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Daily Times beat writer Anthony J. SanFilippo takes you inside the locker rooms of the Philadelphia Flyers and the rest of the NHL.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

HOMER DID IT AGAIN

I know it's early. I know it's only been four games, but by the looks of things, Paul Holmgren pulled off another one of those trades where your left scratching your head as to how in te world he convinced the other general manager to agree to it.

Like when he convinced Nashville to give up all they gave in two separate trades that netted them Peter Forsberg for about 20 games. (In case you forgot, it was Kimmo Timonen, Scott Hartnell, Scottie Upshall and Ryan Parent).

Like when he convinced Atlanta to give up Braydon Coburn because they could really use Alexei Zhitnik for their playoff push.

And now, he's done it again.

I know I wrote about this earlier, but the more I watch Matt Carle, the more I can't help but laugh at how easily teams hand over quality players to Holmgren.

Carle is playing 25 minutes a night. He's quarterbacking the power play, he's on the penalty kill, he's now supplanted Timonen on the top defensive pairing - and he's playing great to boot.

Don't get me wrong, Marty Biron has turned his season around, but if there's an external reason his confidence has swelled in the past four games, it's been the addition of Matt Carle.

The exciting thing for the Flyers is, Carle's only going to get better. And when the young core of your defense consists of Coburn, Carle and Parent, three highly touted prospects, the future looks bright on the blue line.

And it's all thanks to Holmgren and the scouting staff he's put together (he leaned on BIll Barber heavily for this one).

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Let's not get carried away. This trade came at a price. Eminger is playing solid top four for Tampa and out producing Carle in the process, at a third of the cap hit. Carle is decent, but the honeymoon is over, between his turnovers, brain farts in the defensive zone, risky play with only spotty production and lacking physical game, injuries etc. at 3.4 million? Not a great value.

Too bad the Flyers didn't give Eminger the larger role they gave Carle from the first day he got there. Maybe they would have seen what he could do instead of dropping the ball and letting Tampa give him the opportunity and reap the results of what looks to be a good trade for them, swiping Downie out of the Flyers cupboard in the process.

Carle may ultimately work out ok in Philly but when I look at the way it's playing out Lawton seems to have done well in his deal with Homer and the Flyers. He wasn't had by Homer, he got good value all things considered (thus far).

January 9, 2009 at 11:35 PM 

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