NBCSN will continue its coverage of the 2016-17 campaign tonight when the Philadelphia Flyers host the Colorado Avalanche at 7:00 p.m. ET. If you want to watch the game online, you can do so here.
We’re just over a day away from the NHL trade deadline and the picture is becoming clearer when it comes to who the serious buyers are and who the serious sellers are.
When it comes to the Avalanche, there’s no doubt that they’re going to be looking to move veterans between now and Wednesday, but will the Flyers go in the same direction?
Philadelphia enters tonight’s game trailing the Maple Leafs by six points for the final Wild Card spot in the East. That’s not an insurmountable number of points, but they need to leap over four teams to get there, and let’s just say the Flyers aren’t exactly playing their best hockey right now.
They’re coming off a 4-2 loss to the Penguins in last Saturday’s outdoor game and they have just two wins in their last nine contests.
“Everybody’s a little frustrated right now, and we can’t be pointing fingers,” captain Claude Giroux said, per Philly.com. “Everybody needs to be a little bit better. Everybody needs to give a little more.
“We like our team. The locker room is great. It’s hard for me to tell you guys we like our team when the results aren’t there. But we like the way we play, and we like the way we play as a team, and I really think we can do great things.”
This will be Philadelphia’s final game before the deadline and you’d have to think GM Ron Hextall is leaning strongly towards selling, but would a win tonight change things?
With the amount of prospects they have coming through the pipeline and with pending unrestricted free agents like Mark Streit, Michael Del Zotto, Nick Schultz, Steve Mason and Michal Neuvirth on the roster, there’s a good chance Hextall will look to move some bodies.
If there’s some doubt as to whether or not the Flyers will sell, there’s none when it comes to the Avalanche.
Colorado has put together a horrendous year, as they’ve accumulated just 17 wins and 37 points so far. Not many people expected them to be in the playoffs this year, but no one thought they’d be this bad either.
Like the Flyers, the Avs have some veterans they’d like to unload (Jarome Iginla, John Mitchell, Rene Bourque and Fedor Tyutin just to name a few), but it’s the names with term that are making headlines in Denver.
With time winding down before the deadline, will GM Joe Sakic be able to find a suitable offer for either Matt Duchene or Gabriel Landeskog?
It appears unlikely that either of those guys will move before tomorrow. Those kind of trades are nearly impossible to make around deadline day. The reported asking price is high (three to four young assets, including a defenseman that could slot into Colorado’s lineup right away), but a team looking to make a splash could feel compelled to make it happen.
“I have no control over anything. Just whatever happens, happens,” Duchene said on Monday, per the Denver Post. “I don’t know what’s coming. But we’ll see. Obviously, I’m prepared for anything, but right now I’m just focusing on getting to Philly tonight and preparing for the game tomorrow.
“It’s hard to look past three days right now. I can’t really look past that because I just don’t know where I’m going to be. So we’ll see what happens.”
Things should get pretty interesting in Colorado over the next 30 hours.
Related:
--Streit and Del Zotto could get Flyers something at deadline
--Stadium Series loss to Pens could push Flyers to sell at deadline