Over the last couple of days, there have been rumors that the Flyers are among the teams considering the idea of trading to acquire Dallas Stars captain Brenden Morrow or former Flyers right winger, Jaromir Jagr. Both veterans are impending unrestricted free agents.
Dallas is a club that has been burned in each of the last two years by largely standing pat at the trade deadline in order to take a shot with their existing rosters at making the playoffs. Both years, they lost out on playoff spots after controlling their own fate heading into the final week of the season. Both years, the team saw their tradeable unrestricted free agents (including Brad Richards in 2011 and Sheldon Souray last year) depart over the summer with the Stars ending up with nothing in return.
This year, it makes more sense for the Stars to be sellers.
Although mathematically still in the hunt for the eighth seed in the Western Conference (11th-ranked Dallas has 29 points in 29 games, eighth-place San Jose has 32 points in 29 games), the Stars' have been going in the wrong direction of late. They have fallen back to the .500 mark, and have a variety of uncorrected problems -- suspect team defense, lack of depth to play around key injuries, a chronic inability to win the second half of back-to-back games, regularly taking too many penalties and not generating enough power plays -- that could easily prove fatal to Dallas' playoff hopes.
As such, the Stars could be sellers before the April 3 trade deadline. Morrow, Jagr, Derek Roy, and Eric Nystrom can all become unrestricted free agents this summer. The Stars would prefer not to deal the iconic Jagr, but the player himself, the market price he could fetch, and the team's record could change the plan. Morrow, who has a no-trade clause, has been a heart-and-soul player for many years and has played his entire career with the Stars' organization. Nevertheless, Morrow's time in Dallas is likely near the end.
What does this have to do with the Philadelphia Flyers? It shouldn't have ANYTHING to do with them. This year's Flyers have a myriad of their own problems, and realistically will not make the playoffs. Besides, they already took a shot at bringing in some veteran rentals to help turn things around this season by reacquiring Simon Gagne and signing 40-year-old Mike Knuble as a free agent after the start of the campaign.
Using trading assets to bring Jagr back now would not make the slightest sense. Yes, the team has clearly missed him as much for the respect and admiration he commanded among teammates as for his scoring and on-ice presence. His season in Philadelphia was a joy both to the team and Jagr himself. Sentiment aside, however, it would be foolish to expend assets to reacquire the 41-year-old this season.
Here are five key reasons:
1) The Flyers' problems this year go far beyond Jagr's departure last summer, and his return would be very unlikely to produce a dramatic turnaround that would propel the team into the playoffs. The fact that Jagr is a shell of his former self and is STILL a pretty damn good offensive player is a testament to the fact that he's one of the all-time greats. But the fact remains that he is now best suited to being a complementary player. Having seen every game Dallas has played this year, I can say that Jagr is a little healthier than he was last year but has run a bit hot and cold in his performance. He still sometimes makes jaw-dropping plays but his lack of speed is also very evident.
2) The cost to reacquire Jagr this season would not be insignificant. Given the number of teams that have interest in Jagr, I suspect the Dallas asking price on the future Hall of Famer (who is also the Stars' leading scorer with 11 goals and 21 points) would require any potential trade partner to expend multiple assets: something along the lines of two second round picks or second rounder and a mid-tier prospect. That's assuming Joe Nieuwendyk would not decide that keeping Jagr around as long as possible is not worth more to the team's transitional phase than the off-chance that a non first-round pick or role-playing prospect would be likely to add down the line.
3) A major part of the reason why the Flyers were not in a hurry to re-sign Jagr last summer -- they told him to wait until they tended to other priorities, which neither he nor agent Petr Svoboda were willing to do -- was that the organization planned to plug Jakub Voracek into Jagr's spot on Giroux's line. Voracek has played very well this season. The fact that Claude Giroux has had an inconsistent year and Scott Hartnell has had an awful season both injury and performance wise, is on those players' shoulders and not because they no longer have number 68 nearby on the ice and the locker room.
4) Apart from money, the main reason why Jagr chose Dallas over Philadelphia was that he wanted a guarantee from the Flyers that his role would not be reduced. He wanted to remain on Giroux's line and he especially wanted the chance to get back onto the top power play unit (he was moved off the top unit midway through last season in favor of Wayne Simmonds). The team was not going to make such promises. Despite the Flyers' disappointing record, his situation here would be exactly the same as it was at the end of the playoffs last year.
5) It sounds like Jagr is planning to play at least one more 82-game NHL season, following the lockout-shortened season this year. So if the team is truly pining to have him back and he'd be happy with his role, they could try to sign him as a free agency this summer on a new one-year deal. That would not require giving up any assets. If Danny Briere gets traded or bought out, there could be a pretty well-defined one-year role for Jagr that he might be agreeable to playing in lieu of displacing Voracek. But all of those things are issues to figure out in the months to come, not right now.
As for Morrow, you are talking about one of the NHL's most respected leaders. He will do anything to win, whether it's a hit, a fight or a gritty goal. But the 33-year-old power forward has had mounting injury issues and there have been signs of decline in his game both last season and the current one.
The plan in Dallas this season was to reduce his role, although he did have a brief resurgence after being moved from the third line onto Jamie Benn's line. When fully healthy, Morrow's on-ince performance essentially makes him an older version of Scott Hartnell.
If there would be a role for Morrow that would make sense on a team that has Hartnell and Wayne Simmonds, I would not be adverse to seeing the Flyers try to sign him as a moderately priced unrestricted free agent this summer. But it would be silly to rent him for the rest of a lost season.
I suspect that Morrow will end up waiving his no-trade clause prior to April 3 and be dealt to a playoff contender looking for a little veteran grit and willingness to crash the net. With Jagr, there's about a 50-50 shot that he finishes the year in Dallas or elsewhere.
As much as I admire and respect both Jagr and Morrow, the Flyers should stay out of the trade market for either one of them. In fact, Philadelphia should strongly consider being sellers themselves this season.
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