When Nicolas Aube-Kubel was recalled on December 15, 2019 the Flyers were hoping he would be able to solidify the bottom six due to injury, and that’s exactly what transpired. What did NAK established in his recall? Well, he was too good to send back to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms in the AHL, as he would no longer pass through waivers.
NAK, finally got a shot to make an imprint with the orange and black, and boy did he deliver. Drafted by the Flyers in 2014 in the second round, NAK was never given a fair shot at sticking with the Flyers, especially after a great training camp in 2019. For the Phantoms, he registered five goals, to go along with three apples in 26 games played.
The fact is NAK has become a staple with the Flyers bottom six. He plays a solid game to include being relentless on the forecheck, battles hard for pucks, and pots big goals. With the big club NAK tallied seven goals, and eight assists for a total of 15 points in 36 games played, to include two goals on the Power Play. Over the course of his 36 Regular Season games he led the Flyers with 82 hits. He also led the Flyers with 52 hits in the playoffs, tallied two goals, and registered one assist in 15 games in the playoffs.
NAK can provide a much needed spark to this club when given the chance, and can pot big goals on the PP. All in all, this recall became a showcasing of the future make up of the bottom six for the Flyers for the next few seasons. His two-year $2.15 million ($1.075 million AAV) is a well earned one for NAK. With this signing the Flyers now have three RFA’s left in Philippe Myers, Nolan Patrick, and Robert Hagg with approximately $6.2 million in cap space.
AWESOME! He faltered a bit after getting hurt in the playoffs. but was a real breakthrough this year.
NOW DO PITLICK !!
I do not think we can afford to sign Pitlick, because Phil Myers must be signed to a good deal, and also take care of Nolan Patrick! But mostly playing against signing Pitlick is Brian Elliot”s new contract, which we have to take care of! But do not worry , we have Linus Sandin signed, and Lacynski and Allison may both compete for Pitlick”s spot in our line-up, so next season should be fun to watch!
All true, but I would seriously consider losing Patrick if it meant keeping Pitlick. Our window is NOW. At the same time, there are plenty of other things they can do to keep them both.
I agree! I would keep Pitlick and re-sign him now, if we already knew that we can trade Ghost for picks and prospects! But i am not ready to give up for Patrick just yet, cause he is still only 21 years old and cause of his head problems, will not cost much to retain! And so we must wait the draft and hope our GM can really move Ghost, and free up his salary! Because if we place our self to that position, that we are cap-strapped, then other teams will use it to against us, and thus give much less assets from Ghost! So let”s see, maybe we can sign Pitlick after all!
No one can say what’s the right move. Patrick could be a force for the next 10 years, or he could never play again, or go out for good after his next hit. I’m not inclined to underestimate him and my God how he could help us, but it just doesn’t feel like it’s setting up well. Especially with Oskar getting all this attention for coming back from CANCER, playing this year and getting a pretty nice contract. I mean how does that make Patrick feel? A fifth round pick from whom not much was expected has delivered, gotten cancer, become the toast of the NHL, come back and gotten paid, Meanwhile the can’t-miss Patrick is just this sort of floating question mark, while ALL the picks around him are delivering — I mean Hischier was picked before but Heiskanen, Makar and Petersson were all picked just after and all those guys would be sorely welcome on the Flyers ….
I’m not up on all the contract details to know who we can keep or who we can spare. But my eyes tell me that we suddenly appear to have a lot of overpaid people and are unable to retain much cheaper people we’d rather keep. It’s kind of hard to swallow that after finally getting out from under Lecavallier, we’ve gotten ourselves right back in the same place with JVR. And same goes for Ghost who is our new MacDonald.
My view after re-signing Kubel. Figure out a way to re-sign Elliott, Hagg and Pitlick. Forget about a sniper and go get another shut down defenseman to replace or even add to Braun — ‘d be happy to take him back at half his current price,
My proposal: TK, Morin and Ghost for Sergachev + Paquette.??
I would go for it! Sergachev would be real great to have, as he can run our power-play with great results, and he can also defend really well, and has great size also! The most appealing thing to have Sergachev, is that he is good friends with Provorov and trains with him really hard in off-season to say the least! So we could have in Provorov and Sergachev the leagues most hard conditioned defenders for the next decade! As for Paguette, he is the best fourth liners in this league, so he would be icing on the cake, but i would do this deal for Sergachev only!
After seeing Sergachev a little more, I agree with you I would do the deal for him alone. Unfortunately I’m not sure the total salary on each side is close enough to make that possible. In essence you are “giving” Morin to Tampa in order to convince them to take Ghost’s terrible (at this point) deal. So it’s TK for Sergachev, basically. I like TK, not sure about how much I like his deal, but he’s the kind of player TB really seems to excel with. On the Flyers, TK somehow becomes one of our more physical forecheckers? I’ve been complaining for a long time about how often the biggest forwards on the Flyers aren’t physical — see Voracek, JVR, even Hayes — while some of their smallest guys are physical — TK and now NAK. If you’re old enough like me, you might remember Sami Kapanen (all 5’9″ of him) who somehow once became the Flyers’ only diligent body checker one playoff season.
But I don’t see the Flyers’ problem as needing a sniper per se. Sure would be great to have one. It would certainly help. But rather than overreach for an overpaid sniper who doesn’t play 200 feet, I’d rather they solidify their D even further. They need to improve controlling the front of the net when defending, as well as moving the puck out of the zone with some confidence that doesn’t mean simply turning it over at mid-ice then going back to defending again. Sergachev checks both of those critical boxes, not to mention showing some real offensive abilities as well. As you pointed out (and I didn’t know), his having a relationship with Provorov sets us up to have a real generational pair of D-men on par with say, Seabrook and Keith or Suter and Weber.
Getting Sergachev means Braun can be let go and also relieves our craving for a more physical presence like we hoped Morin would eventually provide. It also puts us in a better position for when we likely lose Niskanen after next year.
Just can’t see anyway TB makes this deal.
Also just read this, which complicates my proposal a bit, but apparently TK is Patrick’s best friend on the team, so there’s that.