Dan Cleary is staying with the Detroit Red Wings, and that’s just fine with Philadelphia Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren.
“Dan was up front right from the get-go,” Holmgren said today, per NHL.com. “My first conversation was he loved Detroit, wanted it to work out there. … One of the things that makes him a good player is he’s a character guy. He had deep roots with the Detroit organization. I can’t fault him for that. I probably think more highly of him now than I did two days ago.”
Besides, there may be a bright side to Philadelphia’s failure to land the veteran forward, says Holmgren.
“We were kind of anxious to look at a few guys in that position anyway,” he said. “I don’t know if you want to call it a silver lining, but it’s really a good thing for us. Mike Raffl, a kid we signed, an Austrian kid who played in Sweden, we like. … [2012 first-round pick] Scott Laughton, who knows? There should be some competition for a couple spots up front.”
CSNPhilly.com has more on the whole Cleary saga (if you can actually handle any more on this story), plus a note on free-agent forward Simon Gagne, who Holmgren essentially rejected as an option for the Flyers.
“We kind of closed that off there a few days ago when we decided to make the commitment to Dan on a tryout,” Holmgren said. “I think right now we’ll probably just stick with who we got.”