The Philadelphia Flyers’ blueline is getting healthier as veterans Marc Staal and Rasmus Ristolainen returned from injury last week. But the downside to their arrival is they’ve come at the expense of 23-year-old Egor Zamula, who is in his first full season as an NHLer.
Zamula has played in 17 games with a goal, four points, a team-leading +10 rating, albeit has been rather shaky along the way. He has just 43 NHL games to his name, spanning over parts of the last four seasons.
The “rebuilding” Flyers now have a defense corps of Sanheim, Ristolainen, Walker, York, Staal and Seeler, an average age of 28.8 (30.2 without York skewing young) with Zamula on the sidelines. Another young player given a small sample size in a situation that doesn’t suit the player well and the coach has given up on him in favor of veteran, good character guys.
This is becoming a trend under John Tortorella. Wade Allison, Tanner Laczynski and Felix Sandstrom had limited opportunities last season then were demoted to the AHL this year. Horrible usage resulting in a one-off NHL chance, never really seeing what the player is capable of in a long-term development pattern.
This looks like a possibility for players like Ronnie Attard and Olle Lycksell, who are spending another season in the AHL. Then, with only one year left on their deals, may get a brief NHL look next season, more than likely in a limited role that doesn’t fit the player.
Now, these aren’t the top bluechip prospects of the organization, but they’re all players who seemingly have some potential as NHL regulars. And for a team that is supposedly in a rebuild, abandoning younger fringe players in favor of old veterans like Marc Staal in the case of Egor Zamula, is counterintuitive to the plan the franchise is supposedly following.
Has Egor Zamula been perfect this season? No. Have there been flashes that show he can be an NHL regular? Yes. And having an impatient coach in charge of handling the prospects that doesn’t set his players up to succeed then blames the player for the failure, resulting in one (or less) season on the Flyers’ roster seems like a dangerous game to play.
In the case of someone like Wade Allison, whose specialty is crashing the net to score, being utilized almost exclusively in a fourth line, two-way role last season and then getting demoted to the AHL this season is going to look real bad if he leaves in the offseason and joined a squad that will give him opportunities to succeed in his preferred role. Why did they not keep him around to see what he could do? Why was it so critical the “rebuilding” Flyers added someone like Garnet Hathaway in his place?
Maybe none of these guys have NHL futures. It wouldn’t be the first time the organization had a bad batch of prospects that resulted in one failure after another. But writing off fringe players after barely giving them an opportunity to see of they fit in the NHL will surely come back to bite them sooner or later. Especially in the case of Flyers fans, who still love to bring up guys like Sergei Bobrovsky and Ryan Hartman, no matter how short their tenures were or how long ago they occurred.
The Flyers playing their prospects during a supposed rebuild has been a much harder mission than it should be, and Zamula is the latest player to be on the outside looking in for no good reason. Snuffing out every prospect if they don’t succeed within their first 20 games, let alone one full season is a bold, and quite frankly terrible, development strategy.
Even if the Flyers bring Zamula back next season (he’s still a restricted free agent with arbitration rights) then the question of what he can bring to the NHL lineup still remains because they didn’t do any due diligence into finding that out this season.
The Flyers burning through all of their fringe-NHL prospects is a story that isn’t getting talked about enough. In fact, some corners of the fanbase root for the prospects to fail, while the organization doesn’t seem any more interested in salvaging the development of their younger players either. It’s all fun and games until one or two of them go become stars elsewhere. And when that happens, the narrative will shift and another player will join the list of infamous players who failed in arduous conditions in Philly but rose to the occasion in a willing system. Then and only then will this topic get taken more seriously.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: Getty Images
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