As you probably already know, the Flyers acquired Chris Pronger and Ryan Dingle from Anaheim for Joffrey Lupul, Luca Sbisa, their 2009 1st round pick, their 2010 1st round pick, and a conditional 3rd round pick. I’ve been seeing a lot of mixed reactions regarding the trade. The majority of them tend to be that it was way too much to give up. My thoughts…we clearly paid a VERY heavy price, however, I am absolutely thrilled with this trade. I will admit, the thought of Pronger leaving after his one year is up, makes me cringe a bit, but I do believe Holmgren has every intention of signing him to an extension. Ideally, we can sign him to a reasonable 2-3 year deal (sadly, I think that’s optimistic) and we can lose the salaries of one of, if not both of, Jones and Carle. If those things were to happy, my grade of this trade would go from a B to an A.
If you were to ask me what I believed my number one priority going into this offseason was (barring acquiring a goalie because we didn’t have one), I would have told you it was a big top 4 defenseman that hits. If you were to then ask me to choose any one player in the league to fill that role…I would have told you Zdeno Chara. However, he won the Norris Trophy and is probably impossible to acquire. My next option would have been Chris Pronger.
Chris Pronger is a former Hart Trophy winner, a 6’6” defenseman that no one in the league looks forward to playing against. He plays in all situations, including first line power play and penalty kill. He adds some desperately needed size to our blueline. Aside from Andrew Alberts, we had very little physical presence among our defenseman. Even though Braydon Coburn is 6’5”, he only seems to play physically when he gets angry, which, unfortunately, does not happen as often as I’d like. Let’s face it, Chris Pronger is a mean dude. In fact, he was voted as the dirtiest player in the league by NHL players. He will bring meanness to our blueline that we haven’t had since Hatcher admirably hobbled around the ice last season.
Pronger is also an exceptional offensive defenseman. He was top 15 in scoring among defenseman this past season, and has averaged 52 pts a season the past 5 seasons. For those of you wondering, Lupul has average just over 42 pts a season since he has been in the league (also 5 seasons). If you give Lupul the benefit of the doubt and take out his rookie season, and his abysmal Edmonton season, he still doesn’t best Pronger’s 52 pts. In fact, Lupul’s best season (53 pts) just barely beats Pronger’s average over the past 5 seasons. I’m going to police myself and go ahead and say Lupul did have 46 points in 56 games 2 seasons ago; but the fact of the matter is…Chris Pronger can more or less put up the same offensive numbers Lupul can, and he can do it from the blueline, while giving us everything we desperately need from a defenseman. But let’s be honest here, the Flyers don’t really need offense. A full season of Claude Giroux and a healthy season from Danny Briere should make us an even better offensive team than we were this past season.
Additionally, I can’t stress enough how important it is that the Flyers have two #1 defenseman now. As you may have noticed, the Flyers are in the same division as the, now Stanley Cup Champion, Pittsburgh Penguins, and they have 2 of the top 3 players in the world. The Flyers now have the ability to match up Timonen, who I’d like to see paired with Coburn, with Crosby. They can then play Pronger, paired with Parent, against Malkin. Malkin is a big guy, but not nearly big enough or strong enough for Pronger. Now that we’ve looked at what Pronger brings to the Flyers, let’s take a look at the assets that the Flyers traded to get him.
Joffrey Lupul is a player I really liked, but he was just unnecessary at this point. As I stated in Part 3 of my “Goaltender Options for the Flyers” series: “I’ve kind of already mentally committed myself to the idea that two of Lupul, Jones, and Carle will not/should not be on this team next season because we could really use the salary cap relief and we have realistic replacement options.” Therefore, I had no problems trading Lupul. With a new contract kicking in this season at a cap hit of 4.25 million, his salary was better served elsewhere. As mentioned earlier, a full season of Giroux and Briere should far eclipse Lupul’s offensive numbers.
Luca Sbisa is a player almost everyone grew to love in his short stay with the Flyers. He went from being drafted 19th overall last season, to making the team out of camp; something that very rarely happens in the NHL, especially from defenseman. I will admit, I told many people that Sbisa had no shot of making this team in camp, and that he was just there to get his feet wet in an NHL training camp. Well, his exceptional camp and injuries to Parent, Jones, and Hatcher gave him an opportunity. I think Sbisa is going to be a very good NHL defenseman; a top 4 guy, with potential to be a top pairing guy. However, people act as if he was capable of doing that immediately. Sbisa played in 39 games last season and had 7 pts; 6 of which came in the first 11 games. He began the season very well, but he appeared to wear down quite quickly. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have been able to keep Sbisa as he is our most promising defensive prospect; but you’ve got to give to get.
I think an important part of the reason why the Flyers were willing to part with Sbisa is the number of defense prospects the Flyers currently have in the pipeline that are as NHL ready as Sbisa. Additionally, I think this is part of the reason many casual fans cry “awful” on the deal. Not many people take the time to follow prospects outside of first rounds picks. The Flyers have 5 prospects that are very close to being able to contribute to the Flyers if necessary, and although they don’t have the same ceiling as Sbisa, they certainly look to be NHL caliber. Kevin Marshall, Denis Bodrov, Michael Ratchuk, Marc-Andre Bourdon, and Joonas Lehtivuori are all players the Flyers are high on; Marshall, Bodrov, and Bourdon in particular. I truly believe one of those three have a shot at making the team out of camp as the Flyers will be looking to fill the bottom pairing with cheap talent. Will any of these defenseman become a top 4 defenseman as Sbisa is capable of? Maybe, but it’s far less likely. However, with Timonen under contract for 4 more years, Coburn being 24 years old, and Parent being 22 years, it isn’t as if we should have openings in the near future anyway.
In addition to Lupul and Sbisa, the Flyers traded their 2009 1st rounder (21st overall), their 2010 1st rounder, and a conditional 3rd rounder. I believe this is where people tend to believe the overpayment came in, therefore making it an awful trade in their minds. If it had just been Lupul, Sbisa, and our 2009 1st, I think far more people would have loved the deal. In my experience, people treat draft picks and prospects like gold. They overvalue them in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating consistently trading youth and picks for veterans as the Flyers have been guilty of in the past. However, this isn’t the NFL draft; first round picks aren’t as surefire as people seem to think they are.
I think it is safe to say the Flyers 1st rounder next year should be a pretty low pick; probably not any higher than the 21 they had this year. Let’s take a look at some of the players that have been drafted recently from picks 21 to 30. I will bold the players that are seeing significant time in the NHL.
2008: Anton Gustafsson, Jordan Eberle, Tyler Cuma, Mattias Tedenby, Greg Nemisz, Tyler Ennis, John Carlsson, Viktor Tikhonov, Daultan Leveille, Thomas McCollum
2007: Riley Nash, Max Pacioretty, Jon Blum, Mikael Backlund, Patrick White, David Perron, Brendan Smith, Nick Petricki, Jim O’Brian, Nick Ross.
2006: Bob Sanguinetti, Claude Giroux, Semen Varlamov, Dennis Persson, Patrik Berglund, Leland Irving, Ivan Vishnevsky, Nick Foligno, Chris Summers, Matthew Corrente
2005: Tuuka Rask, Matt Lashoff, Nicklas Bergfors, TJ Oshie, Andrew Cogliano, Matt Pelech, Joe Finley, Matt Niskanen, Steve Downie, Vladimir Mihalik
2004: Wojtek Wolski, Lukas Kaspar, Andrej Meszaros, Kris Chucko, Rob Schremp, Cory Schneider, Jeff Schultz, Mark Fistric, Mike Green, Andy Rogers
2003: Mark Stuart, Marc-Antoine Pouliot, Ryan Kesler, Mike Richards, Anthony Stewart, Brian Boyle, Jeff Tambellini, Corey Perry, Patrick Eaves, Shawn Belle
At the very least, we can gather that it takes minimum 3 years to start seeing real time in the NHL. Additionally, I listed 60 players; 21 of which are seeing significant NHL time at this point. Even if I give them the benefit of the doubt and add in the players I still really like as prospects but need development time (goalies in particular), the number isn’t impressive. The 2003 draft class, one of the best draft classes of all time isn’t overly remarkable in the late 1st round either. I’m willing to bet most of you don’t think all that much of quite a few of the bolded players anyway. I see four legitimate NHL stars of the 60 players I listed (Richards, Kesler, Perry, and Green), three of which came in the 2003 draft class which produced (wait…let me count) 12 legitimate NHL stars (i.e. Fleury, Staal, Richards, Carter, Parise) as well as (counting again) 10 players that are a notch below stardom (i.e. Horton, Zherdev, Suter).
Long story short, the chances of even getting a player in the last 10 picks of the first round that will significantly contribute to the Flyers at some point might be 50%. The chances of that player making an impact in less than 3 years are minimal; and the chances of that player being a star…well, I wouldn’t count on it.
All of this is without even considering the makeup of our team. The core of the Flyers (Richards, Carter, Gagne, Briere, Hartnell, Giroux, Timonen, Parent, Coburn) averages 26 years old. Who are these 1st round picks going to replace in the near future, because I don’t see it being any of these guys. That is our top 2 lines and 3 of our 4 top defenseman. The Flyers are going to need role players far more than they will need top line players. The beauty of drafting well in the first round (see Gagne, Richards, Carter Giroux) is that it allows you to mess up, or not pick it all if necessary, in later years. The Flyers are built to win. They are built to win now, and they are built to win for the foreseeable future (barring cataclysmic salary cap problems, which in today’s NHL and with Holmgren’s recent cap management…is a real possibility). A few lost draft picks shouldn’t be a concern.
Keywords: Chris Pronger, Joffrey Lupul, Luca Sbisa, Philadelphia Flyers
