Mandaou
Registered User
Incredibly the Flyers cap number currently stands at 23 million for next year with the team sitting on about 30 million in the bank. There is a caveat though, as the team did not resign Scott Gomez or Martin Brodeur.
“We want both players back and we’ve told their agent so. Frankly, we thought both the players and our team would be better served by letting the market dictate their value. We have the right to match on Scotty so we control the destiny there. With Martin it’s riskier but when we traded for him it was in anticipation of getting a discount on the signing. If we did not, then it was not worth to give up an additional 1st round pick to sign the player when all we would have to do is sign him in free agency if that’s what we decided to do.”
The trading of Wade Redden and Todd Bertuzzi allowed the Flyers to collect younger assets but also to free up cap space. Todd Bertuzzi was traded for a song but in the cap world sometimes you have little choice.
“We had a similar situation last year with Ray Whitney as we were over the cap heading into the draft. We knew Ray was worth much more than what we received in return but we reached out to every team and only found one bidder. Would we have liked to keep Ray on our team, certainly.”
It’s clear that they Flyers want to be big players in the FA market this year. Their first goal will likely be to sign their own players but expect the team make a strong pitch for one or two UFA and possibly one RFA. “We’re not necessarily from the school of Kevin Lowe but we’re not going to stand on the sidelines either.”
Flyers Current Depth Chart
Centre
Scott Gomez, RFA
Mike Fisher
Tim Connolly
Stephane Yelle
LW
Simon Gagne
Gary Roberts
Fredrik Sjostrom
Tyler Pyatt, RFA
Tyson Nash
RW
Maxim Afiniganov
Trent Hunter
Jordin Tootoo
Matthew Keith
Defense
Anton Volchenkov
Colin White
Brent Seabrooke
Tim Gleason
Cam Barker
Mark Stuart
Goalies
Martin Brodeur, UFA
James Howard
“We want both players back and we’ve told their agent so. Frankly, we thought both the players and our team would be better served by letting the market dictate their value. We have the right to match on Scotty so we control the destiny there. With Martin it’s riskier but when we traded for him it was in anticipation of getting a discount on the signing. If we did not, then it was not worth to give up an additional 1st round pick to sign the player when all we would have to do is sign him in free agency if that’s what we decided to do.”
The trading of Wade Redden and Todd Bertuzzi allowed the Flyers to collect younger assets but also to free up cap space. Todd Bertuzzi was traded for a song but in the cap world sometimes you have little choice.
“We had a similar situation last year with Ray Whitney as we were over the cap heading into the draft. We knew Ray was worth much more than what we received in return but we reached out to every team and only found one bidder. Would we have liked to keep Ray on our team, certainly.”
It’s clear that they Flyers want to be big players in the FA market this year. Their first goal will likely be to sign their own players but expect the team make a strong pitch for one or two UFA and possibly one RFA. “We’re not necessarily from the school of Kevin Lowe but we’re not going to stand on the sidelines either.”
Flyers Current Depth Chart
Centre
Scott Gomez, RFA
Mike Fisher
Tim Connolly
Stephane Yelle
LW
Simon Gagne
Gary Roberts
Fredrik Sjostrom
Tyler Pyatt, RFA
Tyson Nash
RW
Maxim Afiniganov
Trent Hunter
Jordin Tootoo
Matthew Keith
Defense
Anton Volchenkov
Colin White
Brent Seabrooke
Tim Gleason
Cam Barker
Mark Stuart
Goalies
Martin Brodeur, UFA
James Howard
