With April 12th (the NHL trade deadline) looming just mere days away, what route should the Flyers’ general manager (GM) Chuck Fletcher take? Well, as any good GM should feel about his team, Chuck has expressed an interest in wanting to be buyers- focusing all his effort lately on trying to find ways to make his team better now in order to try and make a playoff push. While this mindset maybe admirable in nature, the question still remains with just a 13.8% chance left to make the post season after Tuesday night’s loss is that decision what’s best for his team moving forward? Or is it just propaganda to help him save face and try to protect his job for the time being?
To get a real sense of the direction the Flyers should take, this writer would advise the powers-that-be to look at the standings: Philadelphia currently finds themselves seeded in the sixth spot in the East Division. Their only decisive winning record against teams within their division have come against the league’s last-place team- the Buffalo Sabres, in which the Flyers have beat them five games to two. The Sabres have only managed to total 22 points on the season thus far (with four of those points coming from beating the Flyers), and they are so bad this season that they have gone on a losing streak of 18 straight games before pulling out a win.
Looking deeper into the standings this season, the Flyers should see what they have managed to do against teams from within their own division who are destined to go to the playoffs. Such teams would include the Boston Bruins (who the Flyers have a record of just one win and six losses against this season) and the Washington Capitals (against whom the Flyers have also only managed to total one win and three losses). However, that’s just within their own division. What about the rest of the Eastern Conference that they will have to go up against come playoff time? Teams like the reigning Stanley Cup champions the Tampa Bay Lightning, the reincarnated Florida Panthers- who have found new life under the tutelage of the great Joel Quenneville (who has them dominating the Central Division right now with 56 points on the year) or the Toronto Maple Leafs (who are atop the newly formed North Division with 55 points- besting all the other teams Canada has to offer).
In saying this, Flyers’ management must judge whether it is worth trading away draft pick compensations, NHL players, and/or prospects who are already within the team’s system just to retain a rental player for the possibility of an unrealistic playoff push. If so, then the question becomes who could the Flyers bring in for the short term who could be the answer to all their problems? What player would be able to come in and elevate the Flyers’ game so much that they would now be considered true Stanley Cup contenders? The real answer is NO ONE! No one player could come into the Flyers’ ranks this season and pull them out of this state of mediocrity that Philadelphia now finds themselves in.
So, the team should then consider themselves to be sellers, right? Not exactly!!
Therefore, it is this writer’s opinion that the Flyers should NOT go out and grasp at straws giving up valuable assets like draft picks or prospects on the rumored 35-year-old defensemen Alex Goligoski from Arizona or Detroit’s 34-year-old veteran left-hand-shot defensemen Marc Staal; both of whom would come with albatross-like contracts that pay them way more than they are really worth while they find themselves not even playing on their team’s respected top defensive pairings anymore. If this is the best the Flyers can manage to do by the end of the week to help the defense, the team should then say NO THANK YOU!
If the Flyers are going to go out and be willing to overpay in order to acquire some help, then Philadelphia should have their future in mind. While we all have since come to the realization this season that the Flyers’ defense is lacking and needs some serious help, it may not be time to panic just yet if the Flyers are willing to chalk this season up as a loss: Reinforcements are coming! On the way are defensemen Cameron York, Wyatte Wylie, Egor Zamula, Mason Millman, Linus Hogberg, and Logan Day, all of whom are now signed and currently playing at a high level for the team’s American Hockey League affiliate the Lehigh Valley Phantoms (with the exception of York who just signed and is due to report there soon).
If the Flyers continue the trend this week that they have been on all season of win one game just to lose the next two, the Flyers might get more out of just allowing each of their young defenders the chance to play a game or two at a time with the Flyers for the rest of season to see what each one may be able to bring to the team next season. This would be to avoid filling the hole with someone else’s overpaid/over-aged veteran defender who has no future in Philly after this season anyway.
Let’s dive in: If this way of thinking were implemented, it would then leave the Flyers the opportunity to be proactive in nature (for a change) and leave them with the ability to go acquire a proven NHL player who could upgrade their offense- both now and in the future- and possibly replace one the Flyers’ aging veteran players like Claude Giroux (whose contract expires at the end of next season) or winger Jakub Voracek and his $8.25 million-a-year salary who could be left unprotected at this season’s end for Seattle’s expansion draft, seeing that Jakub has no protections (aka a no movement clause) to his contract and the Kraken might be in need of a veteran player with a big contract to make sure they hit the salary cap floor next season.
One such player who the Flyers could still look to acquire that could be a player to help them for the foreseeable future, whose team has at least been rumored to be listening to offers for him since not naming him as one of their untouchables when they came out, and whose team has officially labeled themselves as sellers is the Detroit Red Wings’ 26-year-old winger Anthony Mantha. What makes this player worth the possibility of having to give up a potential 1st round draft pick and more to acquire his services is that this 6’5 234-pound sniper can score from anywhere! This comes from his ability to play on both sides of the center, which he has been excelling at since his time back in junior hockey playing for the Val-d’Or Foreurs of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). In his last year there he was able to score an unheard-of 2.10 points-per-game average; Netting 57 goals and 63 assists for 120 points in just 57 games played. This prolific scorer was then rewarded by getting drafted in the 1st round back in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft.
Being forced to play for the rebuilding Red Wings for parts of the last six NHL seasons, Mantha has been able to achieve three seasons in which he has scored over 20 goals. One of those seasons he was even able to break the 25-goal mark on. He achieved all this with limited help from his less-than-stellar teammates. When Mantha came to Detroit he already had an NHL frame which helped him to excel and be labeled an elite-level skater who possesses an ability to achieve great speeds. All these attributes have helped him to now be considered a player who is strong on the puck- protecting it with ease from the opposing teams’ defenders while he blows by them en route to his location of preference at the time to unleash one of the most dangerously strong and accurate shots to be found in all the NHL right now. While these previously-mentioned, natural-gifted attributes may gotten him this far, Anthony is a student of the game and is thus always working on his craft. Lately he has been putting a focus on working on his defensive abilities and his physicality: Two things that the Flyers so desperately need right now.
This season, Mantha has been able to achieve 10 goals and 10 assists so far for a total 20 points on the year. This being quite the feat indeed seeing that most of his line mates have been or are still out with nagging injuries.
If the Flyers could acquire Anthony Mantha in a trade from Detroit the team could get a player that is not only capable of replacing the kind of goal scoring that will soon go missing from the teams’ offense when the Flyers’ aging duo depart from the team; either finding themselves in another jersey or retired. They would be getting a player who could be considered the first sniper since Jeff Carter (who the Flyers chose to trade to the Columbus Blue Jackets all those years ago). Trading for Mantha would not be done in vain even if the Flyers were to NOT make the playoffs this year seeing that he is signed to a reasonable $5.7 million-per-year contract through the end of the 2024 season (3 years from now). This would ensure the Flyers the peace of mind that they would not have to go back into a full rebuild mode after one (or both) of these aging players hang up their skates for the last time.
