On the Philadelphia Flyers …
Adam Kimelman: Flyers GM Ron Hextall said that he hasn’t spoken with Ilya Kovalchuk’s camp and doesn’t plan on it.
Hextall said they are hoping to be involved in the free agent market, but added:
“We’re certainly not going to reach out on a 7-year deal on a good player, I can assure you of that.”
Adam Kimelman on NHL.com: The Flyers currently hold the No. 14 and No. 19 draft picks at next weeks draft. They are open to moving up or down, but currently, they are planning to make the picks.
“I anticipate right now making our picks,” Hextall said. “Certainly we would move up if the right deal were there, and we’d look at moving back if the right deal were there too.”
GM Hextall doesn’t see them giving up a lot of their future assets for an immediate improvement next season.
“It would be easy to make a deal to make us better for next year,” Hextall said. “We’ve got lots of young assets that teams are frothing at the mouth for. We could do that, sacrifice a lot of our future, but that’s not going to happen.”
The Flyers would like draft, as well as adding one at the NHL level, a right-handed defenseman.
“When you look at the hockey world, it’s a weakness,” Hextall said. “We’d love to add one. We intend to go by our lists. We’re not going to take our lists and go down to draft a right-shot defenseman. We can make a move, maybe we move down where you think you’re going to get a guy, maybe you do that. We’re not going to jump 10 guys on our list to draft a right-shot .”
Free agent right-handed defensemen include John Carlson and Mike Green.
Sam Carchidi of the Philadelphia Daily News: Three of the top right-handed defenseman are not expected to be around when the Flyers draft at No. 14 – Noah Dobson, Evan Bouchard and Adam Boqvist. Hextall:
“Right-shot defensemen are hard to find,” he said. “You look at the draft, there’s not a ton of them.”
Hextall adds that being strong down the middle is also important: “You can’t have too many centers,” he said.