Streit tries to tread lightly on trade deadline
VOORHEES, N.J. >> As March dawns across the NHL, all teams can look around their respective locker room for an annual icon ... that elephant usually lurking in the shadows.
At this time of year, that idiotic idiom looming large is the NHL trade deadline. It’s Wednesday at 3, and since the Flyers are about three standings strides south of where they finished last season — as the eighth and last playoff team in the Eastern Conference — they might have one of their busiest of trade deadline periods in recent seasons.
That’s because an outdoor loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins Saturday seemed to reinforce the idea that the Flyers don’t have a snowball’s chance in Steel City hell over their last 21 games to hurdle several pretending contenders for that No. 8 spot.
“Everybody realizes the situation, but we’ve put ourselves in this spot,” Mark Streit said. “We’re the only ones that can get ourselves out of it. We do a lot of good things out there, but apparently not good enough. We don’t get the points. We don’t get the results.”
The Flyers aren’t only off their 2016 pace at this point, most of the other teams in the Metro and East are that much better. As of Monday morning, Philly had fallen to sixth in the division and was tied for 10th overall in the East, five points behind the No. 8 Maple Leafs.
Tampa and New Jersey were virtually right with them and moving up.
“It’s different this year,” said Streit, the 39-year-old defenseman with the expiring contract. “At this time of year (last season) we had gotten hot. It’s the results, and they don’t add up to the way we play. Sometimes we play pretty good games, but we don’t get the results. So it’s tough, and it’s frustrating. But at the same time you try to be positive . ... We still have the same team, the atmosphere is still good in the room and everybody believes.”
But it takes only a minute for the veneer to drop for Streit, because he knows reality when he sees it. While the Flyers could fool themselves and still imagine being in a position of playoff hope (with all fingers crossed), it’s the way they’ve gotten here that’s so troubling: They have lost seven of their last nine games and are 8-15-3 since Dec. 22. That’s quite the spiral. It’s also plenty of evidence for Ron Hextall to want to hang a symbolic sales sign out on the Skate Zone’s front lawn.
Hence that metaphorical elephant in the Flyers’ locker room, which seems to loom larger whenever Streit is there. He’s a pending free agent, and for a player his age his skills are still much in evidence, as is his defensive savvy. He’s almost a prototype, then, for a “rental deal” centerpiece with a team that’s a true Cup contender.
“Well, it’s certainly not easy, there’s no other way to say it,” Streit said of waiting for the deadline to pass. “I’ve been through it a couple of times and I’ve seen guys go through it. You really try to worry about the game tomorrow, because all the other games are out of your control.
“I think everybody knows my feelings toward this organization, how much I like it here and how much I believe in the team. There’s a business side of it, too, and I understand that. But I just want to help the team win tomorrow and see what happens. I want to win, but I want to win with this team.”
You can see the sincerity in his face, perhaps with some expressions of puzzlement as to how this team suddenly isn’t good enough to compete. That doesn’t mean Mark Streit is going to give up the ghost, even if that hazy image looks a lot like an elephant.
“We’re not in a great position right now,” Streit said. “I know we have to have an unbelievable record (to get in). But if anybody can do it, it’s this team here. It’s an incredible challenge, but we’re up for it.”