I love Mike Richards. There I said it. Not like a man loves a woman, but like a man likes a good cigar. Except fuck cigars.
Mike Richards is one of my favorite players, and definitely my favorite player not playing for the Flyers. He is a hard working role model. He is a leader by example. He is a proven winner having won a Stanley Cup, an Olympic Gold Medal, World Junior Championship Gold, a Memorial Cup and a Calder Cup. All he needs is a gold medal in the World Championship, which will be hard for him to get since the only time he ever was out of the playoffs is the season we do not speak off. He also should have a Selke in his trophy case if not for the voting system being really dumb. Richards is definitely one of the most underrated players in the league, and many teams can only dream of having a guy like him in its line-up.
He also seemed like the future of the Franchise in Philadelphia, having been named captain (a role tailor made for him) and with an admittedly ridiculous 12-year contract in the back pocket that would expire when he is 35 years old, with a rather manageable $5,750,000 cap hit. Seemingly he would be a Flyer for life. Plus his best friend and teammate Jeff Carter had also been locked up with a very similar contract.
I make no bones about it. I don't really like Jeff Carter as a person. However, he is a very talented hockey player and a true sniper. Someone that can add value to a team. However, I did believe that in 2010, when the Flyers trade away Simon Gagne to Tampa Bay for Matt Walker and a 4th round pick, the Flyers should have traded Carter instead and end the logjam at center while preserving a valuable winger. (Now that was a terrible trade, though I guess the Flyers owed the Lightning something for the Meszaros trade that happened just days earlier. The Sum total I guess is Simon Gagne and a 2nd round pikc for Andrej Meszaros, Matt Walker and a 4th, which makes it somewhat more palpable. And since leaving the Flyers, Gagne didn't exactly light the world on fire though I do find it nice that he did manage to get his name on The Cup).
All the more shocked was I when I woke up on the day of th 2011 NHL Entry Draft to learn that both Mike Richards and Jeff Carter had been traded, as I found out while checking my e-mails on my phone. The grogginess was immediately gone, replaced by pure anger. I was not ready for this. Nobody was. It was an absolutely unexpected bombshell that ripped the heart of the team out of the franchise. The fans reacted with immediate calls of mutiny, myself among them.
Well, after a day or two, I came down from the mad high I had gotten myself on and attempted to see the more rational side for the trades. It was time to actually look at what Paul Holmgren had received in exchange for his two super stars.
From Columbus the Flyers got Jakub Voracek, a 2011 first round pick and a 2011 third round pick which turned into Sean Couturier and Nick Cousins respectively. Voracek at the time was a young talent, a natural winger with some great goalscoring potential, as yet unrealized in the Columbus system (which has a terrible reputation with eastern european players). Couturier had been projected to go as high as 1st overall that draft, but contracted mononucleosis which kept his numbers down. At the time of the pick it was a gift however, as he was one of the most NHL ready players in the draft as he would prove in short order. Cousins was a troublemaker, but with some talent to back it up. He has as of yet to fulfill his potential in pro hockey, but finishing in the top 10 in OHL scoring in 2012 and 3rd in 2013 is promising (which could have been higher if not for a suspension).
From Los Angeles Holmgren received Wayne Simmonds, Brayden Schenn and their 2012 2nd round pick. Flyers had to chip in Rob Bordson, but that was acceptable (Bordson has yet to play in the NHL, and the Kings did not give him a qualifying offer when they had the chance to do so). Simmonds was a young, raw, grinding middle-six winger with some untapped promise to score goals. Schenn was considered perhaps the best prospect not yet in the NHL, a two time silver medalist at the World Juniors and a former WHL rookie of the year. The draft pick would be packaged with a 3rd round selection in 2012 and flipped to the Dallas Stars later that year in exchange for defenseman Nicklas Grossmann.
So the verdict in total was that the Flyers got some very good value for the two centers the gave up, though it was largely in young and mostly unproven players. With other players of similar talent already on the team looking for more responsibility, players like Claude Giroux and James van Riemsdyk, the Flyers seemed to have gotten a whole lot younger, but not necessarily a whole lot worse depending on how the NHL replacements Voracek and Simmonds would fill in, and how other players would step up.
A definitive positive was that the shelves were restocked, as the Flyers prospect pool was almost entirely devoid of any definitive NHL talent with many of them having graduated to the big club and little having come after as many draft picks were used in trades to acquire roster players instead.
What was more worrisome was that it did not solve one of their larger problems, which was a logjam at center. Yes, the Flyers had traded away two centers, but they had also picked up three centers in Couturier, Schenn and Cousins. Add that to the fact that Giroux was looking to completely takeover the center position on the top line and Danny Briere still sticking around, the Flyers seemed to have too many centers again.
The biggest problem however was the reasons that motivated the trades themselves. I guess we won't be able to avoid talking about "Dry Island" so we might as well get out of the way. The story is that head coach Peter Laviolette asked his players to remain completely sober for an entire month. The practice was dubbed "Dry Island" by the players and Richards and Carter were the only two players that refused to participate, supposedly causing a rift between them and the coach. That Captain Richards routinely had his problems with the intrusive Philadelphia sports media was no secret and this may have contributed to the factors as well to the trade, but that would be nothing to the field day they would have with this story and how it related to the trades. I personally am still skeptical about how much of that is actually truthful and how much it influenced the trades.
Another factor was the presence of another-larger than-life character in the locker room. His name is Chris Pronger, professional troll and hockey player, as well as winner of a Hart Trophy, a Norris Trophy and the Stanley Cup among many other awards. Pronger is undeniably an asshole, but he is also one of the best defensemen to ever play the sport and a natural leader. Rumor has it that there was a division between Pronger and Richards (who had won Olympic Gold together two years prior) and the organization favored Pronger's leadership despite him only playing 50 games due to a languishing knee-issue. Without the ability to actually transfer the captaincy to Pronger and leave Richards with any dignity, Richards was traded instead.
The largest influence however was definitely the issues in goal. In the 2011 playoffs the Flyers employed a three-headed monster in net. They had Sergei Bobrovsky, a young goaltender out of Siberia that was practically a complete unknown when he showed up at training camp, winning the starting goaltender's job solidified by a great performance in a 3-2 win against the hated Pittsburgh Penguins in the first game of the season, spoiling the opening of the new Consol Energy Arena.
Backing up "Bob" was Brian Boucher, a veteran goalie who always had talent but never really stood up as a starting netminder and falling into a backup role periodically. Boucher was in his third tour of duty with the Flyers, the team that had originally drafted him in 1995, and despite his strong play in the playoffs the previous year he was again outperformed by another goaltender.
Waiting behind them was Michael Leighton, a borderline NHL goalie with occasional flashes of brilliance. One of those was the year before where he was picked up by the Flyers from the waiver wire due to a season-ending (and career threatening) injury to Ray Emery, then posted a 16-5-2 record with a .920 save percentage before going down to a high ankle sprain himself. This kept him out of the playoffs until the 2nd round, the day Boucher suffered two overextended knees after a goal-crease collision. Leighton jumped into the game, finished the shutout 50-50 and followed it up by letting a 2-0 lead stand for 59 minutes before Boston could score an ultimately futile goal. The following round Leighton posted three shutouts in five games against the Canadiens. However, he was made the lone scapegoat in a disappointing finish due to giving up a wake goal in overtime of game 6 which would give the Blackhawks the Stanley Cup.
Leighton had been extended for two years, but an offseason back surgery meant that he would miss the start of the season. By the time he was ready to play again, Bobrovsky had supplanted him and Leighton was placed on waivers, which he cleared and was assigned to the Phantoms. However, later in the season Bobrovsky's confidence was crumbling, as was the entire team as it finished with a 9-9-7 record from late February to the end of the season. Leighton was recalled and the Flyers themselves hardly knew themselves which goalie would start any given playoff game. They barely got by the Sabres in the first round before being dispatched in four games by the eventual Stanley Cup Champion Bruins.
Philadelphia was known for a long time as a goalie graveyard in large part due to the mounting pressure caused by the expectations of the city's sports fans and media. Management decided it had to stop so they went out and got the biggest fish in the pond: Ilya Bryzgalov. Bryz was the beneficiary of a very strong defensive system in Phoenix under the guidance of head coach Dave Tippet, but the Flyers would definitely get him come hell or high water. And so they traded a 3rd round pick and minor league player Matt Clackson for Bryzgalov's expiring contract which they swiftly extended to the tune of 9 years and $51 million, a $5,666,667 cap hit.
Personally I still believe this to have been marching orders from higher levels which caused ripple effects for years to come. The Flyers already had a good young goalie that just needed some grooming and time, but this would not be soon enough as it appears.
Bryzgalov's monstrous contract would require some restructuring for the Flyers and with high salaried players like Briere and Pronger having the advantage of No Trade or No Movement Clauses in their contracts, it was decided to rebuild "on the fly" by trading Richards and Carter for younger talent and gun for the Cup a couple of years down the line.
The same effect could probably have also been achieved by trading only one of Richards and Carter, so why both? The answer is simple: They are best friends. It is no secret how pissed the two of them were after the trades. Carter in particularly crawled up in his shell and was unavailable to the media after being traded away from a booming night life and a talented team in Philadelphia to the perennial bottom feeder in the sleepy Columbus. I don't think there would have been much of a difference had his best friend Mike Richards been traded away with him remaining in Philadelphia.
On the other hand, I believe that Carter was the sole player traded and Richards had remained, the increasing rift between Richards and the management would have in all likelihood immediately exploded into a full fledged mutiny. In either case, the Flyers would likely have had to trade the other man in the duo sooner or later as well, only for their trade value to have tanked in between. Management opted for the band-aid approach, tearing it off fast and efficiently.
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