Ron Hextall’s outlook for the NHL trade deadline
VOORHEES — The NHL’s trade deadline is less than three weeks away, leaving plenty of time for Flyers general manager Ron Hextall to change his mind back and forth as his team’s playoff outlook ebbs and flows.
“I have some ideas in my mind,” Hextall said Wednesday. “We’ll look at everything as we go along here. We’ll monitor where our team’s at, what we think our needs are, what people want from us. We’ll monitor everything and make decisions closer to the deadline.”
The last time he spoke about potential trades, he played coy and then unleashed a bombshell hours later that sent Vinny Lecavalier and Luke Schenn to Los Angeles.
His ability to do something of that magnitude again is somewhat limited because he is not able to retain any more salary in a trade. With the aforementioned Lecavalier and Schenn, the Flyers are also eating $500,000 of defenseman Nick Grossmann’s salary in Arizona.
Hextall can still take on a bit of money before the trade deadline and certainly could use a scoring winger on his team. Then again, the Flyers entered Wednesday six points out of a playoff spot. If Hextall were to bring somebody in, it would likely be a true rental and not someone that can safely set up shop in the area for a few years.
“I don’t believe so,” Hextall said. “If we can help ourselves this year and moving forward (we will), but we’re not gonna give something up just to help us this year. That’s not gonna happen.”
Looking ahead to June’s draft, the Flyers have all seven of their picks as well as Chicago’s second-rounder and L.A.’s third- and sixth-round picks. He’d probably rather add to that than subtract.
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One thing for sure is that the old Flyer way of making a splash and being in contention for the biggest piece on the market is not in Hextall’s mind.
“Do I think one piece is going to elevate us into the top couple teams there? No, I don’t,” Hextall said. “I don’t think that way. That doesn’t mean we can’t make the playoffs, doesn’t mean we can’t win. It just means that I don’t see a quick fix here were one move can put us as a No. 1 Stanley Cup contender. We’ve got to be realistic.”
The Flyers are still trying to find out if making the playoffs is realistic. Their three-game losing streak would suggest against it, but that was preceded by a three-game win streak. Before that? Another three-game losing streak.
“It’s a tough league,” Jake Voracek said. “It’s a lot of good teams. If you play Edmonton, Buffalo, Toronto, all teams below us in the standings, they’re gonna give you a hard time. It showed when we played Toronto. They outplayed us as well. They were a better team. We have to make sure we’re ready to go (Thursday) because Buffalo has a lot of talented players, a lot of dangerous players. Just got to make sure we win.”
If the Flyers don’t and they continue to slide, the question becomes what Hextall can sell off as he continues slowly rebuilding the roster with homegrown prospects.
Michael Raffl, Sam Gagner, Ryan White and Evgeny Medvedev will all be unrestricted free agents this summer, but Gagner has already passed through waivers unclaimed this season.
Brayden Schenn, Nick Cousins, Jordan Weal, Radko Gudas and Brandon Manning are all pending restricted free agents, but Hextall has already expressed his interest in re-signing Schenn this summer.
On the surface it appears as though the most likely scenario is that Hextall stands pat at the deadline…but he’s thrown some curveballs before.
“I like our team,” he said. “I like where we’re at. I like where we’re going. I don’t like our record in the last three games, but I think we’ve grown as a group. I think there’s very few nights where I look in the last couple months and say we haven’t given a real good effort. We’ve improved in certain areas and we need to continue to improve form within.”
Dave Isaac; (856) 486-2479;disaac@gannettnj.com.