Everything interesting from Daniel Briere’s press conference

Flyers’ General Manager Daniel Briere spoke with the media today, mere days ahead of training camp and with it, the dawn of a new NHL season.

For those who want to view the full Daniel Briere presser, watch here

For those who don’t? One could hardly blame you.

That’s what I’m here for. I won’t go into the exact quotes, since you can see all of Danny’s words for yourself in the video linked above, but I will tell you what I heard and what it means going forward.

As is the case with most of these conferences, it was largely uneventful and didn’t exactly announce the thoroughly detailed 5-year-plan to the promised land. That said, “largely” uneventful doesn’t mean “uneventful” and here were the notes of import and intrigue from Danny’s availability.

Foerster and Risto are on-track.

As of right now, it seems likely that Foerster will be suiting up for the Orange and Black as the regular season kicks off. His recovery has gone splendidly, and he’s participating in the captain’s skates with the team in a non-contact jersey.

Foerster is healed, but his arm will take time to recover the strength it once had. That’s the only thing keeping him from being fully ready to go at the moment, but it seems unlikely that Foerster misses any regular season action. If he does? A few games missed appears to be the reasonable ceiling.

As for Risto? News is gloomier on that end, but that was to be expected.

The Rebuild is Over–hopefully.

Danny doubled down on comments expressed by President of Hockey Operations days ago, declaring that the season would be a failure if they ended up as sellers at the deadline again.

It’s not impossible that they’d covet assets for the future, but the distant future is no longer a consideration. Instead, Danny declared specifically that they’d be looking for near-ready NHL prospects rather than draft picks.

He was clear that he’s not going to deny reality if they’re terrible. But if they’re terrible, that’ll be a bug in the system and far from part of the plan.

The rebuild is over. Whether you agree with that timetable or not, here we are. And cheering for losses will no longer be tacitly (though never explicitly) endorsed by the front office.

The Reality of Torts.

Why is Danny and co. so willing to believe that they can compete for a playoff spot, if not make it? Well, it’s their belief that Tortorella was doing more harm than good. Those specific words did not once exit Danny’s mouth, but you’d be hard-pressed to draw any different conclusion from what he said.

First, he declared that one reason he expected the goalies to be better this year was that the system Tocchet employs will better protect them. Protect them from what? The predations of Tortorella’s system, of course.

Torts’ system in the defensive zone was a mess. There was such a heavy emphasis on blocking shots that players would simply turn into screens for the netminder. They’d become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

It is possible to do right by your goalies while placing such an emphasis on shot blocking. The Vegas Golden Knights do it. But they’re built to do it. The Knights are one of the biggest and most positionally disciplined teams in the league.

They’re not very fast. They’re not all that creative as a team. They really aren’t the most tenacious forecheckers you’ll ever behold. But they’re big and they’re positionally pristine, and it makes them natural fits for the system that Cassidy preaches.

Another problem with the system is the philosophy that Tortorella preached on offense. “Get north fast and get pucks on net” sounds noble, but it has debilitating effects on your team defense.

Encouraging so many linear shots off of the rush has the distinct misfortune of both being bad offense and bad defense. First, that’s a practice shot for goalies… quite literally. Second, and even worse, a lot of missed shots off the rush become shots against off the rush.

Worse, they become defensive fire-drills where people are scrambling and often failing to get into viable defensive positions. Good luck to your goalies on that one. What’s left to do other than pray?

The conference doubled down on recognizing the reality of the team with Tortorella, and that didn’t end at the tactical.

The Newfound Confidence in Cam York.

Danny made it clear, as has Tocchet at previous points, that Cam York has gotten some luster back around here. People are excited about him again. In fact, they seem more excited by York than Drysdale, if you put a gun to their head and made them choose one.

The reasoning? They remain extremely impressed with the defensive play that York integrated over his time with Tortorella. He was one of the few reliable defensive presences on the team. A lot of that came from him being the best “fire driller,” to continue my earlier metaphor. When the team was scrambling, York was usually good for a great play defending the rush to end a chance.

Of course, he was also going to get posterized at times, and that wore thin on fans because you rarely get credit for the plays you did make on defense. It’s about blame for the plays you didn’t make on that end.

It was a thankless job, but under Torts, it was a job he’d been pigeonholed into with the coach repeatedly rejecting the notion that York has an offensive side to his game.

As soon as they shuffled Torts out the door, the conversation shifted to how they can get back to the cerebral puck manager and clever offensive facilitator that existed before York met his primary NHL coach.

The Pragmatism Surrounding Emil Andrae.

Emil Andrae has become something of a hot-button topic, to the extent that one has existed now for several months, because he’s the walking opposite of the current NHL trend. As NHL teams have begun sacrificing themselves at the altar of size on the blueline, Emil stands below 5’10”.

It’d be reasonable to expect that the Flyers would do the same, and some have even advocated for exactly that.

Danny was adamant that they’d be doing no such thing out of hand. In Andrae’s first stint with the club, he “controlled the game,” as Briere put it. In Danny’s estimation, if that’s the version of Emil Andrae that’s going to show up, then it’s irrelevant how big or small the blueline is.

However, if the guy who appears looks more like any median NHL defenseman? Then sure. At that point, I might be better served by a big median NHL defenseman.

I admire the pragmatic outlook, it’s commendable.

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