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Quick Hits: Weal, Weise, Gagne and More |
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QUICK HITS: July 19, 2018
1) Entering training camp last year, Jordan Weal had a secure roster spot on the Flyers after signing a two-year contract extension (carrying a $1.75 million cap hit) following a solid all-around showing for the team in 2016-17 after being recalled from the Phantoms. Unfortunately, very little went Weal's way last season and he ended up back on the outside looking in during the stretch drive. He was also a healthy scratch in five of the six games of the Flyers first-round playoff loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Weal is good with the puck but it didn't result in much production last season. His previous season line combination with Wayne Simmonds and Valtteri Filppula had some success together in 2016-17 and opened the campaign intact but collectively struggled. Weal ended up bouncing all around the lineup, with sporadic effective games but mostly a lot of frustration, and he ended up out of the lineup.
The frustration that Weal felt was palpable. There were a lot of deep sighs in interviews, some smashed sticks at practice.
In Game 4 of the Flyers-Penguins series, Weal was part of a pivotal sequence that took all the air of Philly's ballooning momentum. The most deflating moment of the game came when the Penguins scored the 2-0 goal. The Flyers had strung together two-and-a-half consecutive shifts of heavy pressure. Then Scott Laughton, from the left half boards, apparently thought linemate Weal was going to cut into the left slot. There a big seam in which to do so. Instead, Weal trailed in the circle. The result was a diagonal pass by Laughton with defenseman Travis Sanheim at the opposite point as the nearest teammate. The Penguins easily intercepted and scored the other way on a stoppable shot that changed up on a moving Brian Elliott.
After that game, without naming names (but it was obvious to whom he was referring), Flyers coach Dave Hakstol said the blame for the turnover was not on Laughton for the diagonal pass but on another player (Weal) who made the wrong read on the play. Weal barely saw the ice again and returned to the scratch list the rest of the rest series.
With the Flyers' offseason addition of James van Riemsdyk, and assuming Simmonds' offseason surgery recovery continues to go according to plan, Weal's situation this summer is no better off than it was this past spring. Where does he fit in the Flyers' lineup plan, if at all?
Ron Hextall made sure to mention that Weal can play center (his primary pre-NHL position) as well as wing but it seems unlikely that Weal is truly regarded as a prime candidate for the available third-line center role. Weal can also play either wing.
Right now, Weal would seem to be competing for a bottom-six wing spot. The right wing is crowded, as Travis Konecny, Jakub Voracek and Wayne Simmonds all slot in above him on the depth chart. On the left wing, the arrival of James van Riemsdyk to supplement Claude Giroux solidifies the top two spots.
Is Weal likely to beat out Oskar Lindblom for left wing ice time on the third line? Not if Lindblom builds on his rookie year.
Is Weal ahead of Michael Raffl, who can also play either side, can kill penalties and is plugged in various spots around the lineup? Probably not.
As of now, Jori Lehterä seems to be the Flyers default fourth-line center option if Scott Laughton bumps up to the third line. Weal is also pretty clearly below Laughton on the depth chart.
If all of this is true, Weal would be battling the likes of Dale Weise and Taylor Leier to avoid being a healthy scratch. Alternatively, Weal could be a preseason trade candidate. Those seem to be two most likely options.
However, a strong camp from Weal or struggles/injuries elsewhere could move him back up in the mix. The process with him is often good -- he is a clever little player, skilled with the puck on his stick and responsible without the puck -- but the bottom line has get better than it was last season. As primarily a skills player, he needs to produce points relative to his ice time.
He's still capable of being something closer to what he showed in 2016-17 but needs the right role and linemates to do so. He's not going to carry a line at the NHL level. His NHL role probably isn't as a regular 4th liner, so he's basically a depth player right now in the event of injury or slumps within the top nine; not what he envisioned last summer, nor what the Flyers had envisioned in re-signing him.
2) At the end of the Flyers-Penguins playoff series, there was internal some praise for the way Dale Weise played in Games 5 and 6. The gist was that, quietly, he looked in those two games like the player the Flyers thought they were getting when he was signed to a four-year contract; a physical, north-south player with decent skating. However, it was too little and far too late to rescue his season or significantly move the needle on his depth chart spot this offseason.
Weise only dressed in 46 games last season. Quite frankly, if Weise had one year left on his contract, the Flyers may have bought him out this summer. But with two seasons left -- which would mean four years of dead space on the cap if he'd been bought out --it was a non-option.
3) July 19 Flyers Alumni birthday: Tomas Divisek (1979).
4) Today in Flyers History: On July 19, 2010, the Flyers made a salary cap-space driven trade that did not pan out well. The team sent veteran left winger Simon Gagne to the Tampa Bay Lightning for oft-injured depth defenseman Matt Walker and a 2011 4th-round pick (German forward Marcel Noebels). The reason why Philly got so little in return for a veteran star such as Gagne is that Tampa was the only team for whom Gagne and agent Bob Sauve were willing to waive his no-movement clause.
Early in the summer of 2010, as recounted in Jay Greenberg's Flyers at 50, the Boston Bruins offered goaltender Tim Thomas to the Flyers in exchange for Gagne. Thomas had (temporarily as it turned out) lost his starting job to the much younger Tuukka Rask, and Boston wanted to unload the rest of Thomas' multi-year contract. Thomas was willing to waive his own no-trade clause to come to Philadelphia. However, the Flyers were not in position to make the trade.
First of all, Thomas and Gagne had comparable salaries at the time -- and Thomas had one more season left on his deal than Gagne had on his -- and the Flyers weren't in position to make a money-for-money swap. Secondly, Gagne was hurt and upset when the Flyers asked him to waive his NMC and initially refused to do so.
Eventually, after much not-so-amicable discussion, the Gagne camp agreed on the condition that they would pick their destination (ala an unrestricted free agent). Things had also soured with Gagne to the point where bringing him back to play out his contract had become a non-option. Thus, the Flyers had almost no leverage in the subsequent trade to Tampa, since there were no other teams to whom Philly could deal Gagne.
In hindsight, the trade really didn't work out for either side. Certainly not the Flyers' side: due to injury, Walker barely played and, the little he did play, he was ineffective. Even if 100 percent, he was a third-pair defenseman. Noebels fizzled out on the minor leagues. In his own right, Gagne was never again a healthy player. The 2010 playoffs were the last time he looked like the player who had been a star for much of the first decade of the 2000s. However, he did play a bit part in LA winning the Stanley Cup in 2011-12. Gagne also had a brief, and ultimately ill-fated, return to the Flyers during the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season.
Thomas re-took the starting job from Rask in 2010-11, won his second Vezina Trophy and won the Stanley Cup (with Conn Smythe Trophy honors as playoff MVP) with the Bruins. That was his next-to-last season of being in peak form, however.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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