Flyers Looking To Add Defensive Help At Forward

The Flyers would like to add a defensive-minded forward, GM Ron Hextall told Dave Isaac of the Cherry Hill Courier-Post.  However, at this time, he acknowledged that the addition would need to come in the form of a trade and not via free agency:

“I’m open to it, but it would probably be more of a lateral move on the market rather than a free agent. It would be a forward. We’d like to add a penalty-killing forward but to this point there’s been nothing there that’s made enough sense for us to move.”

While there are a few veteran forwards left on the open market with some penalty killing experience such as Shawn Matthias, Dominic Moore, and Chris Kelly, those players would likely wind up on the fringes of the roster so adding them in wouldn’t necessarily make much of an impact when they’re shorthanded.

Philadelphia has seen their penalty kill performance drop in the past couple of years, from 80.5% efficiency in 2015-16 down to just 75.8% last season although they were a little better than that over the final couple of months.  They also have a notable void to fill with the departure of Valtteri Filppula to the Islanders in free agency; he ranked second among Flyers forwards in SH TOI in 2017-18.  Meanwhile, winger James van Riemsdyk, played just 1:27 all season long in that situation so he’s not an option to take Filppula’s spot in that situation.

Long-term, Nolan Patrick could work his way into a regular spot in that situation but they’ll be asking him to take on a larger role as it is without asking him to add a regular shift on the penalty kill to his workload as well.  Accordingly, Hextall will likely continue to look around the league to see if there’s a small move to make to his bottom six that can give them a bit of a boost when they’re down a player.  Once teams get a better idea of what they have in the preseason, deals like these will start to become more of an option so a trade like this is probably still a few weeks away.