At trade deadline, Flyers sorely lacking appealing assets
The word is best used in tones reserved for solemn promises, all the better to fool the ever gullible prosports fan raised to believe teamconstruction is a science, not a skill. Naturally, Chuck Fletcher — long out of other answers — went right for it as the NHL trade deadline approached.
“We have to find some more young,” Fletcher said, setting up the money noun, and here it comes, wait for it, “assets.”
He said assets. He wins. Who could argue with assets? Assets are good.
Even better, they don’t spin left when they should have turned right at the blue line. They don’t necessarily cost much. They won’t be showered in boos by a Wells Fargo Center stuffed with Rangers fans. They just exist, the sports answer to NFTs. And as soon as a befuddled general manager can acquire assets, the quicker he can flip them for different assets, which can help him acquire more assets. Pretty soon, he has the largest collection of assets on his block and all his friends will be envious.
That’s where the Flyers were Thursday. They were looking to acquire you-knowwhats — young ones, as the man said — even while so many other NHL teams were trying to find hockey players fit for a Stanley Cup run. That the quagmire he was in was a function of his own doing was lost on Fletcher, so he was not at all self-conscious about it as he openly planned another Asset Jamboree.
“I think what we’re going to try to do is more in line with what most of the other teams in the league have tried in the last few years,” Fletcher said.. “You keep some of your assets, and if you can move a couple other players out to get younger, then we’ll do that.”
Done right — and it rarely is done right — the strength-in-numbers rosterrebuild can work. Move one player, acquire two, then repeat the maneuver often enough that by accident a club can find a forward who can make two good plays a period. The other alternative would be to have gotten it right the first time, so a GM doesn’t have to scramble around to find a desperate team to take failed or overpaid veterans off his hands just to be a little showy around the deadline.
That’s the Flyers’ problem. That’s why they can’t win a hockey game any more, not even with as good a coach as there is in the industry. They committed to the wrong players in the first place. In what hockey economy was dumping a fiveyear, $35 million contract on James van Riemsdyk, injury prone as he had been, a good idea? Ivan Provorov once did seem to possess every skill to make multiple Norris Trophy runs, but someone in the Flyers organization should have had the scouting instincts to sense that he could be inconsistent and at times seemingly disinterested before going for a $40 million, six-year deal that Fletcher will had trouble giving away before the 3 o’clock deadline Friday afternoon.
Alain Vigneault liked Kevin Hayes as a player, but
Tortorella quickly found him to take too long to retreat to the defensive end, and he’s not worth his $70 million deal, even if he was a surprise All-Star.
Those are the kind of assets Fletcher could move under the standard rationalization that his team could lose just as frequently without them. But at one point, someone thought them to be valuable assets and was plainly wrong.
Just over a year ago, CEO Dave Scott made the unfortunate “blank check” declaration, never meaning it in the literal John Middleton sense, but rather that he would not stand in the way of whatever Fletcher thought was the best escape route from the Flyers’ horrifying position. So Fletcher’s latest plan is to just make the Flyers younger, a diversion that fans usually accept, rarely pausing to consider that young players can become ordinary old players.
By Thursday, teams all around the NHL were collecting good players for the purposes of competing for a Cup. The Rangers acquired Patrick Kane, an approach
that helped embolden their fans to create a stir in the Flyers’ own building. Jakob Chychrun went from Arizona to Ottawa. There were more, and there will be more. Carolina even made a move for an established defenseman, and a good one, Shayne Gostisbehere. And what was Fletcher’s hurry to trade him all about, anyway, in 2021? The answer: He would acquire that eternal MVP candidate, Future Considerations. It’s so close to the comical point that Hayes did all he could the other day not to slap his knees in laughter at the
deadline drama.
“Three days ago, it was Joel (Farabee being talked about),” he said. “Now it’s me. It could switch in two days to someone else. Early in the season it was T.K. (Travis Konecny).” Addressing a small media gathering, he needled, “It’s all your fault.”
The trade deadline is near. Assets are in play. The sooner Chuck Fletcher acquires a few, the sooner he can dump them off on someone else.