January 19, 2015
The Flyers aren't Stanley Cup contenders. Not this season anyway.
But unlike the other team that calls the Wells Fargo Center home, they're not going to give up on the season in the hopes of landing the top pick in the draft.
Flyers General Manager Ron Hextall said over the weekend that despite his team's poor play this season, he has no intentions of tanking. The team, currently 11 points out of playoff spot after Monday's 7-4 loss to the Islanders, needs to go on quite a run if they hope to make a playoff spot.
But what if they don't? What if they continue to lose at this rate and find themselves hopeless out of contention?
When that time comes, Hextall will be ready to make some moves.
Dave Isaac of USAToday has more:
And if they don't, Hextall has vowed to stick with the plan he sold to team chairman Ed Snider and now-president Paul Holmgren. He's not interested in "mortgaging our future to try and sneak into the playoffs."
"If 23 guys can't do it, we're gonna hold," Hextall said. "If we can do something between now and the deadline that makes sense for the future if in fact we're in a bad position, we'll do it." [via usatoday.com]
"There's not going to be a firesale here," Hextall said. "We don't have the so-called UFAs. If something makes sense for us to do, long-term and this year, we won't hesitate to do it."
The prize of this summer's draft is Connor McDavid, but Hextall seems content with the depth of the draft class, and is content to pick wherever the team's record places them.
If they keep up at this rate, McDavid might be more of a possibility than they think.
Here's some other notes from the team's ugly 7-4 loss out on Long Island:
It seems as those opponents have figured out how to beat goalie Rob Zepp: shoot high.
The book on Zepp: Wait ... wait ... wait ... get him to go down ... shoot high. The Isles have figured it out.
— Sarah Baicker (@sbaickerCSN) January 19, 2015
In the first period, Zepp made a great pad save on a Flyers power play, but after that, the Islanders went high on almost every shot they could. Midway through the second period, Zepp was pulled after allowing his fourth goal of the afternoon.
Ray Emery wasn't great either, allowing a pair of goals on 20 shots before the Isles added an empty-netter with just over a minute remaining in the game. With the loss, the Flyers record when scoring four or more goals dropped to 14-2-1 on the season.
The Flyers lost a pair of defensemen in the loss to the Islanders, leaving them with just four on the active roster.
Click here for more on the injuries to Nick Schultz and Carlo Colaiacovo, as well as what the means for Tuesday's game against the Penguins.
We'll have an update as soon as a move is made.
The aforementioned pad save by Zepp came with the Islanders down a man, but that wasn't even their best shorthanded attempt of the game.
In the second period, with the Isles again down a man, Nikolay Kulemin blocked a shot from the point and took it nearly the length of the ice, out skating Matt Read and beating Zepp for his second goal of the day.
Kulemin must have learned of Zepp's kryptonite between periods, as the 33-year-old rookie goaltender didn't stand a chance at saving the top-shelf shot.
The Islanders will be moving to Brooklyn's Barclays Center next season, meaning today's game was the Flyers' last at the Nassau Coliseum.
After 41 seasons worth of games there, the Flyers will finish with a 54-55-15-3 record there. They had a chance to leave with a winning record, but that was quickly erased as the Isles jumped out to a big lead early on Monday.
However, since the Isles last won a playoff series in 1993, the Flyers are an impressive 30-7-3 at the Coliseum, including a 16-3-0 stint that lasted from 2006-2013.
Flyers columnist Jay Greenberg has a great story on the team's history there in case you're wondering how the Coliseum treated the Orange & Black over the years.
