With Daniele Briere now the Interim GM of the Philadelphia Flyers, talk of a rebuild and re-imagining how the franchise is run is everywhere. Briere addressed the media on Saturday and Jeff Marek noted during the 32 Thoughts segment of Hockey Night in Canada on Sunday and spoke about the team and the plan for it moving forward. He noted that he’s not going to hold a fire sale but that he’s going to look at rebuilding the team the right way. He didn’t want to rush things and the group would have a number of discussions. “This is not a quick fix in my mind.”
Briere noted there are a lot of good, young players on this team. Sometimes that inexperience shows on the ice but he noted that the team will have to continue to build via the draft and its youngsters.
Briere wouldn’t get into players he is specifically looking at trading. He said it’s too early in the process but he noted that he has his opinion on things. Among the names that might be on the move is goaltender Carter Hart. Marek noted that with the emergence of Samuel Ersson, the Flyers can extend Hart, but they may move him to a competitor to spend his prime years with an organization in a different position than the Flyers are in.
Marek suggests the Flyers could ask for and get quite a haul if they were to trade Hart, who has a year remaining on his contract. Hart is a pending RFA who has one more season on his current deal. That gives any acquiring team some control over the contract and at 24 years old, the netminder has plenty of good years left in him. With Briere all but confirming the team will go through a rebuild he noted, “The young guys are obviously not the guys that we’ll be shopping” this offseason. But he does say that no one is untouchable.
Marek also noted that trade talks surrounding Kevin Hayes will probably pick up again closer to the 2023 Draft in late June.
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