Last year the Flyers had a number of players headed toward Unrestricted Free Agency and made a significant move towards winning the Stanley Cup. This year the Flyers are hoping that they can, by dipping into the UFA talent pool, take things 1 step further and capture the cup itself. As such, the team has been tremendously active in the UFA market by making many offers and also, more recently, signing players who can immediately step in for them while rookies are permitted to develop carefully.
Here are the recent signings and the GM's thoughts regarding those signings:
Chris Drury - 2.25 for 2: "We felt Chris is a real winner, a true professional and a person who can play wing or center in all situations. It's huge to land him. A lot of teams over looked him I believe, because he had a down year last year, but that's not typical of his game at all."
Erik Cole - 2.3 for 2 : "With Erik you do have injury concerns, but you also have a true power forward, which we sorely needed. Presuming he's healthy he's a big asset to our team given the size of some of our other forwards"
Brian Rolston - 1.55 for 1: "Another savvy veteran who still has good speed and a blast of a shot. People look at Brian and say he's not the guy he was at 27-28, but right now he's still a 20 goal guy who can play center, wing or even defense on the powerplay. Another guy we feel was a true bargain for us"
Marc Andre Bergeron - 1.5 for 2: "Smallish yes, but here's another guy who is blessed with tremendous offensive instincts from defense and a wicked shot. The way we run our powerplay and offense, he stands to get a lot of opportunities to unload"
Rostislav Klesla - 2.0 for 3: "Rusty is a guy we like a lot and had on our team years ago. He's mobile, he's effective in all 3 zones and when he gets into a groove he can produce points as well. He's had health concerns, but he had those corrected in the offseason with surgery and looks to be 100% now"
Clearly, thus far, the team has dramatically improved their depth at C and D, which were big concerns going into the UFA period. But what was the cost? "Right now we're very very comfortable with the amount of cap we have remaining", said the GM. "I can't say that we're done right now and I won't say that there will definitely be more signings...all I can say is we have the room to make more moves if we want to and we'll evaluate that very closely today".
In the meantime, talented rookies like Cam Fowler and Nick Leddy were also signed to compete for a potential job in the NHL/AHL this year. With all these events taking place so quickly, it's easy to see that Philadelphia has continued to place a firm commitment on winning now, but this year they have also retained much of their youth and intend to rely on those youngsters as well. With more signings possible and young players like Richard Panik, Jordan Schroeder, Nick Leddy, Cam Fowler, Sergei Bobrovsky and more on the cusp of professional hockey it will be interesting to see how things transpire during preseason.
NOTES:
Rumor has it that the Flyers are in play on other UFA's with a league source indicating that the Flyers have substantial interest in at least 2-3 players who are still on the market.
Richard Panik may be close to a professional deal per a club source. "He really impressed in camp last year and if he shows the progress we suspect he will in camp this year it's almost a lock he's going to be signed".
Sergei Bobrovsky has been impressive in his first rookie camp. Bobrovsky, who speaks no English, is a notoriously hard worker and intends to compete fully. Through a translator Bobrovsky said, "It is different here, because there is more traffic, more shots and a different style, but I intend to do what needs to be done to be an NHL goalie...this is my dream".
