Answering your Flyers questions: Potential trade deadline moves, prospect timelines, grading Hextall

Over on Facebook this afternoon, I did a 45 minute long Philadelphia Flyers Q&A session. Thanks to the 3,000+ viewers who caught us live, and those who left the 400+ comments we discussed. You can watch the full thing from start to finish above, and be sure to give us a like over on Facebook so you don’t miss us next time we do this!

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Here’s some of the stuff we discussed:

• Prospects! Which of Ivan Provorov, Travis Sanheim and Travis Konecny will be in the NHL next year? Which will be a better NHL player? Is there room for these guys on the NHL roster next year?
• Trade deadline moves: Will Streit go? What about Umberger or MacDonald?
• Whether or not I was wearing pants during the chat. You’ll have to watch to the end to find out.
• Somebody really wanted us to trade Jakub Voracek, so we talked about why not to do that.
• If Zac Rinaldo were here, would the Flyers be any good?
• Jordan Weal’s future with the team.
• What might the Flyers be interested in doing in free agency?
• Is Steve Mason a Cup-winning goalie?
• … and lots more!/

And one hold over from today’s chat. I promised Rob Farley I’d find a better answer to his question since I had to do some quick rulebook research and couldn’t answer on the spot. He asked:

“What’s the big deal about the match penalty not being rescinded? Is it like hoops with flagrant fouls, X number during year = suspension?”

So Rob’s obviously talking about the Wayne Simmonds match penalty last week against New York. Here’s what the rulebook says on this:

21.2 Short-handed – A substitute player is permitted to replace the penalized player after five (5) minutes playing time has elapsed. The match penalty, plus any additional penalties, shall be served by a player (excluding a goalkeeper) to be designated by the Manager or Coach of the offending team through the playing Captain, such player to take his place in the penalty box immediately. For all match penalties, regardless of when imposed, or prescribed additional penalties, a total of ten minutes shall be charged in the records against the offending player. In addition to the match penalty, the player shall be automatically suspended from further competition until the Commissioner has ruled on the issue. See also Rule 28 – Supplementary Discipline.

Now in Simmonds’ case, his match penalty was not rescinded, but after the requisite review by the league office they allowed him to play the next day against Washington — likely because they deemed Simmonds was defending himself against Ryan McDonagh’s cross check and that he was not the initial agitator.

I think what Rob was getting at with his question was the stipulation in the rule book that when you get three game misconduct penalties in a season, you are automatically suspended one game. Match penalties are treated differently than game misconduct penalties in the rule book — the biggest difference being that match penalties also make your team short handed for five minutes, while game misconduct penalties do not necessarily make your team short handed.

With regards to how match penalties are treated in the rule book, there is nothing that stipulates an automatic suspension after you incur a certain number of match penalties. You’re automatically suspended pending commissioner review following a match penalty, but that’s the only sort of automatic suspension outlined in the rules regarding them.

Hope that helps answer your question, Rob. Thanks for asking it — and thanks to everybody who joined us live, and to everybody who tunes in later today or next week when we do this again.