Winging It: Can the Philadelphia Flyers find Mike Richards a linemate?

Once upon a time, Mike Richards was the Philadelphia Flyers' undisputed No. 1 center. He was the captain, a point per game player and had two proven veterans in Mike Knuble and Simon Gagne on his line.

Life was good.

Fast forward three years.

Knuble and Gagne were not re-signed and traded, respectively, and have been replaced on the team by the likes of Claude Giroux, Ville Leino and James van Riemsdyk, who are younger, more affordable forwards.

Knuble scored 56 goals in his last two seasons with the Flyers and Gagne tallied 58 goals, playing the equivalent of two seasons worth of games, during his last three years with the team.

But the younger Flyers, Giroux and Leino in particular, have produced enough to make the loss of them easier to swallow.

Despite the Flyers offensive success, some fans still believe it was mistake to let go of Knuble and Gagne. But one thing that can’t be debated is that the team hasn’t been able to find Richards a consistent, productive linemate to replace them. That is particularly surprising, given the array of talent and different styles that GM Paul Holmgren has assembled at the forward position.

Not that former and current head coaches, John Stevens and Peter Laviolette, haven’t tried to create some chemistry with different line combinations. Giroux, Daniel Briere, Jeff Carter and Nikolay Zherdev have all been given a shot with Richards, but he hasn’t been able to rediscover the magic he had with his former linemates.

That being said, the experiments have not been complete failures. Richards is still productive offensively (17 goals and 31 assists in 53 games), but he can’t seem to click with someone like the Leino-Briere-Hartnell line or even the newly created Carter-Giroux-Zherdev combination has done.

While that is a testament to him being able to find ways to be valuable despite the circumstances, it leaves Richards with less experienced and/or less offensively explosive players like Andreas Nodl, Dan Carcillo, Darroll Powe and van Riemsdyk.

That renders his unit as more of a checking line than a scoring line, which is a shame for someone with his playmaking ability.

I did a slide show a few weeks ago on potential forwards that the Flyers could obtain before the trade deadline and I still hope Holmgren focuses on a scoring winger for Richards’ line to supplant Nodl in the playoffs.

A guy like Erik Cole or Alex Tanguay would make the Flyers incredibly difficult to defend and that, combined with their offseason upgrades on defense, could make it possible for the Flyers to finish what they started last postseason.