Coming off an overtime victory to the Toronto Maple Leafs that saw the Philadelphia Flyers briefly clamber to just three points out of playoff position, new questions have arisen about where general manager Rom Hextall wants to lead his team for the rest of the season.
Judging by the standings, the team still has a decent chance of making it in, with sportsclubstats.com giving them 28.1 percent as of Monday night. Despite this, it seems Hextall is is going to go into sell mode, but still try to rely on his stars to squeak into the playoffs. They will have center Sean Couturier returning soon after missing nine games, along with the team captain Claude Giroux possibly returning soon from an upper-body injury. Is this enough to lead them to a playoff berth? Ron Hextall seems resigned to the belief that even his team does not have the necessary pieces yet to make a respectable playoff push and is focusing on the future.
"We're not adding," Hextall said. "We feel comfortable with our team. We feel comfortable with our depth. We're not gonna add. I've said that all along. I guess if something came along that helped us now and in the future, but we're not looking to add a player that's a rental. That is not gonna happen. If we can add something that made sense for this year and years to come, we'd look at that, but we're not gonna add a rental. We're not gonna mortgage a part of our future to try to make a push to make the playoffs," according to the Courier Post's Dave Isaac.
The Flyers possess numerous pending free agents which could be grabbed up by a playoff bound team. Defenseman Evgeny Medvedev and forwards Sam Gagner, Michael Raffi and Ryan White are all pending unrestricted free agents. Nick Cousins, Brayden Schenn and Jordan Weal, along with defensemen Radko Gudas and Brandon Manning are all pending restricted free agents.
Schenn is most certainly going to be re-signed, according to Isaac.
"I told you guys the other day, I have ideas in my mind, but nothing that I know I'm going to do or not do," Hextall said, wrote Isaac. "Things are all still up in the air. I still have a vision for the future but we also have to be cognizant of knowing where we are today."
The Flyers are sitting in seventh place in the Metropolitan Division.
