UPDATE, 9/29, 1 p.m. ET: Per TSN’s Bob McKenzie, both Hall and Gervais have cleared waivers. The Flyers will now have the option to send them down to Adirondack or keep them on the roster. Presumably we’ll hear more about their choice there soon. Original post from Saturday afternoon below.
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Here’s us, here at Broad Street Hockey dot com, about 90 minutes ago following the news of Scott Laughton making the team:
That wraps up the roster battles at the forward position, but the Flyers have five centers now, so that’s a question mark. Perhaps Adam Hall — one of the team’s better face off men — will move to the wing. We’ll see in the next few days.
It’s also not a guarantee that Laughton, who’s still eligible for juniors, plays the entire year in the NHL. Much like last season, his first nine games will be a tryout, and his play will be reevaluated before the Flyers reach the point where they have to make the decision to keep him in Philly or send him back to the OHL’s Oshawa Generals.
So. About that. Here’s Ren Lavoie of TVA Sports, from later in the afternoon:
Waivers: Sceviour, Colton DAL Gervais, Bruno PHI Hall, Adam PHI Strachan, Tyson WSH Craig, Ryan CBJ Skille, Jack CBJ Goloubef, Cody CBJ
— Renaud Lavoie (@LavoieRenaud) September 28, 2013
You’ll notice two Flyers in there — Bruno Gervais and the aforementioned Adam Hall.
Gervais is probably not too surprising, as it’s looked like the writing was on the wall for him from the start of training camp. He was already a likely victim of a numbers game on the blue line with no less than seven guys ahead of him, and with reports that the team is looking to keep Hal Gill on as a seventh defenseman, it became that much more unlikely that Gervais would be here when the season began. He’ll head to waivers and will presumably be sent to Adirondack if he clears, and his salary cap hit of $825,000 will be taken off the books.
Hall being waived is a bit more of a tough one to figure out, for a couple reasons. While by no means whatsoever a crucial player, Hall looked like a guy who could be a quite competent fourth-line center, thanks to his defensive ability and faceoff talent. Scott Laughton apparently making the team certainly complicated the picture for Hall, given that the team has said it wants to keep Laughton at center and there are no center openings on the Flyers in any of the top three lines, but it still seemed likely that they’d keep Hall around.
Regardless, it seems like Hall may have known his roster spot was in danger, given that he fought twice in last night’s preseason loss to the Capitals. Now he’ll be on the waiver wire (like he was so many times last year) and Jay Rosehill will remain with the Flyers. Truculence. Catch the fever.
The other thing that makes you wonder with Hall being waived is what’s going to happen next. Assuming he’s claimed or sent to Adirondack, the Flyers currently have just 12 forwards (and eight defensemen) under contract. That’s not a position you want to be in as an NHL team that travels and frequently has players get injured, so chances are another move is coming.
Or, better put: another move is definitely coming. With the roster the Flyers currently hold, Capgeek.com suggests that the team is about $16,000 over the $64.3 million salary cap. That figure isn’t including the injured Marc-Andre Bourdon, who was waived last week and may be put on long-term injured reserve or optioned to the Phantoms.
Either way, the team is over the cap and only carrying the minimum number of forwards it can carry. Something’s going to happen — there were rumblings about an Andrej Meszaros trade with Colorado for a forward? — so it’s tough to make a hard judgment on where things are going until we know what the next move is. Stay tuned.
