The Flyers are expected to interview Barry Trotz for their vacant head coaching position on Friday, reports Sam Carchidi of Philly Hockey Now. Philadelphia is among the teams looking for a new bench boss after opting not to give interim coach Mike Yeo the full-time job and with Chuck Fletcher looking for someone to turn things around quickly, Trotz’s track record certainly is appealing. Trotz’s former team, the Islanders, made the playoffs in each of his first three seasons while making the Eastern Conference Final in two of those while his defensive tactics would certainly help to shore up a team that allowed 298 goals this season. Philadelphia certainly isn’t the only team interested in the 59-year-old, however, as Trotz interviewed in Winnipeg earlier this week.
More from the Eastern Conference:
- Bruins center Curtis Lazar told reporters, including Fluto Shinzawa of The Athletic (subscription link) that there is mutual interest in signing a new contract. The 27-year-old had eight goals and eight assists in 70 games this season while chipping in with 186 hits and is the type of energetic depth player that should garner some interest on the open market this summer. Lazar will be coming off a deal that paid him $800K and he should be able to get a little bit more than that at least either from Boston or someone else in free agency.
- Penguins winger Rickard Rakell told Chris Adamski of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that he’s definitely open to re-signing with Pittsburgh for next season although no contract talks have been held just yet. The 29-year-old did well after being acquired from Anaheim at the trade deadline, collecting 13 points in 19 games during the regular season before being injured and missing most of the first round. Rakell is coming off a deal that paid him $3.8MM over each of the last six seasons and while he hasn’t come close to matching the 34 goals and 35 assists he had in 2017-18, he should be able to land a bit of a higher price tag on the open market this summer.
As hard as it might be they need to let Lazar and any other 3-4 line players go it’s way past time to see what we have in the pipeline because right we have garbage
Pay Letang.
Pay Geno.
Let Rust walk and use his money to keep Rakell and Rodrigues.
Rakell was good with Sid. Give him a fair offer and a chance to play with one of the best to ever play.
Letang can get like 10.5 AAV if he wants to leave
sign 3 players for that. especially with Hextalls success with guys like Heinen
is there really belief that Letang, at his age, is getting the third highest AAV for a defenseman? I mean, I get the dude is still great, but age IS an issue.
So, your strategy is to have less Letangs and more Heinans…?
Hard no.
I’d take 2 average defenders for 3 mil each and a decent forward for the price of Letang
and yes I think Letang can get paid an insane amount on the open market still, and likely will.
the difference is penguins will still have a high scoring offense with or without Letang, but lack of physical defenders is starting to hurt especially when GK unfolds in the playoffs
pens should be looking at Connor Murphy, Nakita Zadorov, Justin Braun type big physical defenders
and forgetting about Letang