QUICK HITS: JUNE 14, 2017
1) The Philadelphia Flyers and Lehigh Valley Phantoms jointly held a press conference in Allentown on Wednesday to announce the third annual Flyers preseason game at the PPL Center. The Flyers will open their 2017 preseason slate on Wed. Sept. 20 with a game in Allentown against the New York Islanders.
Additionally, the Flyers will have preseason road games against the Boston Bruins at TD Garden (Sept. 21) and against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden (Sept. 25) as well as home games against the Rangers (Sept. 26) and Bruins (Sept. 28). The full preseason schedule will be officially announced later this week.
2) The Trial on the Isle during the Flyers' annual summertime Development Camp will be held on July 12 in Avalon, NJ.
3) In Tuesday's Philadelphia Inquirer, beat writer Sam Carchidi pondered whether the Flyers will or should try to get the Vegas Golden Knights to take on Andrew MacDonald's contract and whether the team will be out veteran forward Matt Read. We'll look at the MacDonald question in tomorrow's blog. For today, the focus will be on Read, who celebrates his 31st birthday today.
It seems unlikely that the Flyers will buy out Read, especially because the team is already carrying a $1.5 million cap hit for the second and final year of the R.J. Umberger buyout of last summer. There are better cap management options for him than a buyout, anyway.
If the preseason numbers game plays out in such a way that there is no longer a roster space for Read in the final year of his current contract, the Flyers could waive him and assign him to Lehigh Valley after he clears. That would give the Flyers $1.025 million of cap relief while leaving a $2.625 cap hit for the 2017-18 season; preferable in the long term to carrying a $1.29 cap hit in 2017-18 and a $1.167 cap hit in 2018-19 and also preferable roster management wise because Read would still be available for callup in the event of injuries.
Alternatively, if there is a space for him on next year's roster, the Flyers could simply ride out the final year of his contract with Read serving as a utility forward. He actually didn't do a bad job last season in the big picture, landing on the positive side of both the puck possession and traditional plus-minus registers while also chipping in 10 goals and 19 points in 63 games and having more takeaways than giveaways with his five-on-five ice time roughly split evenly between defensive zone and offensive zone starts. No, from an offensive standpoint that is not really the full value sought from a player of his cap hit. Even so, a player can only fairly be judged by how he does in his assigned role. Read's role on the Flyers has changed (or been downgraded, depending on the terminology one wants to use) over the last two seasons under Dave Hakstol.
The Flyers could also try to find a trade this offseason that involves Read, whether with Vegas or another team. While he won't be penciled in a top nine forward anymore, there are still teams he could help as a role player.
4) Flyers prospect Radel Fazleev gave a very candid
interview to Russian media outlet Sport Business Gazette. Discussing his tough indoctrination into pro hockey as a rookie this past season, Fazleev went in depth into some of his struggles.
Fazleev said that while he tried to embrace being a defensive-minded role player for the Phantoms, he felt that his playmaking skills were sublimated by head coach Scott Gordon, who wanted him to a play a very simple north-south game and dump the puck in rather than trying to stickhandle. Fazleev said that he and other young players (such as Nicolas Aube-Kubel) were quick to be benched or scratched for mistakes. The player also admitted that his skating needs continued improvement and that he very much needed AHL seasoning (saying that if he'd been put out there against elite NHL talent such Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin, he'd probably have been so discouraged that he'd have thought about quitting hockey).
Overall, Fazleev said that he realizes that the fourth line was the most logical spot for him last season with all the prominent veterans the organizations signed for Lehigh Valley last season and that he still needs further development to turn learning experiences into consistent improvement. He also recognized that things went well for the Phantoms as a team this past season, and that was important for the Flyers organization.
The young Russian forward also said that his Flyers development coach (John Riley) noticed a difference in his usually sunny personality as last season wore on, telling Fazleev that he hardly saw the youngster smile anymore. Fazleev chalked it up to being a lesson in cultural differences. In Russia, he said, a coach would view a smiling, sparingly used young player as someone who had not been "punished" enough yet to push for a bigger role on the team. In North America, a mood shift from unbeat to subdued was construed as a negative change.
Fazleev also stood up for himself in response to a recent interview given by the Ak Bars Kazan general manager (his "home base" team in Russia), in which the GM said Fazleev had made a big mistake signing an NHL entry-level contract with the Flyers rather than coming back home after junior hockey to play in the KHL. Fazleev said that he didn't want to get into a war of words, but that he doesn't at all regret signing with the Flyers. He said that he is more determined that ever to make his NHL dream come true in whatever role the Flyers want him to play.
Fazleev also weighed in longtime Calgary Hitmen and now Phantoms teammate Travis Sanheim's rookie season. He said that, as a first-round pick, Sanheim got a little more leeway to play his way through the adjustment period to the pro level. Fazleev said that while Sanheim perhaps played a bit tentatively in the early months of the season so as to keep mistakes to a minimum, he settled in and began to play much closer to his full capabilities as the season moved along.
All in all, the 21-year-old Fazleev came across in the Russian interview as the same sort of bright, mature, ambitious and honest to a fault young man that he appears to be when speaking to the media over here. He just went a bit more in-depth in his native language.
5) The Flyers and Flyers Alumni are offering a variety of incentives for participants in the upcoming Charity Classic (July 16) to do individual and team-wide fundraising. Individual incentives ranging from a Flyers ball cap (for $50 raised individually) all the way up through an invitation to join the Flyers Alumni in their balcony party suite at the Wells Fargo Center on a Flyers game night plus a Flyers jersey autographed by numerous Alumni (for $1,000 raised individually) are available. For meeting team-wide fundraising goals, Flyers Charities will donate from $500 to $7,500 (depending on how much is raised by the team) to a charity of the team's choosing. For more information,
click here.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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