN OR EIGHT DEFENSEMEN?
For much of the past two seasons, the Philadelphia Flyers have carried eight healthy defensemen at a time on their NHL roster. It remains to be seen if rookie head coach
Dave Hakstol continues that trend in 2015-16.
During the 2013-14 season, veteran
Hal Gill served as the Flyers' eighth defenseman. Gill was on the roster the entire season but dressed in only six regular season games in what turned out to be an unusually healthy season for the Philadelphia defense corps.
Erik Gustafsson and
Andrej Meszaros (prior to being traded to the Boston Bruins) rotated in and out as the sixth and seventh defensemen for then-coach
Craig Berube's club.
Last season, the Flyers opened the campaign with seven defensemen. Coming off a rough preseason, free agent signing
Nick Schultz was a healthy scratch on opening night. As things would turn out, Schultz would dress in 80 of the next 81 games and would not be a healthy scratch again.
The Flyers' defensemen were not nearly as fortunate in 2014-15 as they'd been the previous season in terms of avoiding injuries and illnesses that were severe enough to force them out of the lineup. The Flyers signed
Michael Del Zotto as an unrestricted free agent in August after
Kimmo Timonen was diagnosed with blood clots in his lung and right calf. On opening night of the regular season,
Braydon Coburn went down with a broken bone in his left foot.
Andrew MacDonald went down in the seventh game of the season.
As the Flyers' veteran core on the blueline depleted, the club signed veteran
Carlo Colaiacovo to join the lineup. Although the injury bug continued to bite -- Coburn went down again with a broken foot,
Nicklas Grossmann suffered a concussion, MacDonald's season ended a few weeks early after sustaining a fractured right hand,
Radko Gudas was already lost for the season due to a knee injury at the time he came over from Tampa Bay in the deal that sent Coburn to the Lightning -- the Flyers spent a significant chunk of the season with eight defensemen before the next wave of injuries hit.
At various junctures of the campaign, Del Zotto (first half of the season),
Luke Schenn, and MacDonald sat out as healthy scratches along with Colaiacovo. As additional injuries occurred, the 32-year-old Colaiacovo wound up playing in 33 games by the end of the season.
Heading into training camp before the 2015-16 regular season, the Flyers still have a logjam on the blueline despite some roster changes over the summer. Even with Colaiacovo departing via unrestricted free agency and Grossmann having been traded to the Arizona Coyotes, the Flyers currently have seven veterans plus fifth-year pro
Brandon Manning on one-way contracts for the season. The vets are
Mark Streit, Schultz, Del Zotto, MacDonald, Russian import
Evgeni Medvedev (an NHL "rookie" who will soon turn 33 years old), Schenn and Gudas.
Manning is presently in no-man's land. He will be paid $625,000 whether he's on the NHL roster or waived and assigned to the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms. His salary is cap-friendly for an NHL seventh/eighth defenseman but would make him a very highly compensated AHL player (ala
Oliver Lauridsen last season) if he is returned to the Phantoms.
Even without making any roster moves, the Flyers could narrowly afford to carry eight defensemen without exceeding the salary cap. However, sending Manning down (assuming he clears waivers) would create much-needed breathing room under the ceiling. The Phantoms have roster over-crowding issues of their own on defense but space would be made for Manning if need be.
Manning is something of an AHL-NHL "tweener" at this point. He's been an All-Star at the AHL level a couple times and has been a young leader on the Phantoms. He's both offensively proficient and physically quite aggressive at the AHL level. He's worked very hard on his defensive game the last few years so as not to be a liability. There has been progress but he would never be called a shutdown defender even at that level.
During his various short NHL stints, Manning has simplified his game by necessity. He's toned things down in terms of risk-taking and focused mostly on positional play and making a good first pass; doing a respectable job in the process with third-pairing minutes. However, Manning's game seems to be an either/or proposition at the NHL level: either he takes a less-is-more approach and serves as a sixth defenseman when he gets in the lineup or else he sacrifices defense to be more noticeable offensively and more aggressive physically with potentially lesser results than he's gotten in the AHL.
The feeling here is that the Flyers make at least one more trade involving a veteran defenseman by opening night. I do not foresee Streit going anywhere before the start of the upcoming season, as he is still both a crucial component of the Flyers' top power play unit and a veteran leader on a team that already could use another leadership type or two. Schenn is a distinct possibility to be moved heading into the final year of his contract. MacDonald's contract -- both term and cap hit -- limit his trade possibilities at present.
However, keep this in mind: There are usually injuries that pop up during the preseason. Even if the Flyers can get to opening night with all of their veteran defensemen healthy, other teams may not be so fortunate. There are usually a few preseason trades made around the NHL and clubs leaguewide tend to stock up on veteran defensemen, anyway, because of the high attrition rate at the position.
The Flyers also want to leave the door open for some of the young players in the system -- first-year pro
Samuel Morin, second-year pro
Shayne Gostisbehere, 2014 first-round pick
Travis Sanheim and 2015 first-rounder
Ivan Provorov -- to be able to push veterans for roster spots in camp. While it is likely that Sanheim and Provorov will both be reassigned to their respective Western Hockey League teams for one more year of seasoning, Gostisbehere and/or Morin could come up to the big club at some point this season.
In the event there are no trades and no injuries serious enough to necessitate opening-night use of the injured reserve, the Flyers may go into the season with eight defensemen. It will be more interesting, however, to see how much blueline roster change there is by next April.
Let's put it this way: the Flyers' opening night defense roster in 2016-17 stands a good chance of having a very different composition from the currently projected group of seven or eight.
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FLYERS PROSPECT UPDATE: DAVID KASE
Flyers 2015 fifth-round pick David Kase scored his first goal and point in three preseason games to date as Pirati Chomutov defeated HC Pardubice, 4-3, in Czech Extraliga exhibition game action.
Kase tallied the third goal of a three-goal outburst in the middle period, which gave his team a 3-1 lead heading into the final stanza. The Pirates return to action today.
At this point, it seems like Kase has made up his mind to remain in the Czech League for at least one more year. He's been taken in the first round of the CHL Import Draft each of the last two years -- by the QMJHL's Blainville-Boisbriand Armada last year and by the OHL's Niagara Ice Dogs -- and was also selected in the third round of the 2014 KHL Draft by Avtomobilist Yekaterinaburg.
After years of decline and then near-neglect of the need to revitalize their once-mighty national junior program (which led the nearly mass migration of top and even middle-tier prospects to teams in other countries), the Czech Hockey Federation has spent the last few years investing heavily in revitalizing their national junior teams. They still face a challenge in trying to convince young players to develop domestically from the junior to Extraliga level before going overseas.
Kase has long-term NHL ambitions, as do most young players. He attended the NHL Combine and came to the Flyers Development Camp last month. At camp, showed off promising skills.
On the one hand, Kase is small of stature and very slightly built. Canadian outlet Sportsnet
rather harshly criticized Kase for his physical weakness in tests performed at the Combine and also said he weighed in at 159 pounds on a 5-foot-9 1/2 frame, with an 18 percent body fat measurement (only three Draft hopefuls at the Combine had higher body fat measurements).
Having stood near Kase at the Development Camp, I would have to agree that his official listing of being 5-foot-11 is inaccurate and that, physically, he looks more like he's 15 than 18 (although that could also be because his face looks very young). However, it should also be noted that when
Claude Giroux was drafted by the Flyers, he weighed about the same as Kase and wasn't much taller. Calgary's
Johnny Gaudreau was -- and still is -- even smaller than Kase.
Two things that Kase has going for him are good hands and fearlessness with the puck, and those traits can't be taught. He also has the versatility to play both center and wing, although his best fit is as a winger. It was worth using a fifth-round pick -- a low-risk, high-yield spot of the Draft -- for the Flyers to take the skilled Czech regardless of the size and strength concerns.
Kase speaks some rudimentary English but not enough presently to be comfortable being interviewed in the language. He appears to be a bit nervous about improving his English communications, which apparently is a secondary reason why he elected to remain in the Czech league for now. However, sooner or later, he will need to make that adjustment. More importantly, he will have to gain experience playing on the smaller rink. The Extraliga is not considered a physical circuit even by European hockey standards, but Kase did show a fearlessness about competing against bigger players internationally and he showed leadership among his age group in captaining the Czech Under-18 team a year ago.
Given their druthers, I suspect the Flyers would rather have seen Kase play in the OHL this season instead of the Extraliga. However, they also want the player to be comfortable with the decision and the scouting and development departments understand that different players develop at different paces. At least Kase will be playing against grown men this season -- albeit not against the same caliber of opposition that the Czech Extraliga offered in its heyday or even around the year 2000 -- in a league that features many longtime professionals.
A season of steady development with action for the Czech Under-20 national team and a strict training regimen that focuses on adding muscle and reducing body fat will be crucial components to Kase's development over the next year. He seems like an ambitious young man and he comes from a hockey family.
Kase's father, Robert, is the head coach of the Choumtov J20 team and an ex-player. Older brother Ondrej is a soon-to-be 20-year-old Anaheim Ducks prospect who is slated to make his American Hockey League debut this season with the newly created San Diego Gulls.
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TODAY IN FLYERS HISTORY FROM FlyersAlumni.org: AUGUST 25
1992: The Flyers sign winger
Greg Paslawski and defenseman
Gord Hynes as unrestricted free agents.
1997: The Hall of Fame career of forward
Dale Hawerchuk comes to an end as chronic hip issues bring about his retirement at age 34. Hawerchuk spent the final one-plus season of his career -- 67 regular season games and 29 playoff tilts -- as a Flyer after being acquired from the St. Louis Blues in a one-for-one trade for veteran checking center
Craig MacTavish.
1998: The Flyers trade the rights of unsigned prospect defenseman
Ray Giroux (originally an eighth-round pick by the Flyers in 1994 and a Hobey Baker Award nominee his senior year at Yale University) to the New York Islanders for a 2000 sixth-round pick. The pick was later traded to Montreal as a component of the March 1999 trade that brought
Mark Recchi back to Philadelphia for a second stint and sent 1996 first-round pick
Dainius Zubrus to the Canadiens.
Flyers Alumni Birthdays
Current Flyers defenseman
Nick Schultz celebrates his 33rd birthday today. He shares a birthday with former checking forward and current Arizona Coyotes head coach
Dave Tippett along with right winger
Greg Paslawski.
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