After a week of cautious optimism and hoping that the Anaheim Ducks would let Leo Carlsson fly the coop, the Philadelphia Flyers are right back where they were a week ago.
Danny Briere ruffled some feathers with his offer sheet, and the Flyers are once again being talked about in NHL circles, but Philadelphia still lacks the first-line center that it desperately needs.
The Flyers were being talked about in terms of offer sheets a few days before sending one to Carlsson, though, as the 14-year, $110 million contract that Shea Weber signed in Philadelphia, and the Nashville Predators subsequently matched, had just expired.
Paul Holmgren was the general manager who tendered that offer to Weber, and he didn’t exactly do well in the following weeks, months, and years to bolster the blue line after the Predators retained their rearguard.
Let’s take a look back at what the Flyers did following their last failed offer sheet and see what lessons the current front office can take from those missteps.
Chris Pronger’s career-ending injury sends Flyers spiraling
The Flyers had a Chris Pronger-sized hole on the blue line after the Hall of Famer suffered a career-ending eye injury in 2011.
Pronger led the Flyers to the Stanley Cup Final in 2010, averaging 25:56 per game in his first season in Philadelphia. He then averaged 22:30 per game in 50 contests the next season, and was injured in his 13th game the following season.
Holmgren traded for a few veteran defensemen in season, acquiring Nicklas Grossmann and Pavel Kubina for draft picks in February.
The Flyers were still able to make the playoffs once again in 2012, eliminating the Penguins in a crazy first-round series before falling to the Devils in the second round.
They then began the offseason by shipping Sergei Bobrovsky off to Columbus and swapping James van Riemsdyk for Luke Schenn.
Adding Weber to that blue line would’ve solved a lot of issues, but those problems were compounded in the following months.
Not only did the Predators match the offer sheet, but the Flyers missed out on re-signing Jaromir Jagr and Matt Carle while pursuing top free agents Zach Parise and Ryan Suter. So the only additions Philadelphia was able to make were a washed-up Ruslan Fedotenko and defenseman Bruno Gervais.
Predictably, the Flyers struggled in the lockout-shortened season, with Schenn, Kimmo Timonen, Braydon Coburn, and Gervais being their four most-used defensemen.
Holmgren puts Flyers on an Island
Holmgren was gifted two compliant buyouts thanks to the lockout and new CBA, allowing the Flyers to get out from under the contracts of Ilya Bryzgalov and, ironically, Briere.
But he didn’t exactly put that money to good use.
The Flyers signed the recently bought-out Vincent Lecavalier to a five-year, $22.5 million contract, and traded for the rights to Mark Streit, signing him to a four-year, $21 million contract. Mind you, Lecavalier was 33 at this point, and Streit was 36. These were two classic Holmgren-type signings that ultimately blew up in the Flyers’ face.
But we’re not even to the worst part yet.
As the Flyers were making a push for the playoffs at the 2014 trade deadline, Holmgren traded two draft picks that became Ilya Sorokin and Brandon Carlo to the Islanders for Andrew MacDonald, who famously arrived for #ClutchTime, and infamously was signed to a six-year, $30 million contract that was the final nail in the coffin for Holmgren.
It’s always going to be interesting to think about how the Flyers would’ve fared in the mid-2010s had Pronger stayed healthy or if the Predators hadn’t matched the Weber offer sheet.
Philadelphia pushed the Rangers to seven games in the first round, with Steve Mason forced to miss a few games due to injury. New York went all the way to the Stanley Cup Final that year, and perhaps the Flyers could’ve done the same if they had a true top-pair defenseman.
Hextall keeps band-aid signings going
After Holmgren was “promoted” to team president at the beginning of the offseason, Ron Hextall took over as general manager. His first move was to trade Scott Hartnell for R.J. Umberger in a deal that we’re still waiting for the second shoe to drop on.
He then signed veteran free agents Nick Schutlz and Michael Del Zotto in free agency for some defensive depth and to replace Gervais, and also added Carlo Colaiacovo in late October.
Of course, none of these moves worked either, as Hextall’s rebuild started in earnest at the 2015 trade deadline with Braydon Coburn and Kimmo Timonen being sold to the Lightning and Blackhawks.
Those turned out to be pretty good trades, as Radko Gudas became a solid defenseman, and the Lightning pick was used to trade up and draft Travis Konecny. It also made Timonen a Stanley Cup champion with the Blackhawks in the final year of his career, as he was forced to retire due to blood clots.
But none of those signings or trades helped the Flyers get a true top-pair defenseman like Pronger or Weber.
The draft picks that would’ve been sent to Nashville as compensation if Weber became a Flyer did help a bit, though.
Flyers draft defensemen with offer sheet picks
In 2013, the first pick that would’ve been sent to Nashville, the Flyers drafted Sam Morin, who some were calling The Next Chris Pronger. Of course, that never came to fruition as the 11th overall pick dealt with multiple knee injuries and even tried playing left wing before ending his playing career.
The next year, with the draft in Philadelphia, the Flyers tried to make a big splash to move up and select Aaron Ekblad. That didn’t happen, but they were able to get a pretty good defenseman when it’s all said and done in Travis Sanheim with the 17th overall pick.
Sanheim didn’t fully flourish until recently, though, partially due to being behind Ivan Provorov, whom the Flyers took with the seventh overall pick in 2015. The Russian blueliner is probably as close as the Flyers got to having a true number one defenseman in the last decade, but it’s a bitter pill to swallow when you see that Zach Werenski was drafted one pick later.
Then, in 2016, after making the playoffs and getting eliminated in the first round again, the Flyers swung and missed with German Rubtsov at 22nd overall. He played just four games in the NHL before going back over to Russia to play in the KHL.
What can Briere learn from Holmgren’s mistakes?
The Flyers once again find themselves searching for different paths to land a true top talent after their offer sheet was matched. Both times they were record-breaking contracts with a front-loaded structure designed to torpedo the matching team, and both times the teams surprisingly — or perhaps not-so-surprisingly in the Carlsson case — matched anyway.
Holmgren was never able to find that top-pair defenseman to replace Pronger or Weber. That didn’t have to be the beginning of the end of his tenure as GM — that was probably already in the works, anyway –though. He continued to throw money at the problem, no matter if the player really fit what the Flyers were trying to do.
Briere has shown that he is not Holmgren. While he is willing to take some risks, they have to be calculated, and, most importantly, they have to make sense.
It would be surprising if the Flyers went on a spending spree for older players this summer or even next offseason. Granted, they’re in a different position now than they were in 2012, with a clear rebuild turning the corner.
But Briere and the Flyers can’t let the Ducks matching this offer sheet affect their plan. It would’ve been fantastic to get a franchise top-line center for four first-round picks. There’s no debating that. However, they can’t now instead go overpay for an available player simply because he is available. The timing and fit have to be right for what the Flyers are building in the coming years.
