On November 13th, 2010, The Flyers signed forward Jeff Carter to an 11 year, 58 million dollar extension. When Carter was signed, I was insanely relieved, I had figured that after this, everyone would realize that Jeff Carter is here to stay and is a franchise player, and these foolish trade rumors (even after Holmgren has said that he will not trade Carter) would be put to rest.

Fast forward to this offseason, there are once again rumors that the Flyers may and should trade Jeff Carter to get the cap space to sign a goaltender like Ilya Bryzgalov. As much as i would love to see Breezy in orange and black, this is foolish. Why would you trade a potential 40-50 goal scorer who surprisingly took a little over 5 million in cap hit (would have gotten more on the open market)? The Flyers have a laundry list of overpaid players on their roster, yet everyone insists on trading one of the few that's earning their money and more, this is very confusing to me.

As far as Carter goes, the critisizm against him totally baffles me, the common complaint is that Jeff is not good in the playoffs and tends to disappear, but when have you seen a playoffs since he began to break out where he wasn't fighting through some injury? The playoff points will come, but it is the other aspects of Carters game that fall by the wayside. Despite chatter Carter is very good defensively and starting this year has forchecked very well. Another complaint with Carter is he doesn't play "Flyers Hockey" by that I mean he doesn't try to murder someone every time they touch his puck. At this point someone needs to say it, not every player needs to rough up an opposing player, Carter is a scorer, and there's nothing wrong with that. Carter is one of the few players on this team that is a shoot first player, and that's part of what I like about him, he doesn't pass 5 million times before shooting like half this team does, he may shoot on every rush, but for my money that's better than what Mike Richards does, try a pass through 2 or 3 guys on every rush.

So as for the thought of trading Carter, I think that's ludicrous, he is a fantastic player and earns every cent he makes with his will and his scoring touch. If we're going to make a cap dump, why not send out an overrated 3.5 million dollar defenseman or a grossly overpaid checking line player who brings in 4.2 million, not an elite scorer who plays solid defense and aside from Blair Betts is our best faceoff man. Where's the love?