With Assistant Coach Brad Shaw, who was highly regarded for his improvement of multiple defensemen and the penalty kill, leaving the Flyers for the rival New Jersey Devils, a lot of eyes will be on how the defensemen improve under Rick Tocchet’s new staff.
One defenseman fans will certainly have an eye on is Jamie Drysdale and his development. Bill Matz and Charlie O’Connor explain why this season is make-or-break for Jamie Drysdale and prove his worth from the Cutter Gauthier trade.
#nhl #hockey #flyers #letsgoflyers #flyershockey #neweraoforange #jamiedrysdale #drysdale #bradshaw #ricktocchet #cuttergauthier #gauthier
7 Comments
If he’s not scoring 10-15 goals, setting up goals and helping to improve the PP, then he is a failure.He has to take a big leap this year. Eventually Bonk is taking his job and if he doesn’t help the PP, then Andrae may take the PP specialist job. We are not paying him3-4 million to be a third line guy who is weak defensively and not scoring. Management is high on him, mostly because deep down, they know they lost that trade and they are praying he succeeds so they don’t look so bad for trading a first line power winger for a #6 dman.
If the Flyers were to trade Drysdale right now, what kind of return would be expected? I can't see them getting a late first rounder. Maybe a 2nd and a 3rd?
Jamie will have to grow up and make it work with whatever defensive coach he’s payed to work with.
Drysdale, York, & Tippett all are in 'make or break' years. And to a smaller degree Risto, Andrae, & Zamula might be as well.
Character-wise, we won the trade hands down to get rid of an entitled me me me player which you cannot ever win a title with!!! Productivity-wise, I am REALLY pulling in the future for the Drysdale + Murtagh combo to outweigh any offensive output Gauthier coulda offered…
we need a Dman who can contribute some points. Sanheim, our best scoring dman, ranked 56th in scoring among defensemen last year. Drysdale, our second best offensive dman at least by points, ranked 99th in the league. That is just not competitive and we absolutely need more offensive production from our defensemen if we are ever going to make the playoffs. I couldn't find where we rank as a team in total scoring from defensemen, but we have to be at or close to the bottom.
I guess it’s a make or break year…..at least according to a weasel like Charlie O’Connor….go back on vacation you rat hack of a writer.