The Broad Street Blog

For the Flyers, the past two days have meant closing out the 2007-2008 season. Yesterday saw Coach John Stevens and GM Paul Holmgren meeting with the media to discuss the past season and what is to come in the next few months.

Some interesting quotes from the pair include Holmgren talking about his offseason priorities:

“Obviously, we have some work to do to get some of our restricted guys signed. We’ve got to take a look and our unrestricted guys and see what we can do.

“I think there are some areas in the game where we need to get better. Our overall mobility and speed on our back end needs to get better, whether we have those players internally or not, we will see. I think we do have a couple of guys that are coming, whether they are ready for a full time basis or not I am not sure yet. We will see how it goes. We still don’t know what the (salary) cap will be. We have to go through some internal stuff here over the next week-to-10 days and try to come up with the direction we want to go.”

Holmgren was also asked about his coach:

“I think just going through the experiences that he went through with his team are going to make him better. I think we started out good and then we went through a period of games where we would win one, lose one. I think that consistency has to come and I think that comes from the coaching staff. I don’t know if we can afford as a team next year to go through stretches where we lose six games in a row or get one point out of a possible 20. I am not sure we can afford to do that and get into the playoffs. I think we were fortunate this year.”

Stevens talked about his current team:

“We feel like we are really deep up front and we feel like we need to get better on the back end. I think any time you look at your whole team you are always going to try to do things to make your team better. It’s obvious with our team we have really good depth up front in our scoring and in our forward positions. We have younger players in the back end that have gotten better. If we are going to get better we need to get better really at every position whether it is done by our younger players getting more experience and getting better, or adding people from the outside.”

John Stevens Full Press Conference

Paul Holmgren Full Press Conference

Today saw the players getting together at the Flyers practice facility for one last time for the 2007-2008 season. The players had one last meeting with the coaching staff and management and cleaned out their lockers. For some of these players, they will be back in September looking to improve upon this year’s success. Mike Richards signed a 12 year contract with the team during the season. Paul Holmgren has said that restricted free agent Jeff Carter is his top priority for the off season. Carter told the media today that he wants to stay in Philadelphia.

“Obviously, I don’t want to go anywhere. I love playing in Philadelphia, and I want to be here for a long time,” he said. “We have to sit down with my agent, [Holmgren] and everybody, and hopefully we can get something done as soon as possible.”

RJ Umberger, who is also a restricted free agent, is also high on the list to be resigned by the Flyers. Danny Briere, Kimmo Timonen, and Scott Hartnell all signed long term deals with the team last offseason.

For others, the chances of them returning are slim. Jason Smith is an unrestricted free agent and the Flyers probably will not have the salary cap space to sign him. Plus the Flyers realize they need to make their blueline faster. Rumors are floating around that Derian Hatcher is seriously considering retiring, especially after the trouble he had with his leg and knee this season. There is also talk that the Flyers will be looking to trade Sami Kapanen or buy him out.

Tags:   Carter · Hatcher · Holmgren · Richards · Smith · Stevens · Umberger4 Comments