Then you might as well trade Giroux & Voracek to both give them a chance to win & go all-in on a rebuild.
You can’t expect to contend with a 31 point 2C when your rivals have Crosby/Malkin, Bergeron/Krejci, Matthews/Tavares, Backstrom/Kuznetsov, Barkov/Trocheck, etc. When the Flyers won the Cup, they had Clarke & MacLeish.
Nolan Patrick is not a 2C yet. Maybe he will become one, but you can’t rely on it. And Frost can’t be expected to be any better than Patrick at age 20.
The Flyers owe Giroux and Voracek nothing but $8M+ per year for 3 and 5 years respectively. It's a shame that Giroux isn't fast or big enough to continue playing C at a high level or depth at C wouldn't be an issue.
Regardless, Couturier is the best overall player on the team and deservedly logs the most ice at F. But in the absence of true superstars around him (McDavid/Crosby etc), the Flyers are going to have to try to win with overwhelming depth, two way team play and great goaltending - and hope a couple of the prospects at F exceed even their already high expectations.
I have no doubt at all that Patrick will be as good or better than Couts some day soon. He's committed defensively, skates better and shows better early offensive talent. He just needs to avoid October concussion season, that's all. Frost needs to earn a job at camp, and I think he can. He has a ton of skill and smarts, so we'll see if playing with smarter players will let him blossom even further. He might need part of a year with the Phantoms, though, so it's on him.
The point is, THIS YEAR is not the year to panic and go all in on mediocre free agents on long expensive contracts.
This year, they need to find a reliable vet backup for Hart, to play a year or two until Sandstrom is ready to join the club. They need to let as many kids play as possible. Their chances of winning it all will come with a Hart/Sandstrom tandem in a couple years time. They can make the playoffs this year easily with Hart and a good backup, health permitting, obviously.
On D, Provorov, Sanheim, Gostisbehere and Myers just need more experience to be a potentially dominant top 4. Patience is still the key.
Then add guys like Morin, Hagg, and Friedman for depth, and good prospects like Hogberg and Zamula coming, and you've got the makings of a playoff team this year and a contending D, in 2020-21 or 2021-22. If they decide to re-up Gudas, that's all the extra vet toughness they need, given the high quality and balance of talent of the other players.
At C, Couts, Patrick, Frost and Laughton will be a good group now, giving Frost and Patrick enough ice time to develop. It's not like they are the only C prospects either. Vorobyev, Rubtsov and Laczynski are good hockey players, who I can see growing into solid players for the 3rd line or even higher, if they hit. Vorobyev made the team out of camp last year, so he'll be very motivated to try to do it again.
At wing, we've got vets like Giroux, Voracek and JVR long term and young players like Konecny, Lindblom and Hartman in the lineup. Raffl is the vet 12-13F. Farabee, Ratcliffe and Allison all look like can't miss middle 6 at worst wingers. All it will take is for one or two of the others: Aube-Kubel, Bailey, Cates, Kase, Laberge, Bunnaman, Twarynski, Sushko, Strome, to make the jump to NHL regular and the pipeline is all set.
Hexy's plan to clear cap space and rebuild the team through the draft worked. He made critical errors in judgement by refusing to fire the coach when it clearly wasn't working, and by relying on an older goalie coming off surgery to carry the workload with another injury-prone backup. It cost him is his job when Scott saw empty seats and the team at the bottom of the standings and panicked.
I dread Homer having any role in the team at all, and it's clear Fletcher is there to be his marionette. Let's hope they don't screw it up. In the next couple years, we're going to have an elite D corps, superb goaltending and depth, balance and skill at forward, it's just going to take a little more time.
