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Flyers Claim Calvin Pickard, Dale Weise and Taylor Leier Clear Waivers
Published:
Sorry for not getting around to the breaking Dale Weise/Taylor Leier news yesterday. Obviously RADIO WARS took over the site for the day.
The Flyers were expected to waive one of these guys, but not both, which made the move somewhat interesting.
What exactly was Ron Hextall planning?
He was planning to add another goaltender, so go figure.
Weise and Leier cleared waivers today while the team went out and claimed ex-Colorado and Toronto goaltender Calvin Pickard.
Pickard feels like a low risk/high reward kind of move, I guess. A .913 save percentage in 87 NHL games is not amazing, but he’s 26 years old and showed some flashes during a couple of seasons on a mediocre Avalanche team. It’s hard to say how much falls on his shoulders and how much is to blame on a pretty poor roster.
It now looks like the Flyers will carry three goaltenders to begin the season – Brian Elliott, Pickard, and Anthony Stolarz. Stolie can’t be demoted by today’s 5 p.m. deadline because he was not waived yesterday, but the Flyers still have time to put him on waivers today.
We shall see.
Otherwise, you’re looking at Weise and Leier both being sent down to accommodate Pickard and get the roster to 23, which would look like this:
Offense:
Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier, Travis Konecny, Scott Laughton, Jori Lehtera, Oskar Lindblom, Jake Voracek, Wayne Simmonds, Nolan Patrick, Michael Raffl, James Van Riemsdyk, Mikhail Vorobyev, Jordan Weal
Defense:
Ivan Provorov, Shayne Gostisbehere, Christian Folin, Radko Gudas, Robert Hagg, Andrew MacDonald, Travis Sanheim
Goaltenders:
Elliott, Pickard, Stolarz
Injured:
Corban Knight, Alex Lyon, Sam Morin, Pascal Laberge, Michael Neuvirth
Yesterday it seemed like the obvious move would be to waive Lehtera and cut the roster from 24 to 23, considering, you know, the big cap hit and drug investigation.
But nope, here we are.
Pickard’s NHL stats:
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com