1) On Thursday, the Flyers re-signed defenseman Radko Gudas to a four-year contract. Any time a restricted free agent contract pre-empts unrestricted free agency years, it drives up the cost of the deal. That's what happened here with the 26-year-old Gudas, whose deal will carry a $3.35 million cap hit with the following real-dollar breakdown:
Note that the deal is somewhat front-loaded with a decent-sized drop in the fourth year. That means two things: The fourth year lowers the overall cap hit and, depending on circumstance, it also could make for an easier contract to trade by the final year. Gudas will still only be 30 in the final year.
Something else to keep in mind: The NHL Expansion Draft is a year away. With the type of role that Gudas plays, he will never be a player who can rest on his laurels. If Gudas does not repeat his success of 2015-16, there is no guarantee that he will be protected in the expansion draft. However, as long as he stays healthy, there's no reason why he cannot have another strong season.
Unless it was a one-year contract, the Flyers were not going to be able to get Gudas signed at less than a $3 million cap hit. To get him under a contract with enough long-term flexibility to be beneficial the Flyers' side as well as the Gudas camp, it cost an additional $350,000 on the cap. Gudas' deal is neither a bargain nor an albatross and he slots market value wise roughly in the same zone as comparable style players Brenden Dillon ($3.27 million) and Erik Gudbranson ($3.5 million), not to mention what the Canucks are paying Luca Sbisa ($3.6 million). The deal places well south of Marco Scandella's $4 million cap hit through 2019-20.
In 2015-16, Gudas bounced back nicely from a knee injury that cost him the second half of the 2014-15 and prevented him from playing after he was traded from Tampa Bay to the Flyers. This past season, Gudas was second in the NHL -- and tops among defensemen -- with 304 hits and an average 4.0 hits per game. He ranked second on the Flyers and was tied for 19th in the NHL with 157 blocked shots.
The Czech defenseman even finished on the positive side of the Corsi/Fenwick ledger; leading all Flyers defensemen in that statistic despite starting roughly half his shifts outside the offensive zone at five-on-five.
After going goalless from October to February, Gudas unexpectedly contributed five goals to the Flyers down the stretch drive including a two-goal game. He displayed an underrated first pass, at least as short to medium range. However, he sometimes got himself in trouble when he tried to do too much with the puck.
Speaking of getting himself in trouble, Gudas' reputation for pushing the envelope with his physical play was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it led to an NHL suspension and several game misconducts as well as not receiving the benefit of the doubt on any marginal penalties. On the flip side, he was one of the few players in today's NHL who had a legitimate intimidation factor among some opponents. There were players who kept their distance and gave him room.
For whatever it's worth as an apples-to-oranges comparison, the hometown discount Braydon Coburn gave Tampa to extend through 2018-19 set his cap hit $3.7 million -- a paycut from his about-to-expire deal. He could have tested the unrestricted free agent market this summer and trying to stay at least in the $4 million range. In Coby's case, in addition to the lure of staying with a Cup contender, there were also family considerations at work because the family just relocated a year ago after the trade from the Flyers.
2) While it is possible the Flyers could make NHL roster related moves over Draft weekend, it is more likely that they consummate nothing more than making their 11 picks in the 2016 NHL Draft. It always takes two sides to make a deal, and Flyers GM Ron Hextall is not one to make a trade for its own sake. The team has enough cap space to dabble in the unrestricted free agent market come July 1. If they need space beyond that, they would have the summer and training camp to do so.
Hextall has managed the cap to where he can trade under his own terms or else pursue the opportunity to fill needs without dealing assets. It could always get better, but it's not a bad spot a week ahead of free agency.
As for the UFA market, caveat emptor. For example, while Milan Lucic would fill an immediate need on the Flyers' roster, the reported salary and term his agent is seeking -- and will get from some team or another -- creates significant potential for an albatross contract. With any prominent UFA, the question mark is always one of weighing anticipated short-term benefit against long-term risk.
The Flyers know they want to add some size on the wings, preferably who can bring some more scoring but at least who can win battles and create space for his linemates. But is that alone the difference in taking the next step from a playoff bubble team (96 points last season) to a playoff lock (no team with 100 points has ever missed the playoffs)? To say yes means accepting the idea that most everything else is already in place on the roster, which is a debatable presumption. Sometimes making a couple of smaller moves adds up to a comparable short-term impact with more long-range flexibility when a team is more solidly a contender and is looking for a "big add" to potentially put them over the top.
3) There has been a tendency locally to hyper-focus on four particular draft-eligible players as the potential 18th pick -- Max Jones, Julien Gauthier, Kieffer Bellows, and Riley Tufte -- if the Flyers stay put in the first round. That is based on Hextall saying he ideally wants to add both skill and size with whomever the team selects in the first round. However, he has also said that the team will take whomever it feels is the best available player (the highest upside balanced against realistic development expectations and demonstrated attributes) and that, if the best available player in their estimation is an average-size or a "special" undersized player, that's how they will go.
For instance, perhaps they think Clayton Keller, if he is still on the board at the time of the 18th overall, is a special enough offensive talent to add another undersized forward to prospect pipeline. Dynamic playmaker Keller is one this year's "if only he was bigger, he'd go near the top of the draft" candidates. The tiny Alex DeBrincat is another such player.
The fact that the Flyers did not interview Gauthier at the Draft Combine really does not mean much of anything in and of itself, nor does that the fact that they did interview University of Wisconsin center Luke Kunin and Russian center German Rubtsov. Keep in mind that the Flyers never interviewed Sean Couturier nor, in an earlier pre-Combine era, did they meet with Simon Gagne. Their only meeting with Claude Giroux in 2006 was a cursory one that the player didn't even remember any details about by the time Draft day rolled around.
Interviews at the Combine, as the Flyers approach them at least, are to fill in the blanks if they want to know a little bit more about the player as a person, his perceptions of his own game or to answer a couple specific questions.
For example, there are a lot of blanks to fill in around Rubtsov, who is described as a two-way talent with a mature defensive game for a player his age and projectable offensive upside. I suspect the Flyers and every other team that talked to Rubtsov asked questions about his willingness to come play in North America sooner rather than later, get a sense of his attitude toward the American Hockey League, ask in a non-accusatory way about the doping scandal that got the entire Russian team banned from the 2016 Under-18 Worlds (the U17 squad took its place), how eager he seems to make the language and cultural adjustments and how he sees himself as a player.
Flyers Russia-based scout Ken Hoodikoff has no doubt seen Rubtsov play quite a bit but the lack of playing in the U18 Worlds prevented other scouts from seeing him in a major tourney. Additionally, he had yet to play above the MHL (Russian junior) level domestically within Russia. To draft Rubtsov would mean than Hoodikoff raved about him, the other scouts along with Chris Pryor and Ron Hextall feel comfortable in stepping up to select him and that the player himself is agreeable to a development plan that would be more in the Flyers' hands than the typical path that KHL teams put their prospects.
That is a lot of variables and no small amount of risk tolerance so, in this case, not interviewing the player at the Combine would have been more telling than it is with other players. It's been rumored that Rubtsov is willing to come to North America next season after the upcoming CHL Import Draft but it's different to hear such a commitment directly from the horse's mouth.
To a lesser extent, the same thing is true for Kunin -- a player I could see the Flyers seriously considering selecting, possibly even if one of more frequently mentioned names is on the board. A slew of NHL teams right now are leery of drafting NCAA players in the first round unless they feel the player is going to be NHL ready sooner rather than later. They see what's going on right now with Jimmy Vesey and, previously, what happened with Kevin Hayes and it creates concern about signing the player if he stays in college through senior year.
Kunin already has played his freshman season, too. That means the Flyers would have to be comfortable he will turn pro and be under contract no later than after his junior year. If it slips into a senior year scenario, anything can happen including the player opting to choose a destination as an unrestricted free agent come August 15.
As such, Kunin was another clear-cut interview candidate as part of the due diligence. In terms of his playing attributes, he is average-sized with some room to get stronger, and his actual game seems to be a good fit for Dave Hakstol's style of play.
If one does not have a strong stomach for risk tolerance, Riley Tufte is a scary option at 18th overall. Drafting U.S. high school players is always a huge leap of faith. A scout cited by McKeen's said he thinks Tufte could be a player who needs to duration of his collegiate eligibility at Minnesota-Duluth to emerge as NHL-ready. I would think that any NHL team that seriously entertains the idea of taking the Mr. Hockey Award winner in the first round would have more of an expedited projection -- ideally within two years or maximum three -- in mind for his pro-game readiness timetable.
Former NHL scout and general manager Craig Button, now a TSN prospect/draft analyst, has often said that, to him, position matters when ranking forwards. He favors natural centers, especially ones whom he believes can also adapt to the wing as pros if called up to do so, over natural wingers. That's a rule of thumb, not an absolute. Some players drafted as wingers can adapt just fine to center. Look no further than Giroux for an example. He was drafted as a right winger and, a few years later, attained NHL stardom as a center.
The Flyers tend to think along similar lines. While they have sometimes drafted junior wingers in the first round (Giroux, Justin Williams and Steve Downie being examples from the 2000s), they tend to have a preference for centers unless they see the winger as a significantly better player. There are some knocks on Gauthier and Bellows as one-dimensional players and question marks over exactly where Max Jones' offensive upside falls in the continuum -- is he more of a better skating future Scott Hartnell or more of a Raffi Torres/ Tom Wilson?
If Michael McLeod were to make it down to 18th, which seems unlikely but not impossible, I think he'd be a virtual no-brainer pick in that spot for the Flyers. Whether it would be worth trading up to get him is a whole different debate. The same goes for Windsor Spitfires center Logan Brown. Under certain scenarios, he'd be a shoo-in pick for the Flyers if they move up in the first round but the scenarios are dependent on how far they'd move up and what the cost would be to do so.
The same principle is at work in terms of the possibility of the Flyers drafting a defenseman first for the fourth straight year. At a certain point, it makes "best available player" sense. For example, while Olli Joulevi ane Mikhail Sergachev a locks to go well ahead of where the Flyers pick, very little is certain after that. If there's a run on forwards -- for example, let's say there's only three D-men off the board in the top 15 or 16 picks -- the Flyers could end up in a scenario where a defenseman winds up atop their rankings of the players still on the board. At that point, they'd have a decision to make.
Lastly, keep in mind that the Flyers go solely by their own rankings, not anybody else's. It is not unusual for the Flyers' 1st round pick to be none of the speculated names. In their respective draft years, Williams, Downie, Giroux and, more recently, Scott Laughton were not among the commonly speculated names mentioned in Flyers pre-Draft media coverage or fan speculation.
Every year there are sleepers. This year, for example, I have heard few mentions of Pascal Laberge because he's ranked in the mid-20s to mid-30s in most of the publicly available ratings. The Victoriaville forward, who can either center or play wing, is one of those players who may simply need to fill out a little bit more (he's listed at 172 pounds on a 6-foot-1 frame) to jump above players who will go earlier than him in the Draft. Whether the Flyers would feel that he's someone worth "stepping up" to take as high as 18th overall, I have no idea. It's just an example.
The point is to not hyper-focus on just a couple names. Do not have a knee-jerk negative reaction if whomever the Flyers pick is internally rated higher by Philadelphia than his ranking by Central Scouting, International Scouting Services, The Hockey News, Bob McKenzie, Craig Button and/or McKeen's.
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Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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