On the Flyers’ precarious trade deadline approach

There are few periods in the season as highly pressurized as the NHL\'s trade deadline. For any general manager, the stakes are high -- teams are willing to pay a premium for help to load up for the playoffs, and it\'s up to selling teams to make the best possible deal, to maximize their return for their players, to set themselves up for success in the future, while buying teams must negotiate the slippery space between acquiring the right players who are the right fit for their organization, while avoiding being the general manager who hugely overpays for them. No one wants to be the one to lose the trade. For a first-year general manager, this pressure increases, as they not only have to check those boxes, but make a strong statement about their intentions and identity, to leave their mark on the team and begin shaping it right to fit their vision. And that pressure ratchets up further still for a first-year general manager like Danny Briere, whose team is neither completely comfortably inside the mix for a playoff spot, nor outside it, and who must decide if his approach should move forward in alignment with their previously solid seeming rebuild plans, or to diverge from it.

Much has been made of where the Flyers stand and how they will approach this deadline -- will they sell, as would be expected of a rebuilding team and as they\'ve been suggesting they will for much of the season? Will they keep some or all of their pending free agents and move towards signing them to extensions? Are the rumors that they\'re considering extensions actually just sneaky plays to drive up the player\'s value? It\'s enough to make your head spin as it is, as we amble towards deadline day and The Right Course is debated time and again.

But what makes this situation even more difficult is the fact that it isn\'t just results that matter here, it\'s optics as well. It\'s clearly something that has been a huge consideration for the team since Briere took over -- he\'s a fan favorite and that built some real excitement, then adding Keith Jones as President of Hockey Operations earned them even more favor, still. And Briere and Jones have been much more willing than the previous management group to not just show face in front of the media and television cameras, but to be really, truly upfront about where they stand and where they envision things going. They\'ve spent the last few months actively rebuilding the trust of the fanbase and building up good will, but it remains an open question just how far all of this will go.

In a vacuum, there\'s a case to be made for letting a team more or less playing with house money -- like this Flyers team is -- ride this thing out. That is, reward their good work, avoid disrupting their chemistry and shipping anyone out, and just see what they\'re able to do down the stretch, and then punt any big roster moves to the offseason. Now, in this case, that move would be a bit at odds with what the management group has been saying about their approach up until this point, but it would be easy to see how they could convince themselves to go that route. We\'ve certainly seen that before.

But choosing to do nothing at the deadline out of faith in your team to continue to perform well and being forced to do nothing by circumstance or lack of creativity is another thing entirely. We\'ve seen that before too -- the last trade deadline came and went with little activity (Just Zack MacEwen sent to the Kings in exchange for Brendan Lemieux -- who was allowed to walk in the summer -- and a fifth round pick, and then Patrick Brown being sent to the Senators for a sixth round pick), and Chuck Fletcher coming away wringing his hands and lamenting how difficult it is to do trades in this league. It was a deadline so disastrous that it effectively cost him his job, and set the fanbase ablaze.

This raises another question: what happens if the Flyers are well and truly lowballed by every team they try to make a deal with on deadline day?

Given the creativity we pretty immediately saw from Briere last summer with the three way trade which ultimately sent Ivan Provorov out , it feels a bit unlikely that they would find themselves completely stifled and unable to work anything out, but you never know -- trade deadlines are weird and weird things happen. But for the purpose of this thought experiment, we\'ll say that they\'re getting lowballed from the start and lowballs are what those offers will stay, so how do they proceed?

Do they stand pat, not let themselves be pushed into making a deal they don\'t love, hold onto their players and accept whatever vitriol (rightful or not) that comes their way? Or do they accept a potentially low offer just to say that they\'ve done something, that they\'ve stuck to the plan, stayed the course?

To do nothing tests greatly the good will amassed and the patience fans have for a new management group, but to do the wrong something can hurt the future that they\'ve been so adamant that they\'re building towards.

We mentioned earlier that everyone wants to be the one to win the trade, thinks they can be the one to do it, thinks their team should be the one to exploit everyone else, but the truth is that this rarely winds up being the case -- rarely are there true and unequivocal winners, more often, we live somewhere in the grey area of discourse and disagreement. So maybe the more pragmatic way to look at all of this is to say that there\'s no way to really well and truly win a trade deadline, and that we should manage our expectations accordingly. But this cannot or will not stop the heaps of discourse and opinion sharing that\'s bound to happen.

It also doesn\'t change the fact that the Flyers are in a pretty unenviable position. Just as it\'s true that the Flyers should hold all of the cards here, it\'s also true that you can\'t please everyone. The Flyers are in a position to both capitalize on their wealth of assets, and also find a bit more success as the seasons wears on, but it\'s still up to them to set their course and stick to it. There remains a good amount of optimism around the team right now, but to walk the tightrope of making both the right and popular decision will be a difficult task, and maintaining the course of the rebuild of the team as well as both the fanbase hinges on it. Decisiveness comes at a premium, let\'s just hope the Flyers are finally ready to make use of it.

Talking Points