Mark Streit is a defenseman and the captain of the New York Islanders.
Just filed to @newsdaysports: sources say #Isles captain Mark Streit will not return. Turned down team’s best offer, will hit open market.
— Arthur Staple (@StapeNewsday) June 4, 2013
Okay. Mark Streit is a free agent defenseman. He’s a former captain of the New York Islanders, he’s 35 years old and played hockey for $4.1 million against the salary cap last year. Could the Flyers be interested in his services? You know, because defense and all.
The basics: He’s a top-four defenseman and can play in all situations, even if he didn’t exactly do that this past year with the Islanders thanks to pairing concerns. He’ll turn 36 in December, and because of that, his play is declining a bit. How much is a bit?
Get answers from our friends over at Lighthouse Hockey, who elaborated on Streit’s 2013 season just a few days ago. This video from Dominik Jansky is a good, quick summary of Streit’s current situation:
He’s leaving the Isles simply because he feels he can get more money elsewhere, and we’d expect the Flyers to have to pay more than that $4.1 million per season to get him on board here. They’ll probably have to commit to three years or longer, too. Free agency does that.
The Isles’ depth on defense has made Streit sort of expendable. Or, at the very least, it’s made him worth less than the open market dictates, and that means he’s going to walk.
Where would he fall on the Flyers depth chart? I’d assume somewhere on the top four, depending upon health of course. He won’t log a ton of tough minutes, but Braydon Coburn, Nicklas Grossmann and to a lesser extent Erik Gustafsson were able to take on those responsibilities last season. Streit’s presence on the Flyers blue line would certainly give them more depth and another capable two-way defenseman who can eat a good chunk of minutes, taking pressure off of … say, a still-aging Kimmo Timonen.
But, as it always does in free agency, the real question comes down to price. How high will the bidding on Mark Streit go? In a summer without many solid UFA options on defense, it might go higher than the Flyers can afford, especially since they need to shed $3 million in salary just to play the free agency game come July.
