On one hand, Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren says hes not sure he needs to address his defense because he expects Chris Pronger back next season.
On the other, he admits Pronger still has post-concussion syndrome.
He also says hes willing to wait until free agency to decide what to do.
That was among the paradoxes presented at break-up day.
Hes doing probably the same and any chance of returning, I would say your guess is as good as mine, Holmgren said of Pronger.at some point, Ill sit down with Chris and see where hes at. Probably prior to July 1st, well make an assessment on where hes at.
As it relates to Chris and as much as anything else, Im a glass is half full kind of guy. I believe hes going to play, but I dont know, I dont have anything to back that up.
Pronger still has headaches, among other concussion symptoms.
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I think its fair to say when we get to July 1st well look at ways to improve our hockey team, Holmgren replied, when asked about Pronger and the defense.
Kimmo Timonen, who will turn 38 next season, once again was fairly banged up and apparently will need knee surgery based on an interview he gave to Finnish reporters this week.
The full list of Flyer post-season surgeries hasnt been determined, Holmgren said.
Heres what you need to remember in judging Prongers health and moving forward next season: Holmgren, more than any other general manager in the NHL, has perfected the art of beating other teams to free agency by orchestrating deals for player rights in advance.
Hes done it to acquire Timonen and Scott Hartnell in the past. He did it to get Ilya Bryzgalovs rights last summer.
Theres no way the Flyers will wait until July 1st to decide on what to do about their defense if Pronger doesnt appear ready to return to work by late June.
Knowing that Nashville general manager David Poile will likely deal defenseman Ryan Suters rights at or shortly before the NHL Draft, Holmgren will attempt to make a move.
The Flyers are one of several clubs, sources continue to say, along with Detroit, who want in on the Suter or Shea Weber discussions since Poile likely will move one of them by June 30.
Well look at every way we can to improve our hockey team, Holmgren said of his approach this summer. Do we have as many holes as we did five years ago? Probably not. We do have some holes and were going to try to fill those holes.
Next seasons cap is projected at 69 million, but the present CBA will expire this September, so, that could change. Holmgren said his club will proceed with business as usual this summer.
One Board of Governor told CSNPhilly.com earlier this month that all the big-money clubs will max out on the cap because if the league has to adjust under the next CBA, it will do so across the board and not penalize the top spenders.
Obviously, pending unrestricted free agent Matt Carles situation factors in on what the Flyers will do on the blue line. They were unable to re-sign Carle in-season.
Ive said that before, if Matt wants to be here, wed like to have him back, Holmgren said. I dont see any reason why we cant work out a deal. Were in a position now where we cant sign him because of tagging space, but this is something that could be done quickly, I think.
His demands, when I spoke with him and his agent Kurt Overhardt, nothing was ever out of line. Could we get him under market value? I would say that we probably could. So I dont see any issues there.
Jaromir Jagr was a huge influence on the young players, aside from the 54 points he gave the club as Ville Leinos replacement.
Both Holmgren and coach Peter Laviolette view Jagr as a player who impacts in many ways despite his age (40).
On Jan. 19, Jagr told reporters he wanted to re-sign here.
If I play good? I dont think its going to be a problem because, from my side, Im happy, he said. I like this team too much. I dont want to go anywhere.
Something has changed because Jagr had several chances to repeat that again Thursday and declined, referring to his minutes (see story) and just wanting to play in the NHL next season.
He didnt like being bounced off Claude Girouxs line. Thats an issue and thats where the minutes lie. Holmgren has had brief discussions with his agent, Petr Svoboda, the former Flyer defenseman.
We kind of agreed to talk about it more after the season was done, but I have not met with Jaromir yet, so well see, Holmgren said. Id like to have him back. Well see. There are other teams that would like to have him on their team too.
Another interesting nugget from the presser concerns the Flyers style of attack and how it affects their goals against.
Laviolettes attack system saw them score 264 goals this seasonthird highest in the NHL. Yet the Flyers also allowed 232rather high among teams that made the playoffs.
Much like some years ago when Holmgren said he wanted then coach John Stevens to tinker with his system to add more offense, Holmgren said he wants a discussion with Laviolette on his system because he believes goals against is more than simply explained by defensive problems or goaltending.
There is no question in my mind that we have to do a better job with goals against, Holmgren said. It is related to Ilya a little bit. It is related a little bit to how we play. We are an offensive team that can score.
We just finished a five game series where we didn't score a lot of goals. We certainly didn't generate a lot of offensive chances. We have to look at what happened there and what you are going to do about it when you get into that situation next year.
Laviolette defended his system about a half hour later when asked about whether he need to tinker with it.
I dont know, he replied. Do you think that attack systems have ever won Stanley Cups before? Do you think that attack systems have every gotten to the finals before?
We needed to do a better job certainly in a lot of areas. I think defensively we could have been better. Offensively, in the playoffs we generated the least amount of shots and opportunities, in the playoffs.
Certainly, I think there are things that we need to do better. All teams need to play good defense to win championships. Pittsburgh and Detroit did it a few years back the way the Rangers played defense this year, not to say that they are moving on.
Certainly, there are things that we can do better. I can agree with that. Defensively we could have been tighter, offensively we could have been a lot better in this series then we were.
Should be an interesting discussion between coach and GM, but given Laviolette has won a Stanley Cup with his system and Stevens has not, its hard to see Laviolette altering his philosophy for next season given his personnel is not going to change all that much, either.
E-mail Tim Panaccio at tpanotch@comcast.net