Flyers General Manager Chuck Fletcher speaks during the end of the season press conference at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees Township, N.J. on Tuesday, May 3, 2022. The Flyers, 25-46-11 overall, finished last in the Metropolitan division and missed out on the playoffs for the second consecutive year.
Photo Credit: Delco Times
Day one of free agency has come and gone, and Chuck Fletcher says the Flyers are done. Believe it or not after one day the Flyers are complete with their offseason, “We’re done,” Flyers’ General Manager Chuck Fletcher said. “We’re out on all the remaining free agents with the reality of our cap situation right now. It probably precluded us from looking at some of the more expensive options in the option in the market today. Today, to us, was more about depth signings, getting guys to make us a little bit harder to play against and making sure we have some players on two-way contracts that, again, can move between Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia.”
Flyers fans have been mislead a bit from the verbiage that the Flyers front office used using the term “Aggressive Retool.” It has been anything but “Aggressive” as the Flyers were never in on Johnny Gaudreau and struck out on Alex Debrincat, “No, we weren’t in,” Fletcher said of Gaudreau. “We were in on the players that we signed.” Fletcher did not add any high-end talent, when he could have, and this has Flyers fans upset or lost in regards to a clear path for the orange and black moving forward. It would have been better if the Flyers front office used the word “Rebuild”, rather than “Aggressive Retool.”
The Flyers are in the red in regards to their projected cap space at the moment ($-48,000), however, they could move Joel Farabee to Injured Reserve (IR) to start the season to become cap compliant, or move Ryan Ellis to LTIR if he is unable to go on opening night. Yes, the Flyers are against the cap with nine remaining Restricted Free Agents (RFA’s) to sign: Morgan Frost, Wade Allison, Owen Tippett, Hayden Hodgson, Isaac Ratcliffe, Tanner Laczynski, Zack MacEwen, and Linus Högberg.
However, Fletcher says the Flyers have been aggressive with some glaring holes within the lineup, filtered with some uncertainty to Ryan Ellis, “We’ve been very aggressive in trying to fix some of our holes,” Fletcher said. “Right now, we felt we had some major holes on defense, with the uncertainty around Ryan Ellis. He’s progressed but there’s no guarantee when he’ll be back. That’s certainly a massive hole in our lineup which we filled with Tony DeAngelo. Justin Braun’s a guy that we know was able to come in on an affordable contract, provide depth and help our penalty kill. The reality is we have some uncertainty with some of our players in terms of their health. We feel pretty confident, or I should say quite confident, that Couturier and Hayes will be able to bounce back. Right now, as an organization, the most important thing that we have to do is stabilize. We’ll be a much-improved team.”
Fletcher continued, “We’ll be a competitive team. A lot of things that we really struggled with last year, I feel we have a chance to be considerably better at, whether it’s our goals against, our structure, our penalty kill, and our power play, in particular. Those are areas we’re all going to attack. We added some good quality kids in the draft. One important thing that I think we’ve also been able to do is we have not expended big dollars on long term, so we still have some flexibility as we look forward. Depending on Ryan Ellis if that continues to not be a quick process, and then we’ll have the ability to get into some dollars, potentially during the season that we can continue to look to fill some holes.”
“What’s that? Ah – Playoffs? Don’t talk about – playoffs? You kidding me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game!…,” a famous quote from former Indianapolis Coach Jim Mora said. If the Flyers are able to right the ship and somehow shock the World and make the playoffs with this current roster, then John Tortorella should win the Jack Adams Award. Tortorella has his work cut out for him, there is no denying that. There is a lot of uncertainty with a clear path towards righting the ship for this club, and it did not get better this offseason.
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I don’t like leaving negative comments so I will just talk about the positives….. it is really nice out today.
I’ll double up your positive thoughts and add…There’s always hope for the future once Chuck Fletcher clocks out
Here’s my positivity. Chick Fletcher is a tool. That’s where the phrase “retool” came from. I’ve never been so disgusted, and disappointed as a life long Flyers fan. My room, car, etc always repping the Orange and Black, but now? Idk, this organization is awful. Start with Comcast, then Fletcher, and get them out of here. We need somebody with passion, love for the city, fans, and culture we were used to before the passing of Ed Snider.