Flyers Goal Scored By helps us determine who might score future Flyers goals

As a longtime Penguins fan, it's no secret that I detest the Philadelphia Flyers. Yet let's admit it: the Flyers aren't quite the bullies they once were being that they employ a guy named Simon Gagne. Sure, they have their fair share of agitators (Mr. Hartnell and village idiot Daniel Carcillo come to mind), but most of the "fear" comes from dealing with Mike Richards and Jeff Carter.

With little salary cap room left, the draft could be crucial to the Flyers' future. It makes sense, then, to ask one of our favorite Flyers bloggers "Flyers Goal Scored By" to represent the bullies again.

As the hockey blogosphere has shown us time and time again, you don't have to like the team to like the blogger and that's definitely the case with Flyers Goal Scored By.

1. What direction do you expect the Flyers to go in with this year's draft? What's your preference?

There is only one man that the Flyers and their fans want to dance at this weekend's draft semi-formal. And if that one man isn't on our team by Friday at 7PM, I don't even think we should draft anyone. Hell, we can barely field a team as it is without going over the cap, so what is a new young stud going to do except for stretch Ed Snider's dollars out even further? Obviously, I'm talking about trading for Maxim Afinigen...excuse me...Jay Bouwmeester. My blotner(blog partner) Ryan wrote up one helluva post about who the Flyers might try to draft if their pick isn’t involved in the Jay-Bo sweepstakes. To echo his sentiment, all these picks are shots in the dark. Sometimes you get a Lemieux, sometimes you get a Daigle. My opinion is that if they’re going to keep their pick they go for defense and draft a European at that, because the Flyers love European defensemen, especially ones with an affinity for boating. (if the Rangers get a compensatory pick for Cherapanov do we get anything? Just askin’)

But lets get serious - like Zach Morris pause the entire world break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience serious - we effin' want Jay Bouwmeester. And no young hot shot left at #21 is going to satisfy our desire for an All Star, ready to play 30 minutes a night, defenseman. It’s what the Flyers need to compete in the crowded Atlantic right now. We need to shed salary and get Jay-Bo. That may mean having to deal away any combination of our #1 pick and Lupul, Briere, Gagne, or Keith Jones. And I think everyone in Philadelphia is fine with that.

2. Looking back, discuss some of the highest and lowest draft moments in Flyers history. What are some of the "steals" and groan-inducing moments that Philly fans will never forget?

Finally, something we're #1 at. In 1990 we took Mike Ricci over Jaromir Jagr. Enough said.

As for the flipside...eh...I guess we can be happy that the Kings took Terry Sawchuck and left Bernie Parent for us to gobble up at #2 in the 1967 expansion draft? Over the past 20 years our first round picks have usually been pretty solid (Steve Downie, Maxime Ouellet, and Ryan Sittler aside) and any pick after that usually hasn't been. There's no Zetterbergs to be found here. There was a Sharp in the third but we traded him for a dried up Commie and before that there was a young Commie in the 6th once named Dimitri Yuskevich.

But like I said before, the defining moment of the Flyers drafting history was 19 years ago in Vancouver......Wayne's World flashback scene.....

Basically unless the NHL catches on and starts a 3-on-3 post draft day single elimination tournament between draft classes it's really not that exciting if you're team's not choosing in the top three. If you end up hearing "with the 21st pick the Florida Panthers select" that would be plenty exciting for us.

Soapbox:

What we'd really like to see is the Flyers fire all their scouts and donate the money to charity. Actually now that I think about it that's kind of what they're doing already. The Flyers have 15 scouts listed on their website. It's been well-documented in the past couple weeks that in any given year only about 1/2 of the players drafted in the first round will ever even dress for the team that drafted them. After that it's like shooting fish in barrel so big that you rarely hit a fish. Take the case of Flyers scout Mark Greig, for example.

Greig put in five years in the Flyers organization back at the turn of the millennium. The loyal readers of Cycle Like the Sedins actually are probably familiar with the son of High River, Alberta from his two incredible seasons in Lethbridge from 1988-90. So now we have this guy scouting the WHL. Just the WHL. All year long. 22 teams. And now, after reimbursing Greig 35 cents a mile for 6 months and for all the coffee he invariably drank while driving his PT Cruiser back and forth across Route 1, we're flying him out to Montreal to stay in a nice hotel and go to nice meals, all to tell Paul Holmgren that if by some miracle Jared Cowen or Ashton Carter is around at #21 that we should take him? Maybe take Landon Ferraro?

Thanks for the input Mark!

If they let all those guys go they'd save at least, I'm guessing, $2M a year. If they then gave that money to me I could make everyone in the world a happier person by finally creating my dream show where chefs challenge what I call "an Iron Chef" by trying to make meals out of a main secret ingredient on a weekly basis. Look, you're smiling already.