Great FanPost here. Bumped to the front page. - Travis

The Flyers have a first round draft pick! And we know about it more than a few days in advance! The Flyers will pick at #20 in the draft.

To mark this momentous occasion, it may be worthwhile looking at some of the options in the draft. In particular, I think it's reasonable to explore the options in defense, considering we're nicely stacked up forward at the moment. Usually, in the NHL draft, going BPA is a solid option. However, the Flyers have young forward depth that not many other teams can boast of, and have a weakness on D that needs addressing. Matt Carle and Braydon Coburn are going to get their paydays, so we no longer have cheap but strong performing defensemen on our team. Given this, I'd really want to see the Flyers draft a defenseman.

It helps that there are plenty of really good defensemen available in this draft. And when I say plenty, I mean a lot. This draft will be remembered for the D-men that come out of it just as much as it will be remembered for the likes of Filip Forsberg and Nail Yakupov.

Disclaimer: not a draft expert nor an amazing scout. However, all you need is a bit of interest and the Internet.

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This is going to be a very short fan post compared to some of my recent ones. But it's something that I thought was worth bringing to everyone's attention.

Nicklas Grossman is a defensive defenseman. He isn't expected to score goals, he isn't expected to fill out his stats column with helpers either. He is expected to play defense. A very good defensive defenseman is expected to play defense against tough competition with unfavorable zone starts, and still prevail.

That is what Grossman did in 2010-11 with the Dallas Stars.

Out of all defensemen who played 30 games or more, Grossman was fifth in CorsiRelQoC (a measure of the quality of competition he was up against). He was behind only the Detroit duo of Lidstrom and Stuart, and the Rangers duo of Staal and Girardi. However, out of that group of five, Grossman had the lowest offensive zone-start percentage (40.7%) and the highest CorsiRel (-2.0). The difference in CorsiRel becomes even more obvious if we try to balance the CorsiRel on the basis of zone start.

On the Balanced CorsiRel stakes: Lidstrom was -6.3, Staal was -3.6, Girardi was -7.5, Stuart was -11.8 but Grossman was 3.0. Grossman was the only one out of those five whose ability to drive play up the ice was ranked in the league's 3rd quartile. The fact that he wasn't in the top quartile isn't a huge knock on him, because of the fact that he was playing against some fierce competition. For the record, out of that group of five, his GAON/60 was the lowest in the group and his SAON/60 was also the lowest in the group.

Now we all know that Grossman isn't even close to being a Norris candidate, which is why I didn't go and compare him to every other defender in the league. All I'm saying here is that Nicklas Grossman, in 2010-11, played against some very tough competition, mostly started in the defensive zone, and managed to emerge from that in a better state than many much more well known defenders placed in a similar situations. He hasn't been as good this season, but he's shown enough to suggest that he might have something about him.

Also attached this poll because I don't think any of the masthead have made one of these yet for this trade.

A while ago, I saw a post on another SB Nation site making the case that one of their players is currently the Most Valuable Player in the league. Interestingly, when noting potential rivals for this title, a certain Claude Giroux wasn't mentioned. So this post is about examining how much of a great player Claude Giroux has become, and moreover comparing him to some of his nearest rivals in the MVP race. This post will imagine what the arguments for Claude Giroux's MVP candidacy would be if the Hart was awarded midway through the season. If you're interested, take the jump and let's see where it takes us.

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Edit: the equations I initially included in the article did a close job of dividing the data into four quartiles; but I repeated the calculations with an aim to get closer to the ideal division. While the entire article remains the same as its original form, the new equations have now been added to the bottom for future use. The change is minimal and doesn't affect any of the conclusions drawn.

I recently had some time on my hands and allowed myself to start learning a bit more about these advanced stats everyone keeps harping on about. One of the concepts I've been thinking about over the last couple of nights has been making the analysis of Corsi Rel in the context of Ozone start % a little more objective. There has been work done on this before, and this article by Eric produced a stat called Balanced Corsi Rel which essentially served that function. However, the process Eric undertook is probably a little less accessible to the casual stats person who occassionally checks how certain players have been going in terms of advanced stats. Bettman's Nightmare at Arctic Ice Hockey created some equations, which would be easy to work with for anyone, to estimate shots-for and shots-against with specific zone starts. And then there's this amazing work by Driving Play which is definitely worth a look too - but once again a bit tougher to work with for anyone who is not entirely initiated into the advanced stats world.

So what I'm doing below is not entirely unheralded, and a lot of it is me sandboxing with advanced stats. But if you're interested take the jump and let's see what we can find!

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I'll get right into it.

I am firstly comparing Jaromir Jagr's contract to Nikolay Zherdev. Both were one year deals for enigmas coming out of the KHL that have had a history of locker room issues and strange fears of the defensive zone. Both also had their last NHL contracts with the New York Rangers. When it comes to a one year contract the idea is you're on a tryout, so age and future potential isn't really a major consideration.

Zherdev got 2 million. Jagr got 3.3 million.

If you consider the cap went from 59.4 million to 64.3 million; that's an increase in 8%. If you apply the same increase to Zherdev's 2 million, you get to 2.16 million. Then there's the fact that Jagr still is a better player by his KHL numbers. We'll just be really crude here and look at points. Jagr's last KHL season he scored 50 points in 49 games at 1.02 points/game. In Zherdev's last KHL season before he came to us he scored 39 points in 52 games at 0.75 points/game. Now I know this isn't how contracts work, but we often see analyses on this website of how a player performed in a certain stat per $ so along that line of thinking I'll point out that the ratio there is 1.36 on points/game. Apply that to the 2.16 million and you get up to 2.95 million. Consider the remaining 0.35 million that Jagr got a combination of him being one of the leading offensive players in the history of the NHL and the apparent need to annoy Pittsburgh and break their fans' hearts. I'd say Jagr at 3.3 million and Zherdev at 2 million aren't that different; and Zherdev at 2 million would have been a bargain if Lavvy had played him.

Of course while Jagr's contract may be acceptable, the fact that he is a Flyer is still something I don't quite have my head around. I imagine I won't be able to fully work out how I'll feel until I see him actually wearing orange.

Now to Maxime Talbot. 1.8 million per year for 5 years is what this man received. Over his past 5 NHL seasons he has played 340 games and scored 100 points. That would mean that in an 82 game season just by basic math he would be projected to score 24 points. Looking at his season-by-season stats that seems about accurate. For a comparison, Ian Laperriere in his final 5 NHL seasons (that's kinda sad) played 389 games for 132 points, projecting 28 points/82 games. Lappy was wonderful for our fourth line. What I'm trying to say is, Talbot's good for our fourth line, but I would like some decent offense coming out of our third line even if that line is primarily a shutdown line to put out there against Crosby and Ovechkin. Talbot's not providing that offense. And even as far as a shutdown defensive minded center role is concerned, Talbot was 7th on the Pens in terms of Quality of Competition based on Corsi Rel QoC and started in the offensive zone 54% of the time. I don't think relying on him to be our main defensive minded forward while the likes of Briere and Jagr are enjoying the offense on the other lines is prudent.

Talbot on the Flyers should be a fourth liner. And 5 years 9 million is not appropriate for a fourth liner in my opinion. But hey, it was a crazy crazy day.

This is going to be short. I just think we're in need for some more education on Wayne Simmonds and this could be a starting point. Note that all rankings in the LA team are based on forwards who played more than 20 games.

In the 2010-11 regular season, LA had 13 forwards who played more than 20 games:

• Simmonds faced the 7th highest competition with the 9th best (or 5th worst, whichever way you wish to look at it) teammates
• His Corsi Rel QoC was the highest amongst all forwards in LA.
• He had the fifth best Points/60 (behind Kopitar, Williams, Penner and Dustin Brown) although he was dealing with having the eighth best shooting % on the team
• His actual Corsi was second last on the team (-9.6), although he also had the third most defensive zone starts to bring him down
• He drew 1 penalty/60 (5th best on LA) while taking 0.7 penalties/60 (6th best on LA, where taking fewer penalties is considered good)
• He spent most of his time outside the Top 6

Looking back a year to 09-10

• He had the second highest P/60 on LA (2.11), but he had the second highest shooting % on the team to lift him up
  
• Out of all right wings in the league he was in the top 20 in terms of P/60
• He faced the 7th highest competition with the 7th best teammates
• His Corsi of -0.2 was 7th amongst LA forwards. However he still had the fifth most defensive zone starts to bring him down
• He drew the second most penalties/60 (1.3) but also took the fourth most penalties/60

Comparing to some Flyers

• His P/60 was higher than any Flyer during the 09/10 regular season
• He drew around the same number of penalties/60 as Scott Hartnell, Danny Briere and Arron Asham. He took the same number of penalties/60 as Jeff Carter
  
• In 09/10 the Richards line and the 4th line started in the defensive zone more than him and the other two lines generally started in D-zone less.

You guys can work from there to make your own conclusions.

This is going to be a short one, but it's just a bit of a 'well done to the Flyers' post.

Some of these guys (Barber and Gagne, for example) were centers when they were drafted and switched to the wing later on. 14 players meet the simple criteria. Glen Seabrooke had a shoulder separation and never could build a career playing professional hockey so really it's 13. Couturier is the 14th.

1967 – #5 - Serge Bernier – 719 games, 308 goals, 763 points combining NHL and WHA stats

1969 - #17 – Bobby Clarke – 1144 games, 358 goals, 1210 points (captain, all star, HoF – moved to wing)

1970 - #18 – Bill Clement – 719 games, 148 goals, 356 points (all star)

1971 - #8 – Larry Wright – 106 games, 4 goals, 12 points – bust

1972 - #7 – Bill Barber – 903 games, 420 goals, 883 points (captain, all star, HoF)

1975 - #1 – Mel Bridgman – 977 games, 252 goals, 701 points (captain)

1982 - #4 – Ron Sutter – 1093 games, 205 goals, 534 points (captain) – but Scott Stevens was taken next so…

1985 - #21 – Glen Seabrooke – injury ended career at age 21

1990 - #4 – Mike Ricci – 1099 games, 243 goals, 605 points (captain of the SJ Sharks) – but Jaromir Jagr was taken next…

1991 - #6 – Peter Forsberg – 708 games, 249 goals, 885 points (captain, all star)

1998 - #22 – Simon Gagne – 727 games, 276 goals, 564 points* (could’ve been captain, all star – moved to wing)

2003 - #11 – Jeff Carter – 461 games, 181 goals, 343 points* (all star)

2003 - #24 – Mike Richards – 453 games, 133 goals, 349 points* (captain, all star)

2006 - #22 – Claude Giroux – 208 games, 50 goals, 150 points* (future captain? all star)

2011 - #8 – Sean Couturier - ???*

So based on this insanely small sample size over a very large sample of years. Around 54% of the centers the Flyers have selected in the first round have captained a NHL team at some point. Since 1990, only 1 of the centers the Flyers selected in the first round did not play an All Star game. In the entire sample of players, 62% were NHL all stars. Only 1 player can be put down as a total bust. It is very likely that all except for that one player (Larry Wright) will end their NHL career with more than 500 games played.

Don't eat me over the percentages because of the small sample size; just having some fun here. The point is we should do this more often because it's kinda good for us.

1998-2004: Part 1

After the jump we go through the rest of Gags' career, beginning from the lockout year: 04-05 (which wasn't a season with the Flyers, but a comment suggested I give some more due to his international achievments).

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Were you entertained Philadelphia? When you evaluate the highs of Simon Gagne's career, the rookie season, the game 6 goal against Tampa Bay, the 40 goal seasons, the successful return from concussion, the Boston comeback: did this great hockey player entertain you? The answer, emphatically is yes.

When you look back at Simon Gagne, now, in five years, in ten years, in twenty years time, you will see a man who gave his heart and soul for a team. A flashy playmaker who turned himself, through pure hard work and committment, into one of the premier two-way forwards in the game. A two-way forward, who after a lockout that took away a year of his prime, proved himself to be one of the most dangerous snipers in the game. A man who has played with the Flyers for 11 years, who has been through the Lindroses and the Primeaus and the Richards of the Flyers and stood tall through all of them.

The tributes will be coming in from all corners, mine will be focussed on the memories. After the jump, join me to relive the ride.

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 The offseason is slowly slowing down, but the discussions at BSH are raging like usual. One of the points that has come up often is the situation for next year's cap. While some are content, perhaps understandibly, to do a Chicago and go for the cup this year while worrying about next year next year, others are a bit more tentative about this team's capacity to maintain it's strong performance over multiple years. I count myself as one of the latter group. So after the jump, I will analyse the situation we will find us in for next year's cap.

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I've been pretty high on some of the elite young goaltenders out there like Jonathan Bernier and Cory Schneider. Even some of the goaltenders in the Flyers' farm, like Johan Backlund, Joacim Eriksson, Nicola Riopel and Sergei Bobrovsky, seem to have a lot of potential and could take the mantle of our 'goalie of the future'. Then I read something that made me doubt myself a bit about prospect goaltenders.

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Note: this is all about my view. I'm not trying to be overly didactic and as this is a blog feel free to disagree.

So there's been a lot of talk about possible trades involving Jeff Carter. I have to say that I have partaken in such discussion because in my view there are significant positives in a potential Carter trade. But I don't necessarily agree with everyone on the reasons and potential results of such a trade. So here I am to air my view:

The Wrong Reasons

1. Carter chokes in the big moments - to be fair to him, he was a fairly useful player last season in the playoffs despite injuring his shoulder, which is important for a sniper and center. This season, he was possibly playing with two partially healed feet, rushed in to react to the Game 3 loss against Montreal. That obviously would have affected his effectiveness. I still reckon he should've got that goal in and won us game 6, but that alone is not a reason to trade our top sniper. Besides, this would be too much of an emotional knee-jerk reaction.

2. We need an elite goaltender - a straight swap Carter for Tomas Vokoun might have won us the cup this season. But there's so much risk involved. We don't know whether an elite goaltender like Roberto Luongo or Henrik Lundqvist (not that we could possibly get those guys) would make a difference. Because Brodeur, Lundqvist and Luongo weren't duelling in the Stanley Cup Finals: Michael Leighton and Antti Niemi were. Carter is a potential 40+ goal scorer, and we can't afford to lose that goal scoring, in my opinion, for a cap-eating goaltender who may or may not make a difference.

3. Carter doesn't play with enough heart - it's impossible to quantify heart. What might appear to be a lack of heart might be skating hampered by pain in both feet.

4. Carter just isn't that good - which is wrong. If we trade Jeff Carter. We should know that we are trading a very good player, our best face-off man (OK that's not saying much), our leading scorer, a big guy who can lay hard checks and be solid defensively. He was the first in line replacement on the Canadian olympic team.

The Right Reasons

1. Carter is the most tradeable and valuable of our tradeable assets - we would get no better return for anyone else. Briere, Gagne and Hartnell - even forgetting how hard it would be to trade them in the first place and how they performed for us in the playoffs - wouldn't fetch us anything as much as Carter would.

2. Carter isn't necessary for this team's success - we made it through much of the playoffs with no Jeff Carter/an injured and underperforming Jeff Carter. And we made it through to the Stanley Cup Finals. I think it possibly shows that we can make another run without him. This isn't certain though

3. Carter will not be playing in his desired position with the Flyers - Briere-Giroux-Richards-Betts should be how we go forward into next season. Putting Giroux/Briere at wing only hurts us. Briere has hit 90 points before when he was centering a line with good chemistry. We should give him the opportunity he needs because he has always been a very good player that's got some unnecessary flak in Philly.

4. Carter realistically will leave the Flyers eventually - this is the most compelling argument to me. Let's just take a look at this:

http://www.nhlnumbers.com/overview.php?team=PHI&season=0910&expand=y

Here you can see our cap situation going forward. Notice that after 10/11 a lot of our forwards come off the books. The main guys to note are: Simon Gagne, Claude Giroux, Ville Leino and Jeff Carter. In many ways Leino has stuffed up our plans going forward. Because that trade all of a sudden gives us a valuable young asset to re-sign. Let's say Gagne + Carter re-sign for around the same combined salary because Gagne takes a paycut. That gives us very little (even anticipating a salary cap raise) to sign both Giroux and Leino. The next season we'll have to get JVR signed as well and hopefully Reimer will have shown us something to make him valuable by then.

So unless we plan to lose Carts as RFA (we would get compensation I guess), or give up on one of our three amazing prospects, we will need to trade him eventually. We might as well do it when his value is high.

What do we get out of it?

There's plenty of possible scenarios. Some suggest a straight swap for a scoring winger from another team. If the value is roughly even or in our favour, then surely this would only help us. Others suggest a prospect goalie + picks/prospects, which could work in our favour depending on who the prospect goalie is. I'm not sure on what we would get for Carter and what other teams would give. But I do think that picks + prospects is a good way to go, because unless we want to end up having an offseason like Chicago having to dump salary in what will end up being very one-sided deals, we need to have a balance between established players and elite prospects playing above their contracts.

So what do people think? Feel free to disagree.

Additional note: I asked the folks at Jewels From the Crown for their input as to a possible deal with LA. Read what they have to sey here.

Hi Kings fans, it's a Flyers fan here. Now despite being led to the Stanley Cup Finals by a combination of Brian Boucher and Michael Leighton, and despite there being some debate as to whether Leighton is to blame for our eventual loss, we are unanimous in saying that Leighton is not the 'solution' to the big hole in goal we've had since 1987.

So naturally we look around for other possible solutions. We've got a lot of goalies in our system, but no-one has put their hand up and said that they're going to be our star of the future. There are some established goalies elsewhere, but they would be coming at a big price.

But how about the incredibly hyped AHL-star young goalies who just can't find a starting spot on their own teams? How set are the Kings and Kings fans on Jonathan Quick being the guy for the future? What are you going to do with Bernier? And what do you think you could get for him if he were traded? It would be interesting to get some possible trade scenarios happening. Right now, there's a lot of fans who think Jeff Carter might end up leaving the Flyers some time in the future (this is just fan talk though). Because a lot of our other forwards (Richards, Giroux, JVR, Leino, Briere) are near untouchable right now, maybe we could start some hypotheticals there.

Some have suggested Carter to the Kings for Bernier and Simmonds. I know you're pretty high on Simmonds, so is this a possibility? How about Carter to the Kings for Bernier and Hickey and possibly a pick?