Assessing the state of the New Look Flyers

Over the past month, the Flyers have been possibly the most active team in the league, trading Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, and Darroll Powe, while letting go of Dan Carcillo, Sean O'Donnell, and Ville Leino. In turn, we brought in Ilya Bryzgalov, Jakub Voracek, Wayne Simmonds, Max Talbot, Brayden Schenn, Andreas Lilja, and the most controversial, signing Jaromir Jagr. Here's a projected lineup for the new Philadelphia Flyers via capgeek.com

CAPGEEK.COM CAP CALCULATOR

FORWARDS

James Van Riemsdyk ($1.654m) / Claude Giroux ($3.750m) / Jakub Voracek ($2.250m) 

Jaromir Jagr ($3.300m) / Daniel Briere ($6.500m) / Scott Hartnell ($4.200m) 

Maxime Talbot ($1.750m) / Brayden Schenn ($3.110m) / Wayne Simmonds ($1.750m) 

Jody Shelley ($1.100m) / Blair Betts ($0.700m) / Andreas Nodl ($0.845m) 

DEFENSEMEN

Matt Carle ($3.437m) / Chris Pronger ($4.921m) 

Braydon Coburn ($3.200m) / Kimmo Timonen ($6.333m) 

Andrej Meszaros ($4.000m) / Andreas Lilja ($0.737m) 

Oskars Bartulis ($0.600m) 

GOALTENDERS

Ilya Bryzgalov ($5.666m) / Sergei Bobrovsky ($1.750m) 

CAPGEEK.COM TOTALS (follow @capgeek on Twitter)

(these totals are compiled without the bonus cushion)

SALARY CAP: $64,300,000; CAP PAYROLL: $61,555,595; BONUSES: $3,815,000

CAP SPACE (21-man roster): $2,744,405

This is assuming that for the 2nd straight year Ian Laperriere will miss the season once again instead of retiring, which will likely be the case yet again. The goaltending situation is greatly improved with the addition of Ilya Bryzgalov, and if we do not trade Bob It will be an incredible tandem, where we could do a Luongo-Schneider type split with Bryz playing possibly 55-60 games and Bob playing 22-27 games, a kind of split that worked very well for the two Stanley Cup finals teams, shouldn't be any fear about the goaltending.

As far as the defense goes, I am fairly nervous about this core, Chris Pronger, our new captain (probably) is officially starting to break down, the wrist injury at his age could hinder his point production, along with his knees breaking down, his physical play over a long career is starting to come back to him, I'd be happy to see him in about 50 games but healthy for the playoffs. Kimmo Timonen is starting to get hurt more, not injured but hurt, he's slower and cant really be a PP quarterback anymore, which we basically the closest Power Play Quarterback we have now is Meszaros, I would've liked to see Carle have gone and we go for someone like Brent Burns, I disagree with the Lilja signing because it really isn't an improvement over Sean O'Donnell and I would've liked to see someone like Kevin Marshall or Erik Gustafsson get a shot at a roster spot, but we'll see how the defense does, but they should look better with a strong goaltender behind them.

The forwards are gonna be the most interesting aspect of this new Flyers team, young forwards like Simmonds, Voracek, and Schenn should make an impact on the team, but the veteran scoring load is going to be placed on Danny Briere and Jaromir Jagr, my fear with Briere is an impending injury that hes susceptible to, hopefully he can play the whole season and plot another 30-40 goals, the key is going to be how well Jaromir Jagr plays, he's coming off a few good seasons in the KHL, but he hasn't played in the NHL for 3 seasons, is older, slower, and is a long time enemy of the Flyers way of hockey, if he gets 60 points I'll be happy, but I'm not holding my breath.

The team is really hard to judge right now, the offense is one giant question mark, the defense is almost exactly the same which scares the crap out of me, because last season we had the most expensive okay defense in NHL, I'm happy to see a strong number 1 goaltender on the team but some patience would've paid off instead of jumping for a goaltender and paying him what he wanted, and instead letting Vokoun and Brygalov fight for a roster spot, it's going to be an interesting season for the Orange and Black, buckle up.