Any trade for an elite player available on the market this summer will come at a price. We know all about Scott Howson’s outrageous demands in a potential trade for Columbus forward Rick Nash, and it’s much of the same when it comes to Anaheim Ducks general manager Bob Murray in a potential Bobby Ryan trade.
These guys want the Flyers youth. They want the Flyers future. They want Sean Couturier and Brayden Schenn, namely. And for a million different reasons, Paul Holmgren and the Flyers would be silly to take that huge risk in such a trade. That’s why it’s so comforting to hear that Holmgren seems to be on the same page here.
“We’ll continue to look to see what’s out there and what we can do,” Holmgren said on a conference call Thursday, hours after signing Ruslan Fedotenko and Bruno Gervais to deals. “I really like our team, and I’m hesitant to look at anything where I’ve got to give up something to get something back. We have a lot of good young players that have tremendous potential. Quite frankly, I’m happy with our team right now.
“That doesn’t mean we won’t look and see what happens. As you know, we took a couple swings for the fences early on in free agency, and those are adding players that you’re not taking away from your team. We had to slide to Plan B, and we’re happy with the players we got in Plan B.”
Maybe you’re not exactly comfortable with the fact that Fedotenko and Gervais are indeed Plan B, especially when Zach Parise, Ryan Suter and Matt Carle were Plan A.
But these words from the general manager suggest that a trade for Ryan or Nash or anybody else isn’t on the table, and as awesome as it would be to have one of those players in the fold, it’s not worth a trade of some of the potentially-elite young talent that’s on this team at present.
And hey, Holmgren didn’t shut the door on the free agent market either. “That doesn’t mean we won’t look and see what happens.” Suggesting there that the Flyers will continue to check out the free agency market. Maybe they’ll make a splash with somebody like Shane Doan or maybe they’ll just shore up some edges, but it doesn’t seem as if the Homer has put the Blackberry away for the summer just yet.
