Should the Flyers trade JVR?

If and only if he fails to impress during training camp, pre-season, and up to the trading deadline would I consider trading JVR. He has line 1 all-star potential. He can play C and LW. He’s a 2-way player with excellent size and yet excellent speed and puck control. The kid’s gooood.

 If we trade him, it’s basically mortgaging our future, because make no mistake — we’re not going to be able, financially, to keep Briere, Timonen, Richards, Gagne, Carter, Coburn, Parent, Lupul, Carle, Hartnell, and Giroux as is — not even taking into account the pay raises scheduled for: Giroux, Parent, Sbisa, Powe, Coburn, and whatever goalies we get this year. That’s just too many top-heavy players. Take Briere outta the equation, and our cap problem almost completely evaporates — add Lupul or Hartnell, and our cap is suddenly an asset. Trade Timonen + Briere, and Bouwmeester signs with us because we offer him an extra $2m more than anyone else can. My point is is that we’ve got a lotta cap space in a few players, which is okay because none of those players are albatrosses (except Randy Jones) production wise, but it will become impossible to resign our young stars who will need a new contract in the next 2 to 3 years unless we shake up some of our more significant contracts.

That’s where JVR comes in. If we do have to shake up those significant contracts, we may not be getting equal value in return, since they’re significant contracts (except Carter/Richards, but I don’t think we’re going to let anyone get anywhere close to either of those two). JVR types can come in and mitigate those losses. Or, if we’re targetting a specific young elite player and the team needs Briere but wants a little more (let’s say, for the heck of it, we want Derrick Brassard real bad, or Steve Mason, or a Nikita Filatov to name 3 Blue Jackets), we’d be able to dangle a JVR type or another player less good whose loss JVR + the new guy would mitigate.

Think of it in football terms. You never see teams giving up their elite young players or even their projects with a ton of talent. Those are the guys you place your bets on, sign long-term for under-market, and get elated when you see them perform at $5m annual when they would get $7-8m on the open market (Carter/Richards). Sometimes you lose a bet (Jones), but if you’ll look at teams like the Red Wings, what you’ll find is that it’s crucial to sign these guys long-term when they’re young, and the trick lies in evaluating who these players are. Hopefully, JVR will be one of them. We have about 2 years to find out.

kid has been good versus the best competition in the world. you gotta keep the kid, he will be the perfect linemate for giroux in a couple of years. plus we could trade someone(lupul of danny b) and he could potentially fill their void without killing the cap