It doesn't surprise me that Michael Raffl or Samuel Morin will be at Lake Placid the next four days as the Flyers escape town for some team bonding and such.
What does surprise is that Hal Gill was going. He has looked slow in two pre-season games and continues to be a longshot to make the roster off a tryout.
Unless ... the FLyers are going to make a series of roster/cap moves at the end of training camp to possibly position Gill as their 7th defenseman. The club almost never carries a 7th d-man if he is a younger player unless forced to with injuries.
They prefer the older player who isn't getting shortsighted with ice time and development by being carried on the NHL roster as an extra.
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When camp began, I felt the 13th and 14th forward spots would most likely go to Scott Laughton and Tye McGinn, in that order. When Dan Cleary emerged, I knew that would be cut by one but with Cleary re-signing with Detroit, it went back to two rookies.
I didn't think Michael Raffl would impress enough coming over from Europe to get a roster spot right away without ever having played in North America. Again, history shows with the Flyers, they like to get Europeans and older collegians a little time with the Phantoms before making the jump to the NHL.
That has gone out the window with Raffl. Everyone in the organization is talking about him now in NHL terms. Unofficially, the Flyers brass now have him ranked ahead of McGinn and Laughton. Laughton moved to the third spot only because he is a center and the Flyers need a left wing and feel Laughton is not a good fit there.
Yeah, as usual, the Flyers are too deep center and that is going to now hurt Laughton unless there is an injury.
Here's player development director John Paddock's take:
“He continues last night to do in the game what he has done in practice,” Paddock said. “He likes to shoot the puck. He didn’t look out of place playing with those guys.
“I talked to Simmer [Wayne Simmonds] and he said he was easy to play with. He finds holes. He had chances early in the game. It was pretty impressive the first time playing together in four days.”
Raffl was used in back-to-back games in two different roles: playing on a skill line and playing on a checking line and coach Peter Laviolette said he liked the versatility he saw in the 24-year-old Austrian. Versatility is also a key to this scenario in playing up or down with shifting ice times.
Again, if the Flyers feel Laughton, who is just 19, is not going to get significant minutes to develop at the NHL level, they will send him back to junior. It only makes sense.
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