• March 28, 2024

Flyers Make Final Roster Cuts

As reported earlier, the Flyers released Bill Guerin from his tryout offer and put goaltender Johan Backlund on waivers. Additional updates from late this afternoon indicate that Jon Kalinski, Mike Testwuide, Ben Holmstrom, David Laliberte, Marc-Andre Bourdon, and Erik Gustafsson have been sent down to the Phantoms. This doesn’t really come as a surprise, as the majority of the prospects looked like they needed more conditioning in the AHL after the annihilation that was last night’s final preseason game. NHL clubs are only required to put eight NHL players in any preseason line-up and the Flyers predominantly iced prospects, Phantoms, and tryouts against the Buffalo Sabres, who scored eight straight goals in a 9-3 drubbing.

NHL teams can carry up to 23 men on the roster, and with forward Ian Laperriere and goaltender Michael Leighton on long-term injury reserve (LTIR), the roster is set. There were a number of players vying for the last roster positions against Guerin, including forwards Dan “Carbomb” Carcillo and Andreas Nodl and defensemen Oskars Bartulis and Matt “Big Country” Walker.

I think it might turn out to be a mistake that the Flyers retained both Bartulis and Walker, as they will eat up $2.3 million in cap space as healthy scratches. Both defensemen looked awful last night as well, having each been responsible for numerous turnovers that led to goals. It’s rare that NHL teams carry eight defensemen, and waiving one of two adequate defensemen and signing Guerin as a 14th forward would have given you more forward options.

Bourdon and Gustafsson’s preseason play also showed that they should be ready for call-ups later in the season, and would be fine seventh defensemen to start their NHL careers. Guerin may have slowed down a little at 39, but he is still a guaranteed goal scorer with two Stanley Cup rings.

As far as Dan Carcillo, either you love him or you hate him. The twenty-five year old left winger provides a lot of energy that could work under coach Peter Laviolette’s system, and can get under other players’ skins, has good work ethic, and is good at drawing penalties. After Laviolette joined the organization, his recklessness was kept under restraint and he showed that he could potentially turn into a more offensive weapon with proper coaching.

On the other hand, for as many penalties as he draws, he either takes stupid penalties or can’t out-skate his reputation, as illustrated last night when he received a game misconduct for mouthing off to the referees.  While he had a strong second half of the regular season, he wasn’t particularly effective in the playoffs and did more harm than good in the Stanley Cup Finals.

The last player to make the roster is probably the one who will face the most unfair scrutiny- Andreas Nodl. The arguments against him are that “he sucks,” “he’ll never be an NHL player,” and “I wanted Guerin!” I will point out why these aren’t exactly well-thought-out arguments in another post.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are your 2010-2011 Philadelphia Flyers (lines not set in stone):

James Van Riemsdyk – Jeff Carter – Nikolay Zherdev

Scott Hartnell – Danny Briere – Ville Leino

Dan Carcillo – Mike Richards – Claude Giroux

Darroll Powe – Blair Betts – Andreas Nodl

Jody Shelley (healthy scratch)

Chris Pronger – Matt Carle

Kimmo Timonen – Braydon Coburn

Andrej Meszaros – Sean O’Donnell

Matt Walker (healthy scratch)

Oskars Bartulis (healthy scratch)

Brian Boucher

Sergei Bobrovsky

Josh Janet

Josh Janet was raised in Northern New Jersey, but by an odd set of circumstances, is a Philadelphia sports fan. While recently converted to the Phillies, Josh is a diehard Flyers fan and can be expected to stay on top of the latest NHL news.

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lewdoggie20
lewdoggie20
October 5, 2010 7:59 am

dont think shelly will be a healthy scratch off the hop, likely nodl will get the scratch. look to walker getting dumped once pronger is set to go. i would not be surprised by guerin getting a call back if the flyers start off slow.