I am on an airplane, so I will keep this blog short and straight to the point.
First of all, I wish Simon Gagne nothing but success and good health in Tampa Bay this season. I hate the fact that the trade of a player the Flyers really wanted to keep and who wanted to stay here was necessitated by questionable management of the salary cap. All that, that the goaltending situation has not been improved.
In terms of the exceedingly modest return the Flyers received, the club put itself in a position of negotiating weakness between going over the cap, having so many other no-trade-clause contracts to limit their alternative trade possibilities and (if public pronouncements can be taken at face value) not being willing to even discuss any trade possibilities that involve Jeff Carter. If that was the best deal Paul Holmgren could make to a team for whom Gagne would waive his NTC, I'd hate to see what the Los Angeles Kings were actually offering.
As far as Matt Walker goes, he earns a lot of money for a player who currently projects to be the club's seventh defenseman. There are too many seasons left on his contract to justify waiving him, so I once again suspect that the Flyers will try to move another defenseman -- with Matt Carle being the most obvious candidate by process of elimination -- move Andrej Meszaros up to play with Chris Pronger and have Walker and Sean O'Donnell provide an experienced, defensive minded third pairing with enough cap money left over to sign either Marty Turco or Jose Theodore. Note that this scenario is strictly my own speculation at this point. I fully understand the need for blueline depth, but you can't have seven D-men earning seven-figure contracts, can you?
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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