Call me crazy, but I'm not that upset with losses now because I honestly don't expect this team to win most of their games this season.
Homer went for it with Pronger and then swapped out older for younger with Carter/Richards trades...then Pronger went down and with that, the captain who ooozed leadership, the alpha #1 D man, the lynch pin, came out...it takes some time to recover and rebuild from that kind of trauma.
To his credit Homgren has continued to bring in some good looking young players and prospects, but it will take time for them to develop and take major roles on the team. Notice he hasn't traded away youth for vets in a desperation move, as may have been done in the past...maybe this represents a departure from the win-now philosophy that many eschew? Yet many of those same fans are calling for his head and/or for a complete gutting or some other such drastic moves so the team can win (now) instead of being patient and waiting for the young players (Schenns, Coots, Jake, Simmonds, Morin, Ghost, Alt, Laughton, Cousins, Hagg, Straka, Akeson, Alderson, etc.) Homer has brought in to develop...people female dog about the Flyers not developing/drafting their players and overpaying for vets, but don't wan't to pay the price of down years it takes to go that route.
At this point I would advocate keeping all of the young players, picks and prospects and being open to trading anyone over 30 if it brought in fair value in the form of high quality prospects/picks. After this season, Timonen will be gone , Mez too...that frees up cash which should be used wisely and with an eye toward signing/retaining quality young players in areas of need.
That's my "macro" or big picture view...my near term/current perspective is that that team is vastly underachieving due to a number of factors and circumstances, some of which we can see and some which are not as clear...regardless, I still feel pretty strongly that this level of play is about as low as the team will go. At some point the spell will break and the goals will start to come...it may take a week, may take longer the old get old, and the young get stronger...but ultimately, I'm not going to fool myself into thinking the team can turn it around and contend for this season....what I am hoping to see over the course of the season is young players taking their lumps and playing through challenges, helping them learn what it takes to win, which will help their longer term development. That's the silver lining...well, that and the lottery pick!
