Offseason Keys: Philadelphia Flyers

The offseason has arrived for most squads.  Having covered the teams that weren’t a part of the NHL’s return and the ones ousted in the Qualifying Round and official first round, we shift our focus to the ones that were eliminated in the second round.  Next up is a look at Philadelphia.

The Flyers were a playoff team for most of the season but really found their stride down the stretch and pushed themselves into the seeding games for the playoffs and avoided the Qualifying Round.  From there, they jumped to the top spot and were able to get by Montreal in the first round before their offensive struggles were too much to overcome against the Islanders.  Despite the weakened production, Philadelphia was one of the better offensive teams during the regular season so GM Chuck Fletcher may opt to not do too much there.  Instead, the things on their to-do list this offseason revolve around the back end and between the pipes and largely involve small tweaks at most instead of big changes.

Re-Sign Myers

There aren’t many restricted free agents of note in Philadelphia, particularly with Nolan Patrick missing all of this season with lingering migraine issues.  (While the team is optimistic he’ll play next season, he’ll almost certainly wind up with a cheap one-year deal.)  But defenseman Philippe Myers is one whose case carries some importance.

The 23-year-old still hasn’t played a full season with the Flyers but he appears to be on his way towards becoming an important piece of their defensive core.  He played in 50 NHL games this season, picking up a respectable 16 points while averaging 17 minutes a night.  His workload increased in the playoffs, however, as he was bumped up to more than 20 minutes per game and into a spot in their top four.  Myers even chipped in with three goals in those 16 contests.

While it’s a small sample size, it’s likely that Myers is back in that role for next season, especially with Justin Braun set to become an unrestricted free agent next week.  A short-term contract would be easy enough to do and should come in fairly cheap given that he has less than 90 games of experience but if he plays well, the price of a long-term deal would go up considerably.  As a result, Fletcher may want to kick the tires on what a longer pact would cost; even if it was a slight overpayment in the short term, it would have the potential to be a bargain down the road.  That makes this case a bit more important than it might seem at first.

Move Gostisbehere

For a while now, it has seemed like an eventuality that defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere would be made available.  That is now indeed the case as just a few days ago, it was reported that they are willing to move the 27-year-old.

Gostisbehere is only two years removed from a breakout 65-point season that made it appear as if he was on his way to becoming a top-notch offensive defender,  Even though he’s not the best defender, that type of production would make up for it.  Even the years that sandwiched that 2017-18 showing weren’t bad either with outputs of 39 and 37 points.  Those certainly weren’t as good but that’s still well above average for a defenseman.  Had 2019-20 even come close to that, this probably wouldn’t even be close to being considered at this point.  But with only a dozen points in 42 games that saw him scratched down the stretch in the regular season and for most of the playoffs, his value has cratered quite quickly.

Further complicating things is his contract which has three years left at a $4.5MM price tag.  That’s justifiable if he can get back to the mid-to-high 30s in points in a normal cap environment but his ability to bounce back is going to be in question and this is anything but a normal cap environment.  If Fletcher can find a taker for Gostisbehere, he’s going to have to consider it.  Selling low is never ideal but moving him out would at least give them some cap space to work with if they want to try to add to their forward group this offseason.  It’s quite the fall from grace for Gostisbehere and it just goes to show how quickly things can change.

Pick A Backup Goalie

The Flyers are among the many teams that have a vacancy to fill between the pipes with Brian Elliott being eligible for unrestricted free agency next week.  The team could opt to bring him back in a familiar mentoring role for Carter Hart while Alex Lyon waits in the wings as a cheap option as well but is almost certainly better off as a third-string option.  There are plenty of options in free agency and the trade market, however, that will also be worth considering.

There are a couple of questions that Fletcher will need to answer in order to determine which goalie he wants to sign: How comfortable is he with Hart playing back-to-backs and how much do they want to spend in that spot?

While next to nothing is known about the schedule for next season, the current expectation is that the schedule will be somewhat compressed in an effort to get as many games in as possible.  Having starting goalies play in both ends of a back-to-back is something that teams have been shying away from doing in recent years and while Hart is young enough that he could probably handle the role, it’s worth noting that he only has 88 career games under his belt (regular season and playoffs combined).  Adding the extra pressure of frequently playing back-to-backs is something that they may not want to do.

That will take a bargain-priced goalie off the table which helps shape the answer to that second question.  Even so, there is still a sizable gap price-wise between someone like Elliott and the top backup options available.  They have a bit of cap room but most of that will go to Myers, Patrick, and rounding out the roster.  If they want an upgrade at backup, they probably would need to free up a bit of cap room first.

As things stand, it certainly seems like re-signing Elliott would make the most sense.  While his days of being one of the better backups may be gone, he’s someone that accepts his role and works well with Hart.  He also won’t need a multi-year commitment in a marketplace where quite a few backups should get an extra year to satisfy expansion exposure requirements.  Philadelphia shouldn’t be in that situation as they could qualify Felix Sandstrom and expose him next offseason.  Fletcher has a bit of time to think about this but the annual game of musical chairs in free agency often doesn’t last more than a couple of days so, within the next seven-to-ten days, he’ll need to make a decision on this situation.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.