Revisiting the Richards and Carter trades Part II: The Results

After examining the Causes for the trades of Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, the question to answer now is: Was it ultimately worth it?

For the two of them it seems to have worked out okay. After a short and sulky stint in Columbus, the Blue Jackets opted to ship Carter to the Kings themselves where he would be reunited with Richards. The two of them would win the Stanley Cup that year in one of the most remarkably lucky (by which I mean injury-free) runs at a Stanley Cup.

That in and off itself was a challenging fact for Flyers fans to accept and was largely seen as a condemnation of the trades themselves. It was proven that a team can win with the two in their line-up. However, that was in my opinion never in question. The difference in the situation between the Flyers and Kings is that their role was significantly reduced, as they were now relied upon as secondary contributors behind players like Anze Kopitar, Dustin Brown and Drew Doughty.

I myself am happy for them. They should have already won the Cup in 2010 and it cemented Mike Richards as one of the ultimate winners. It also meant that other Flyers alumni deservedly got their names on the Cup as they should have had for a while now, namely Simon Gagne (himself acquired by the Kings as a free agent) and Ron Hextall as part of their management.

As for the Flyers, they tried their hardest. It helped that the lost scoring was replaced by acquiring some free agents like Jaromir Jagr returning from the KHL and performing a grandiose heel turn by signing with the Flyers instead of the Penguins, or unsigned college graduate Matt Read who turned some heads himself. After an absolutely ridiculous series against the Penguins, they would however fall short against the Devils who would advance to the Finals and be crushed by the Kings.


The trades themselves are also looking good from the perspective of the Flyers. All the key pieces have established themselves as core members. Voracek has become one of the better right wings in the league and is a constant threat on the side of Claude Giroux, who has wonderfully grown into the first line center role that was opened up by the departure of Richards and Carter. Wayne Simmonds has established himself as a great power-forward and a dominant presence in front of the net and on the boards. Sean Couturier made the NHL as an 18-year old and is at age 21 already one of the best defensive forwards in the NHL while hardly ever committing a penalty. His scoring needs work but he is an integral part of the line-up as a shut-down player. Brayden Schenn is also slowly realizing his promise, looking to break the 20-goal mark this year while centering the 2nd line.

The surrounding areas however are kind of a disaster. Ilya Bryzgalov's contract would ultimately be bought out in the wake of the changes brought upon by the new Collective Bargaining Agreement established in 2013. He had some very disappointing numbers and never fit in with the system or the team due to his eccentric personality, finishing up as one of the worst goalies in 2012, statistically.

However, this was not before the Flyers had traded Sergei Bobrovsky to the Blue Jackets, attempting to bring Bryzgalov around by removing some competition. The Blue Jackets would earn some crow calls from the peanut gallery as in "of course you go to Philadelphia to fix your problems in goal" for this move, but Bobrovsky would regain his confidence in Columbus and win the Vezina Trophy in the shortened 2013 season for his troubles, another dagger in the back of the battered Flyers fans suffering through a decidedly mediocre season.

The Flyers would return the favor by taking Steve Mason off the Jackets' hands in a separate trade a year later. Mason won the Calder Trophy as an outstanding goaltender in his rookie year and posting 10 shutouts. However, he was unable to follow this up behind a weak Columbus team and was seen as a lost cause, though he has been regaining some of his confidence with the Flyers.

Another goalie would also be acquired from Columbus in a more roundabout way, as the 2nd round pick the Flyers received in exchange for Bobrovsky was used to select Anthony Stolarz, who as of this writing shares the league lead in Save Percentage in the OHL.


However, far worse than the debacle that was Bryzgalov in net was the unfortunate end of Chris Pronger's career. Pronger was struck in the eye by the stick of Toronto Maple Leafs forward Mikhail Grabovski on a follow-through. This injury coupled with some other hits caused a long lasting battle with post-concussion syndrome.

Pronger has not suited up for the Orange and Black since 2011, and his career is effectively over. With him the Flyers lost a stalwart on the blue line, which they are still attempting to replace. They also lost the leadership and guiding presence in the locker room they needed after trading away Mike Richards. The Flyers were also somewhat forced to retain his salary and cheat the system by placing him on injured reserve, rather than using one of their two compliance buyouts allowed with the new CBA on him, as they were used on Bryzgalov and Danny Briere.

There can be debate about whether it was wise of the Flyers management to build on Pronger, who signed his contract extension with a year left on an ongoing deal and whose new contract would run until he was 42 years old without the potential if relief in case of his retirement or just such a long term injury. However, injuries are by their very nature unforeseen and unpredictable, even less so for a guy like Chris Pronger who was occasionally and jokingly described as a sort of unstoppable Terminator.

As of now the Flyers have managed to mitigate the Bryzgalov debacle, but have a number of areas in which they can improve. They are still looking to fill the crater left by Chris Pronger, as attempts to sign Shea Weber and Ryan Suter have failed, but they have managed to acquire a number of good young prospects on defense, mostly through the draft. Samuel Morin, Mark Alt, Frederick Larson, Valeri Vasiliev and Robert Hagg are showing some promise, but the biggest hope for now is Shayne Gostisbehere who is one of the front runners for the Hobey Baker Award this year. He may very well play for the Flyers next season, though I hope they will not rush him into it.

In the wake of the Richards and Carter trades it is interesting how the Flyers of today resemble the Flyers of five or six years ago. They are again a team consisting of an elite and young forward group growing towards and/or about to enter its prime, with an uneasy and aging defense corps and rather questionable goaltending.

The positive is that unlike five or six years ago, the Flyers actually have a number of talented prospects in the system with hope that those will fill the gaps in the near future. If these defensemen can catch up to the forwards, and if Steve Mason can regain his Calder Trophy winning abilities in goal (or if Anthony Stolarz manages to supplant him), it may ultimately truly have proven worth it. However, in the face of Richards and Carter completing their dream in Los Angeles, anything short of a Stanley Cup victory will be unable to actually punctuate this.

For now, the trades themselves appear to be an absolute win-win-win, as all three teams, Columbus, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, appear to be happy with what they received in exchange for the assets they have given up.

Revisiting the Richards and Carter trades Part I: The Reasons

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.