The New New Unending Flyers thread

[LegoDoom]

But the Farabee money will go to some other player, for years to come.

AF is cancelling out the Farabee and Kuz money, which is not correct. I am not saying the money will be better spend elsewhere, but reinforcing that Frost needed to be in this deal to make it logical.

Flyers are not good either, why should they be any better against a Pens team with the exact same winning percentage?

Crosby wasn't playing. And before AF chimes in about Tippett, Crosby has almost double the points at age 37.

[Docs]

Starting with the 2022 lottery; the teams winning one of the two lotteries will only be allowed to move up a maximum of ten spots in the draft order, and teams will only be allowed to advance in the draft order because of winning a lottery twice in five years.

I pulled this from Wikipedia - does anyone know the mechanics of the twice in five years? I’ve seen it written differently on other sites stating you cannot win the lottery more than twice in a five year span. The official wording is probably important.

A) what if you are the worst team and the 14th team wins the lottery? You don’t advance and technically you didn’t win the lottery and you still pick first. Does that count as your 1/5 years?

B) what if you are the worst team and you win the lottery but didn’t advance your pick - is it winning or advancing that matters?

C) does getting the second pick count? So if you pick second two years in a row the best you can pick the following three years is third?

2022 - MTL, NJ (+3 - skipping flyers)
2023 - CHI (+2), ANA (-1)
2024 - SJ, Chi (no changes)

Does Anaheim have a win even though they dropped a spot?

Does that mean Chicago cannot pick in the top two? Or just that they can only pick first once in the next three years?

Wiki says this: With their second lottery win in two seasons, the Chicago Blackhawks will not be eligible to win the draft lottery again until 2028 - but other sites are indicating that they can still win the lottery.

[Austinfan]

Farabee - Kuz was more Calgary wanting to dump Kuz to free up roster room after they added Farabee and Frost, they have oodles of cap room (and it's hard to get FAs to come to Calgary). I was surprised there was no demand for Farabee, but I think his neck injury combined with 3yr/$5M left on his deal scared off a lot of teams - but Calgary has the cap room to gamble on him.

Frost for a 2nd and Pelletier.is about right, I'd preferred trading a 3rd or so back to bump it to a 1st, but i would have to be 2026 and Calgary probably didn't want to lose a 1st.

[LegoDoom]

Farabee - Kuz

Again, you are separating the trade. My contention is that it doesn't get done at all without Frost.

[flyers19rw]

In a post trade interview Farabee and Frost said that a difference between Philly and Calgary is that the Flyers focused more on players mistakes than their positive plays. Today’s younger players respond better to what Calgary does. As Dave Reid said on the broadcast of the TB-Montreal match, the game of today is more about speed and skill than strength and physicality. The Flyer’s approach is decades behind the game today in many ways.

[Austinfan]

Let's check back in 30 games and see if they actually play better in Calgary.
Most players who leave Torts over the years tend to regress.

The only one I can think of who made a jump was Karlsson when he went to Vegas, and that was both a shooting heater (23.4%), and getting major PT after he was behind two young centers in CBJ. After that outlier season he settled in as a 3C.

Torts/Briere do not emphasize strength and physicality, or they wouldn't have Brink, TK, MIchkov, York, Andrae, Drysdale and drafted Barkey, Ciernak, and trade for Pelletier.

Briere does like smaller players with "grit," since he played in a much more physical era as a small player who stepped up in big games. He was a "fight in the dog" type and wants that in his players.

Torts emphasizes aggression, wants D-men to attack the O-zone but he wants players who play hard off the puck, and are fundamentally sound. He's emphasized going to the dirty area around the net instead of floating on the perimeter.

Both want players who can win board battles and maintain puck possession. Strength plays a part, but it's also about knowing how to play with leverage, and the willingness to go to dirty areas where you're gonna get hit.

[zambonir]

Report: Flyers ‘likely’ to trade Andrei Kuzmenko by deadline

[Austinfan]

Doubt he has much value even with 50% retained ($2.75M cost).
But he's a bad fit for this team as well.

[zambonir]

Anything is more value than nothing, return would just be another throw-in to the original deal. It was originally said they saw him as someone they want to audition and possibly re-sign cheap, partly to have another Russian player (who speaks decent English already). Nobody really thinks he'll score 39 goals again.

And they can still do that for two weeks. He was still a factor in the game the other night - even just as a body after they'd played without the traded guys for so many nights - so take him out of the line-up and you have the bonus of making the team worse again.

[Squire]

It's bad enough that the Flyers front office is mediocre at best at their jobs....when you throw in how disingenous they are there is not much to like.

[bigegypt0417]

It's hard to call them mediocre as they've done an excellent job at accumulating assets and with a few other players on the move, they could essentially own this next draft...as of now they have 7 picks in the first 48.

2025 NHL Draft Order | Tankathon

[zambonir]

Yeah I don't have much of an issue with the current, extremely short-lived regime. Their moves have been pretty good and the team has overachieved at times. The Hart and Gauthier issues are also not really their fault. And full-on tanking doesn't always work either.

The larger issue of course is that it's the same owner, the same philosophies (including fully being willing to rebuild/tank) and the same old boy's club and Flyers Ways. This group is an improvement over the last group but still from the same stock. Regardless, they can't be judged fully until '26-'27 at the earliest.

[Austinfan]

I'm happy with Briere so far:

Trades Hayes with 50% retained for 6th rd pick, year later traded to Pittsburgh with 2nd rd pick to take the other $3.5M

Gets a 1st, (2) 2nds, Grans and Walker for Provorov and Peterson's 2yr/$5m deal. Rumor is CBJ is looking for a 1st for Provorov.

Gets a 1st for Walker, 5th and Johansen's contract. Walker then signs 5yr/$3.6M contract with Carolina to be a 3rd pair D-man.

Refuses to trade a 1st plus for Zegras, refuses to give a sweetener or retain on Farabee with Anaheim.

So he's got a strong record of maximizing value so far. Including the deals he didn't do.

Farabee had little value with 3/$5M left on his deal, which seemed strange at 24, tells me the league is wary of his neck surgery, and thinks his regression this year may be related. Calgary had cap room to take a chance.
Same way Frost had less value than Flyer fans felt he should. In a league desperate for centers, nobody offered a 1st.
2nd rd pick & Pellitier is good value for a 3C.

[Austinfan]

Briere took over a mess, due to Hextall's last three drafts (bad drafting combined with bad luck (Lindblom, Hart, Patrick).
Fletcher/Flahr drafted decently, but Fletcher traded away too many picks trying to win now (1st, (3) 2nds, 3rd).
So it takes time to restock the cupboard.

[zambonir]

Watching US-Finland. I guess it was a good one last night (though not for TK and Canada). Sanheim is entering the Canada line-up tomorrow.

They've already announced 2028 World Cup with similar timing. I'm still not sure what the point of this one is but making it a regular thing while staying in Olympics makes sense I think. The PWHL takes three international breaks, including delaying their playoffs until after the Worlds (whereas the men just don't get the best players at that if their teams are alive).

[zambonir]

Three fights in the first nine seconds of Canada-US. Still no Bobby Clarke against Russia though.

[bkeich]

Michkov with a goal, 2 assists and +5 today.

[zambonir]

Two straight wins and first game with a full line-up since before the trade (including injured guys), they might yet blow the tanking.

[Austinfan]

First five games back from break should be full of upsets.
Real test is last 20 with a compressed schedule, that will expose the pretenders.

Flyers weren't as bad as they looked going into the break. Injuries really decimated them for a couple weeks.
But while Kuz looked solid, I'm not sold on him.
Pelletier is a bottom six forward.

Tiippett - Couts - Michkov line had a fantastic game, dominated, scored 4 goals - but not sold this is sustainable. Fresh legs for Michkov. But Tippett's speed balances Couts' smarts.

Kuz - Laughton - TK is a holding pattern, we'll see if anyone gets moved at the TDL (Laughton has a year left, Risto and Hathaway 2 years, Poehling a year, so Briere isn't facing a move them or lose them situation, he can wait until June if he doesn't like the offers).

Something to watch, Guelph's last game is March 23, and they're unlikely to make the playoffs. Flyers have ten games after that, they can play Luchanko in 5 games and not start the clock, or sign him if they want him to finish the season in LHV. Barkey and Bonk won't be available b/c London should go deep into OHL playoffs.

Western Michigan finished on the 8th of March, but will be in the NCAA playoff race starting the 15th, So Bump might not be available even if he wants to go pro.
However, Notre Dame is unlikely to be in the playoffs, so Knuble could choose to go pro.

[flyers19rw]

So could Devin Kaplan but BU will probably spend some time in the tournament.