A Guest Post by Victor Filoromo
At the very least, this is hard to digest. For ten years, Simon Gagne called Philadelphia home. He was as much a part of the city as the Liberty Bell or Ben Franklin. It’s easy to go the sentimental route with this, but that can be avoided. This is understandable. It is, as they say, a business. It’s a business that has seen Philadelphia sports institutions like Brian Dawkins and Donovan McNabb flock to Denver and Washington respectively. Bobby Abreu’s trade to the New York Yankees comes to mind. But the business can be good, and it can be bad.
It’s not a problem to see longtime stalwarts like Gagne go. It is a problem to see players like Gagne moved in a deal as incomprehensible as this one.
Sure, the Flyers had limited options heading into this off-season. The goal of trading a big-name roster player such as Jeff Carter, Scott Hartnell or Gagne seemed appealing should the team be able to upgrade the goaltending position. But the goaltending options were never particularly effervescent, and the Flyers seem content to head into next season with Michael Leighton and Brian Boucher tending the twine.
In that case, the trade of Gagne is tough to swallow. The Flyers could have easily kept Gagne and tweaked here and there. They now have seven viable starting defensemen, but the ways in which they were added to the roster were somewhat baffling. Sean O’Donnell would be a great sixth defenseman. Unfortunately, so would Matt Walker, whom the Flyers have acquired in the trading of Gagne.
It has become clear that this was purely a salary dump by Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren. He was attempting to clear Gagne’s $5.25 million salary from the books in what may not have been a necessary move. A lot of people will argue and say that “it had to happen” because this was the position the Flyers were in. It was Holmgren who worked himself into this situation, and to avoid mincing words, he wasn’t able to work himself out of it.
In the end, the Flyers made two separate trades with the Tampa Bay Lightning this off-season. If you want to combine them into one trade, the Flyers received Andrej Meszaros, Walker, and a fourth round pick and dealt Gagne and a second round pick.
And what did they do in those trades? They came out by adding salary to the team.
Holmgren could have gone about things quite differently this off-season. They could have nipped here and tucked there. They could have traded defenseman Braydon Coburn, who had a relatively disappointing 2009-2010 season but was rewarded with a new two-year contract as a restricted free agent. They could have avoided signing Nikolai Zherdev to a one-year, $2 million deal. They could have done a lot of things.
It’s reasonable that players like Hartnell or Daniel Briere (who owns a $6.5 million cap hit through 2014) didn’t have a certain worth on the market. Holmgren seemed to be determined to ship Gagne, who has given everything he has to this team over the last ten years. He’s dealt with his share of injuries, but if Holmgren’s reasoning for shedding Gagne from the roster was injury risk and this was the return value, he would have been better off holding on to the 30-year-old winger.
In his first major move, new Tampa Bay general manager Steve Yzerman fell into a perfect spot. He now will oversee a team that has Vincent Lecavalier, Martin St. Louis, Steven Stamkos, and Gagne up front. Though Paul Holmgren has been in the Flyers’ front office in various capacities for the past 15 seasons, it was he, not Yzerman who looks like he made a rookie mistake.
Image Credit: Neat1325
The Flyers needed two or three players this offseason–a starting goalie, a third pairing defenseman and perhaps a scoring winger–and they have grossly overcomplicated things. The Meszaros and Shelley acquisitions were completely senseless. At the rate things are going, they likely could have afforded to sign Zherdev, sign O’Donnell re-sign Coburn, re-sign Carcillo and sign Turco. Instead they go out and push up the cap with puzzling acquisitions. Basically they dealt Gagne for Meszaros and Shelley, what GM is making that deal?
Gagne “had to go” because his contract dictated it. He was not going to be retained beyond this season and thus seemed expendable. That is a fine approach for a non-competitive team but for a team vying for the Cup this season it seems foolish to deal away your best winger in the final year of his deal.
It also make his contract palatable to suitors, Briere and Hartnell’s deals require longer commitments and both guys are just as hard to trade because of no-movement clauses and no-trade clauses respectively.
Gagne also had a no-trade, hence the terrible return. He had a list of ten teams he’d consider but few of them had cap space to acquire him now let alone re-sign him. So it was basically exclusive negotiations with Tampa Bay, his first choice and only legitimate option. As we saw when Holmgren had that sort of leverage with Nashville, it’s not a great bargaining position. Horrendous return because of the unilateral negotiation and also the cap limbo the Flyers entered into for no apparent reason handing out long deals to underachieving defenders, aging enforcers and career backup goalies.