Flyers make deal for Isles’ MacDonald
VOORHEES, N.J.— Despite his team’s dramatic move in the standings since their rapid early fall, general manager Paul Holmgren didn’t fail to act quickly to try to shore up a most obvious team shortcoming — the Flyers’ lack of calm in their defensive zone.
In Andrew MacDonald, the Flyers might have a defenseman who not only knows how to rifle a puck out of trouble, but actually skate it out of his defensive zone on occasion without incurring a widespread sense of panic.
The Flyers Tuesday traded a thirdround pick in the June draft, a secondround pick in 2015 and lightly regarded minor-leaguer Matt Mangene for MacDonald, who at 27 is a mobile defenseman still developing his game.
He also was paired with Mark Streit for the better part of three seasons on Long Island, and perhaps Holmgren saw this as a potential case of familiarity breeding competence.
“He’s a good, all-around defenseman,” Streit said via a conference call Tuesday night. “He plays really well defensively and blocks a lot of shots and has a really good first pass, and obviously he’s got some offense as well.” “It’s a really good mix.” MacDonald also has an expiring contract. A pending resticted free agent, he only brings a $575,000 cap hit and should help give the defense at least a bit of a literal push (up the ice). Expect Holmgren, who declined comment on the deal, to try to give MacDonald a push with a nice contract extension sooner rather than later.
In a one-line text take, Holmgren said only that MacDonald, “is a solid two-way defenseman who brings us depth and experience.”
MacDonald has four goals and 20 assists in 63 games for the Islanders this season, and was a somewhat worrisome minus-19. That was seen as more of a product of an Islanders team that was struggling from the net on out this season.
On the plus-side, MacDonald leads the NHL in blocked shots with 198. His closest competitor in that category, Montreal’s Josh Gorges, has 171.
MacDonald is ranked eighth in the league in on-ice time, averaging 25
minutes, 25 seconds per game for the Islanders, who in that area really missed their former captain who pursued greater financial reward in the offseason, one Mark Streit. He said when he caught wind of the trade Tuesday, he texted his former partner MacDonald and welcomed him to the team. MacDonald had left the Islanders team hotel in Winnipeg when he received the text and was at the airport waiting on a lengthy flight to Philadelphia. He was thus immediately unavailable for comment, but is expected to be available for Wednesday’s home game against the Washington Capitals.
“Great guy in the (locker) room,” Streit said of MacDonald. “He wants to win and he competes every night, as I said before he’s going to make our team better.”
MacDonald was a sixthround selection in the 2006 draft and worked his way through the minors before spending all of the past three seasons and most of the 2009-10 campaign with the big club. In 295 career games with the Islanders, MacDonald had 17 goals and 72 assists for 89 points.
“He’s still a young player, and it’s the first time for him to be traded,” Streit said, “... but he’s really excited to be a Flyer.”
Surely not as excited are a couple of other youngish Flyers defenders who were battling for ice time before this move, Andrej Meszaros and Erik Gustafsson.
Lately it’s been Meszaros who had been getting the bulk of ice time out of those two frequently alternating defenders, but at 28, Meszaros is three years older than Gustafsson, comes at much heftier $4 million cap hit ... oh, and Meszaros is a pending unrestricted free agent, too. You’d think he already had plenty to think about considering the trade deadline looms Wednesday at 3 p.m. Now a Mez move seems inevitable.
“I don’t care about tomorrow,” Meszaros said after an early Tuesday practice at the Skate Zone. “Whatever happens, happens; it’s out of your hands and it’s a business thing. But it’s going to be interesting.”
Asked if he thought he had a reason to be nervous about the deadline, Meszaros added. “Not for me. When I was younger, I kind of got nervous (on deadline day) because I didn’t want to leave. But now, once you get older, you understand the business and how it works. You’re not thinking about it and you go day by day and see what happens.”