NHL : Philadelphia Flyers to re-sign Braydon Coburn for $3.2M per season
Philadelphia Flyers have made headlines after acquiring the beefy Andrej Meszaros, a former defence player from Tampa Bay Lightning. It was certainly a dizzy day for dealing and wheeling, the Flyers also re-signed their top defence man Braydon Coburn offering him a maximum contract for $3.2M per season. They also managed to pull a veteran defence man Sean O’Donnell standing at 6feet 3inches along with robust winger from New York Rangers, Jody Shelley.
Signing on to such a sturdy defence team, will certainly make the Philadelphia Flyers one of the deepest and strongest teams in NHL.
It also makes them one of the most expensive teams in NHL. Their current defensemen cost up to $21.8M computing $4.4M large per player. The current list includes, Matt Carle, Andrej Meszaros and Braydon Coburn.
Sean O’Donnell is a solid defenseman who will soon turn 39, said he was quite ecstatic about joining the Flyers because he believes that they will certainly make it to the Stanley Cup with a roster filled with stars and also joined them because of his long time friend Chris Pronger.
O’Donnell said, “If I didn't think Philly was in that group of teams that was right there on the cusp, I wouldn't have signed with Philly.”
Sean scored 15 points last season with his former team Los Angeles Kings; he has also served as a captain for Minnesota Wild in millennium season. He has also appeared in two Stanley Cup finals once in 2001 with New Jersey Devils and once in 2007 with the Anaheim Ducks which they won against Ottawa Senators.
One of the most valued players this season was the young Slovakian player Andrej Meszaros, who deserves the credit for adding a lot of weight to the Flyers along with O’Donnell and Coburn.
Despite his shoulder being injured and a broken jaw Meszaros hasn’t slowed down as a player. When asked how he felt about joining the team he said “I’m excited, Philadelphia is always a tough team to play against, and now I'm joining them, so it's great." Meszaro was signed on for a 4 year deal with a $4M large annual hit, which compared to Anton Volchenkov is a steal, Anton who is regarded as an elite defenseman was only offered $4.25M over the period of 6 years.
Although the Flyers failed to sign defensemen such as Anton Volchenkov who signed with New Jersey Devils or Dan Hamhuis who signed with Vancouver Canucks they still managed to land other top defensemen. The team is also interested in getting a hold of some top goal tenders, but so far have been unsuccessful as their top choices were stolen by other teams. Chris Mason who was apparently the top priority for the Flyers was signed by Atlanta Thrashers and Dan Ellis, who was drafted by Tampa Bay on July 1st
The same very day, a lot of other teams lost their star players and some could not acquire what they wanted too. Pittsburgh Steelers lost their star player Sergei Gonchar to Ottawa Senators. However, on the other hand, they picked up two young motivated players Zbynek Michalek for $20M and Paul Martin for round about $25M.
In disparity the New Jersey Devils picked up, Anton Volchenkov from Ottawa Senators and former Buffalo Sabres brilliant defenseman Henrik Tallinder.
Meanwhile the merciless Jody Shelly will be replacing Flyers winger Arron Asham who played much better than Shelly in last year’s playoffs. Yet somehow Flyers GM Paul Holmgren believes that Jody will do better with the current players.
Moreover Flyers also made a new offer to restricted agent Darroll Powe and Dan Carcillo leaving Flyers with around $600,000 in cap space, which they hope will increase after trading Riley Cote off.
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