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Finally the long awaited Carter Hart contract is complete. The price is reasonable, as is the term. Flyers GM, Chuck Fletcher, did a good job brining the contract in at a nice tern for a vital part of the team. Hart, while talented, didn’t have his best showing last season, as did most players on the team, but the organization was able to take advantage of his struggles and get him at a reduced cost. Ultimately, he is still a young star and the goalie of the future, but these struggles helped bring his price down. At this point Fletcher needs to sign RFA defenseman Travis Sanheim and the team will be ready with their final roster. There could be some more moves made, but it’s unlikely since the club saw quite a bit of turnover this past season.
With a revamped defense and some offseason transactions the team is now ready to compete with a vastly more seasoned group of players. With all the new faces, it leaves us guessing as to what the lineup decisions will look like heading into the 2021-22 NHL season. Having said that, the team has a slew of options at all positions and it will allow Alain Vigneault to experiment quite a bit with the roster combinations. While, Vigneault knows his current squad he also has several new players to learn. Ryan Ellis, Rasmus Ristolainen, Keith yandle will give the coach confidence to roll three defensive units. Cam Atkinson, a shooter and finisher at heart, brings in a new skillset that this team lacked for several years. Ultimately, the coach has new tools to get creative with and experiment with lines that underperformed in the previous season. Will it pan out to better production on the ice? Potentially, but all signs point to yes.
Additionally, the team has several young guns such as Jay O’Brien, Morgan Frost, Tyson Foerster, Zayde Wisdom, Issac Ratcliff, Cam York, Igor Zamula, and more are all capable of making an impact and could definitely push the veterans more than anticipated. It’s a long season and it should be suspected that the coaching staff will be taking notes of players that are close to making the jump to the big leagues.
On this episode of Getting Gritty Wit It, I welcome back guest, Tyler Ledbetter, to the show to talk about the Flyers current cap situation and the singing ahead. Is this team ready to compete for the playoffs or are they only making a horizontal shift. Either way they underperformed last season, so the results must come from within.
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