Dear The Flyers, Trade For Mattias Ekholm By The End Of This Blog. Please And Thanks
John Russell. Getty Images.The Philadelphia Flyers won a hockey game last night in regulation. Which, out of context, is pretty kick ass. This is a team that seems to have an addiction with going to overtime. So any chance the boys can pick up 2 points without gifting a division opponent a point themselves, I'll take it. As the late great philosopher Theodore Roosevelt once said, "the Flyers winning a hockey game is always better than the Flyers losing a hockey game". People forget he was a huge Flyers fan.
But despite the fact that the Flyers were able to hang on to that win courtesy of this extra saucy top bunk snipe from The Best One…
…there were still plenty of issues with this game. And it's been the same issues that have been plaguing this team all season so far. Credit where credit is due, the Flyers seem to be making the adjustments to fix their problems with generating shots over the past few games. It looks like they've been making an effort to get more pucks on net than they were in the beginning of the season. There are still a few times when they are a little too passive, but they've made some necessary adjustments in that category.
But the defensive lapses? The horrific penalty kill? The amount of times they seem totally unprepared in the first minute or so of a period? The Flyers are still thoroughly kicking themselves in the dick when it comes to all of those things. And the common denominator here is that the back end just hasn't seemed to find their game at all this season. Provorov hasn't been able to take that last step to where he's comfortably in the Norris conversation. Travis Sanheim has been borderline irrelevant at times this season. And Phil Myers…well Phil Myers looked completely lost all night.
Like…c'mon, man. You gotta give me a little more than that. You're just drifting below the goalline while the guy who already has 2 goals on the night is in the blue paint. How are you not tying him up? How is there no urgency there to make sure that Kreider doesn't get to tap in his 3rd tap in goal of the night. 3 goals from Kreider last night and all of them were right on top of Elliott. And Myers ends up with 1 hand on his stick and 1 skate below the goalline. Yikes.
Is it the players? Is it coaching? Is it the fact that Matt Niskanen retiring has left a hole in this roster that the Flyers felt could have been filled naturally through development but turns out the lack of that steady presence on the blue line is causing regression? No idea. All I know is that the whole world knows the Flyers desperately need to make an addition on defense. Which brings us to Mattias Ekholm.
The Athletic - Let me preface this by stressing there’s no evidence to suggest the Nashville Predators are shopping defenseman Mattias Ekholm.
OK, now that that is clear, let me also point out, as Predators beat writer Adam Vingan did earlier this week, that the Predators might listen to offers for Ekholm given the need for the franchise to start thinking rebuild, retool or reset. It needs young assets either way.
At a $3.75 million cap hit this year and next, Ekholm, 30, is probably the most desirable asset on the team.
Ekholm has been "week-to-week" with an injury for the past 2 weeks now. So you have to imagine he's probably not too far away from playing again. And if there were ever a season to go full send and trade away a 1st round draft pick for a missing piece of the playoff puzzle, it's this year. Who knows how many games some of these kids at the draft will have played over the past 2 seasons. There is still so much up in the air when it comes to the draft and if the Flyers plan on having an aggressively late pick, why not just send that pick over to Nashville so you can bring in a reliable veteran defenseman who doesn't have a massive cap hit, and could be used as expansion bait if it just so happens to not work out the way you intended? Very, very little risk. Very high reward.
And on top of it all? Mattias Ekholm is a Bauer 4500 guy. Everybody knows that 4500s are the biggest beauty bucket in the game. The Flyers don't have a guy like that on defense right now. Just Hayes. So not only do you get to add a reliable weapon on the blueline, but you also get to add some style points to the roster. If Chuck Fletcher isn't on the phone with Nashville by the time this blog gets published, well then he's clearly not interested in doing his job.