If you had to pick three players whose success in 2011-12 are the most pivotal to the Flyers' season, who would they be? My three picks would be Chris Pronger, James van Riemsdyk and Jakub Voracek.

With Pronger, so much is riding on the player's healthy return from back surgery and his ability to stay healthy and productive. There is also a good chance that the 36-year-old will be named captain this season. Having a healthy Pronger goes a long way toward helping the club adjust to all the personnel changes and remaining a contender in the East. If he's out for a prolonged period or playing at far less than 100 percent (like he was for much of last season), the power play and D could be vulnerable.

With JVR, the Flyers are heavily counting on him to be the player they saw during much of the Buffalo series and especially in Game 2 of the Boston series. Philly needs JVR to become a bonafide first line forward this season. If he plays to that level on any sort of semi-regular basis, the team will be fine. The gauntlet has been thrown to Claude Giroux and JVR to become the franchise cornerstones. If JVR is not up to the challenge, Philly could be in trouble.

I picked Voracek as my third pivotal player because his 2011-12 production is rather hard to predict. With Jaromir Jagr, I think there is every reason to expect that he will at minimum replace Ville Leino's 19 goals and 53 points from last season (and probably exceed it). But Jagr is likely to be in Philly only for one season, unless things go so well that it's a no-brainer for he and the Flyers to agree to another one-year contract.

With Voracek, the pressure is on to take the next step in his development. He has posted more points in his first three NHL seasons than Jeff Carter did over the same span. But Voracek also failed to step forward last season, producing less than he did in his second campaign. Regardless of what Jagr does, the Flyers also need Voracek to start coming into his own next season if they are have a deep attack.

In all three cases, I picked the players because there is much that is tough to predict about their performances next season. Obviously, Giroux, Ilya Bryzgalov, Kimmo Timonen and Danny Briere will all need to continue playing at least to the standards they did last year. Brayden Schenn's success will be a long-term key to the Flyers, but he is only a rookie.

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