Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

Flyers In Need Of More Talent And Skill

05/01/2014 at 9:04am EDT

from Mike Sielski of the Philadelphia Inquirer,

Give it all some distance and perspective, and it's easy to see that those two are the most valuable discoveries the franchise made. Berube and Mason. In the former, they have a promising head coach with less than a full season on the job, with room to grow. In the latter, they have the commodity they've lacked for so long: a bona fide No. 1 goaltender, the kind who can handle a 60-game workload during the regular season and steal a postseason round or two. Hell, he darn near did it against the Rangers.

That distance and perspective is of vital importance now, because we know what the Flyers' history is. If that history is any guide, the foremost fear of this offseason has to be that team chairman Ed Snider and the organization's player-personnel people will fall into the same pattern that has contributed to what will be a 40-year drought since the Flyers' last Stanley Cup.

General manager Paul Holmgren was smart to be relatively patient during this season, to avoid blowing up the roster back in the fall, when the playoffs seemed a pipe dream, and seeing what he had.

Now he should know: This Flyers team wasn't much different from many Flyers teams before it. It played hard. The players' collective character cannot be questioned. But there are areas with glaring shortages in talent and skill, particularly among the defensemen, that will be difficult to improve with another summertime spree of trading and spending.

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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