Philadelphia Flyers: Plans for the Offseason and Beyond

Rather than trying to analyze the Flyers’ failure to win the Stanley Cup, their 34th year in a row without one, let’s instead look ahead and see what can be done to help end the drought.

The Flyers are in a particularly tough position, thanks to long-term contracts and the very uncertain situation of the salary cap.  Some decisions will be difficult, but the orange and black have proven to us over the years that nothing is ever easy.

Here are some strong suggestions.

DO NOT RE-SIGN MARTIN BIRON

Biron cannot be blamed for the loss to Pittsburgh, but we have enough of a sample size in his time with the Flyers to know that he is not a championship-caliber goaltender.  He can go on hot stretches and win you some games, like he did against Montreal last year, but the team would be spinning wheels if they brought him back.

Even if he were available at his same salary of $3.5 million, the Flyers need to just let him go.  He simply does not inspire confidence.  Sometimes you need your starting goaltender to stand on his head and win you a 2-1 game.  Biron can’t.

While the Flyers are at it, they should let Antero Niittymaki walk if they cannot sign him for something very close to his 2008-09 salary of $1.375 million.

The real shame is that the Flyers have no solid goaltending prospects in the system, otherwise Biron would have proven to be a good stopgap experiment while a franchise goaltender was being groomed.

Unrestricted free agents Scott Clemmensen and Craig Anderson will draw strong interest from the Flyers, but I honestly wouldn’t blame them if they started the season with a cheap and inexperienced tandem of Scott Munroe and Johan Backlund.

I would rather go into a season having no idea what to expect rather than knowing that we have already settled for the mediocrity of Martin Biron.

FIND SOMEONE TO TAKE DANNY BRIERE

Briere played a lot better down the stretch after returning from a myriad of injuries, but the team can’t absorb his cap hit of $8 million next year and $7 million for the next three after that.

Even if the Flyers have to still pick up half his salary, getting $3-4 million off the books would be a big deal.  The return on Briere might be something like a second-round draft pick and a serviceable third-liner or defenseman.

If no one is willing to bite on Briere, Plan B would be to trade Joffrey Lupul, the second-most obviously overpaid player on the team.  Lupul is making $4.25 million each of the next four seasons, a ludicrous amount for a guy who finished sixth on the team in goal scoring.

It would really be tremendous if the Flyers could trade Briere and Lupul to get some younger and far less expensive assets, but that is not likely to happen.

GET RID OF RANDY JONES

When you look up “average NHL defenseman” in the dictionary, there is a picture of Jones staring you right in the face.  He makes $3 million but does nothing particularly well.

Thankfully, he has just one more year left on his contract, but the Flyers should do everything in their power to shed themselves of him this offseason so that Ryan Parent and Luca Sbisa can play the full year.

Matt Carle is another candidate to be traded, but he has three years left on a contract that pays him $3.5 million the next two seasons and $3.8 million the one after that.  At least he is better offensively than Jones, and you can live with his cap hit if you move some of the other pricey players I have mentioned.

LET THE KIDS PLAY

Ryan Parent, due to injury and then salary cap constraints, came up far too late last year.  He should be there from day one next season.  The same goes for Luca Sbisa.  I would think Claude Giroux would be a no-brainer at this point.

James van Riemsdyk does the Flyers no good playing for whatever minor league team he ends up with.  Since Mike Knuble will be gone in all likelihood, JVR should be placed in his vacated role.

The Flyers won’t have much to spend in the offseason unless they make good on some of my suggestions, so they need to resist the temptation to bring in “seasoned veterans” (which I call retreads) at the expense of giving younger players a chance to play.

TAKE SOME OF THE ONUS OFF OF RICHARDS AND CARTER

While the Flyers are blessed to have two of the most well-rounded forwards in the NHL, it can also work as a curse.  Richards and Carter do everything, but the team asks too much of them.

They both averaged over three minutes of ice time per game in shorthanded situations during the year, ranking in the top 18 forwards in the league in that category. Meanwhile, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Alex Ovechkin all only played about one minute per game shorthanded, failing to rank among the top 200 forwards.

That two-minute-per-game disparity translates into Richards and Carter playing 164 extra shorthanded minutes—over two and a half full hockey games—this season than players like Crosby, Malkin, and Ovechkin.

Those are hard minutes on the penalty kill.  Blocking shots, breaking up passes, battles in the corners.  Richards and Carter are out there because they are very good at it, but the Flyers need to find a way to give their skill players more time to think about offense and not get worn down over the course of the season so that they have something left when the playoffs start.

It would be a big help if role players like Darroll Powe and Jared Ross could fill some of the penalty kill time.  The Flyers also need to bring in another fourth-line center in the Jim Dowd-Glen Metropolit mold who can be responsible defensively and win faceoffs when they need him to.

It’s hard to believe that the Flyers have just one Stanley Cup Final appearance in the last 22 years.  Or maybe it’s not that hard to believe when you look at some of the things that have happened.  Still, you have to like the young core of this team. 

The window is open and should be for a couple more years.  Let’s hope that management’s decisions will be wise and productive so that some day in the near future, the Flyers can be back atop the hockey world.