VOORHEES, N.J. — Philadelphia Flyers general manager Daniel Briere has a message for those fans begging, pleading, imploring and even screaming for him to make a headline-making trade for a top-level center that everyone in a position of power in the organization has admitted is necessary for their rebuild to be successful.
“We’ve tried, and we’re trying,” Briere said on Tuesday, in an approximately 30-minute, midseason news conference at the team’s training facility.
“We’re looking at what’s out there,” Briere continued. “The reality is, there’s not a lot of high-end centermen in this league. When teams have them, they want to keep them or the price is crazy. We’re not willing to give up on our future at this point. Yes, I realize that it’s a glaring need that we’d like to upgrade. But, it has to make sense.”
Fortunately for Briere, the recent play of the current crop of centers — and everyone around them — has improved in recent weeks. The Flyers are again hanging around the playoff race, and even though they haven’t spent all that much time in the top eight, as they did last season, there have been enough positive developments lately to believe that they could at least keep it interesting again through early April.
Morgan Frost, Noah Cates, Sean Couturier and Ryan Poehling (currently out with a head injury after he was run over last Thursday on Long Island) comprise the Flyers’ top four centers at the moment, with Scott Laughton, who missed Tuesday’s game against the Red Wings due to personal reasons, able to play in the middle, as well. If the Flyers desire to make a playoff push again this season, something Briere suggested that, yes, they would, there is less of an immediate need for another center. Cates, especially, has found a new level as part of the team’s most consistent line for the past two months with Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink, while Frost has again worked his way out of some early-season gloom and has found chemistry with Owen Tippett and Travis Konecny.
Patience, therefore, is still a luxury that Briere can afford at this stage of their process.
“The reality is, (if) we force something, after two weeks we can’t press undo and start from scratch again,” he said. “So we’ve got to be sure before we make a move. But believe me, we’re trying, we’re looking at everything that is out there, that is available, and we’re even asking questions on some guys that aren’t available, just to check in and make sure.”
There’s reason to believe that the Flyers’ timeline to compete has at least moved up ever so slightly since Briere and president of hockey operations Keith Jones were installed a year and a half ago. Why? Konecny has become a bonafide top line winger, locked up for longterm and Travis Sanheim looks like a legitimate top-pair defenseman, while impressive rookie Matvei Michkov already has shown he could be a star in the making.
Finding a true, No. 1 center, or at least someone with that potential, to unlock Michkov, in particular, could benefit the team both in the short and long term. That begs the question — does the center the Flyers target have to necessarily be in his early or mid-20s, or could he be a little more advanced in his career?
“If it makes sense, yes,” Briere said. “But there’s a lot that goes into play with that, also. The length of the contract on the back end. The (average annual value) obviously is another one, and what it’s going to cost you. If it does make sense, absolutely. But in most cases with those older guys, it doesn’t.”
No names were mentioned to Briere, since he’s not permitted to speak about another team’s players, but Vancouver’s J.T. Miller, 31, has been in rampant trade rumors lately, along with their 26-year-old center Elias Pettersson. The New York Islanders’ Brock Nelson, 33 and a pending unrestricted free agent, could also be available if that team continues to scuffle.
Briere has reinforced, too, that his patience doesn’t just apply to players the Flyers could potentially acquire. It’s also about making sure they don’t give up too soon on the guys they have. The organization is still trying to discern whether young players such as Frost and Joel Farabee, who have had up and down seasons and have spent time as healthy scratches — Frost for four games in November, and Farabee for three games this month — will ultimately be part of the solution.
Briere offered his opinions on both forwards that have found themselves in the spotlight.
“Frosty, very similar to last year, he’s a player that the deeper it gets into the season, he seems to feel better and more comfortable. We have to find a way to get him to be ready in the first 20, 25 games in the season,” Briere said. “You talk about centermen being tough to find, we have to be careful about a guy like Morgan Frost. I like where he’s trending, I like how he’s played in the last 15, 20 games. He’s taken a step forward, and it’s been good to see.”
As for Farabee, “Joel certainly had a rough little spell lately, but him coming back in the lineup, I thought he played extremely well the last two games,” Briere said. “He’s back to making a lot of subtle, little plays that you don’t always see in a game. He was doing that early in the season, even though he wasn’t maybe getting rewarded with points as much as he would have liked. … Again, we have to be very careful with a 24-year-old that is still growing, and learning the game.”
So, what’s next? The March 7 trade deadline could, of course, change the Flyers’ lineup, perhaps even drastically. Or it might not. The two players that the Flyers have that are most likely to be targets of other teams because of their ages and skill sets, defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen and Laughton, aren’t locks to be moved. In fact, Briere seemed to suggest there’s a path for both players, who are signed beyond this season, to remain with the club after the deadline.
Ristolainen, Briere acknowledged, is a player they’ve already gotten calls on. But, “I can tell you I’m not shopping him,” he said. “He’s not a rental. … There’s no rush to trade him. We finally have him healthy, and playing extremely well.”
As for Laughton, the price to acquire him is still significant. Not only is Laughton firmly one of the Flyers’ leaders — Briere gave him credit for helping to turn the team around after a difficult first few weeks — but he’s playing better lately, too, according to the general manager.
“Scotty still has another year on his contract. He’s not a rental,” Briere said. “He’s important to the dressing room, and I really think his play has really kicked in the last 20 games.”
The bottom line? The Flyers are most assuredly open for business. But, trying to predict what they might do over the next few weeks could be a fool’s errand.
“I’ve had a lot of different conversations around the league….and, I guess, setting things up for crunch time,” Briere said, when asked about his approach to the deadline. “That’s what happened last year, also. But, we’re always listening. If something makes too much sense for the future of this organization, we’re going to take it.”
Other takeaways
• Briere took exception to a suggestion that the team’s middling record, and its earlier struggles, primarily have been because of goaltending. “We have to be careful. It’s really easy to just blame the goalies,” he said. “That’s the easy way out.”
He also expressed confidence in Sam Ersson, in particular.
“It seems like he’s a goalie that starts to feel it, and he gets comfortable in there. I’ve been pleased with him, especially lately.”
• The Flyers continue to carry three goalies. Ivan Fedotov is locked in as the No. 2. It stands to reason, then, that No. 3 Aleksei Kolosov could use some time in the AHL.
“We’re looking into that,” Briere said. “There’s a lot of moving parts. Fedotov is the backup, so we’re looking at different things.”
The question is whether Kolosov would accept an assignment to the Phantoms, given that he was unwilling to play for them at the beginning of the season, preferring to stay in the KHL if he wasn’t on an NHL roster.
Would he accept a reassignment now?
“As far as I know, yes,” Briere said. “I don’t have any reasons to believe that he wouldn’t.”
• Briere admitted that the Flyers weren’t pleased with how prospects Jett Luchanko and Oliver Bonk, both on Canada’s World Juniors team that didn’t medal, were deployed in the tournament.
Regarding Luchanko, Briere said: “We’re happy with his progress. … We were disappointed in the role (Team Canada) gave him, but when you look at the role they gave him, he performed great. We have higher expectations for him. He’s probably the best skater in the World Junior tournament, and he barely played.”
As for Bonk, “They put him in positions that is not really what is going to be his strength moving forward, which was really weird to us.” Briere expects the defenseman to turn pro next season, and “we’re looking forward to him making his debut in the organization.”
(Photo of Morgan Frost: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
