Photo by Kate Frese/Flyerdelphia
Out of all the Philadelphia Flyers potential unrestricted free agents, only one seems to be universally accepted as worth bringing back for next season and oddly enough it’s the agitator of the group, Ryan White.
The team’s other two UFAs are Evgeny Medvedev and Sam Gagner. While Gagner may return if he takes a drastic pay cut, Medvedev is surely gone.
Between likely parting ways with both those players and buying out R.J. Umberger, the Flyers will most certainly use that cap space to pay their restricted free agents.
So with Brayden Schenn due a big raise and Radko Gudas likely seeing a pretty decent one as well, it would behoove general manager Ron Hextall to spend as little as he can to retain his fourth line.
The only problem with holding onto White is that by the end of the season, the fourth line wasn’t playing like the last set of forwards. They were playing third-line minutes due to earning Dave Hakstol’s trust and the third line was losing it.
With that, what kind of raise will White want? The Brandon, Manitoba native has stated he wants to stay in Philadelphia and is willing to take less money to make that happen.
Hometown discounts are always ideal especially in regards to keeping a depth line. Overspending on the bottom two lines is not the way to build a contender and a unit consisting of Chris VandeVelde, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and White should only be a bang for your buck proposition.
Good returns for minimal spending was certainly the case for White as he turned in quite the performance this past season.
The feisty sometimes right winger, sometimes center had his best campaign as a pro in 2015-16. White reaffirmed his role as an actually useful version of Zac Rinaldo. He was able to kill penalties, score goals, added a net presence to the second power play unit, brought a lot of energy and chirped a great deal.
But how much is that worth? Particularly to a Flyers team still looking to gain cap relief.
The general consensus is the White will see a $200,000 raise resulting in a $1 million cap hit. That’s a bit much for a fourth liner and that needs to be made clear. White is a fourth-line player and the Flyers cannot afford to pay him and his linemates like they aren’t.
The Bellemare line doesn’t have the best metrics. As a unit, they had a Corsi percentage of about 46 to 47 but started more draws on the attack than in their own end. However, their Corsi for dipped significantly in some instances when the line was separated.
Bellemare’s CF went up slightly from 46.3 to 46.8 without White, but dropped from 47.4 to 40.4 without VandeVelde, while VandeVelde’s Corsi plummeted without either.
The thing about White though is that he fared just as bad without his linemates yet saw an increase of offensive zone starts away from his fourth line brethren. So the drop off in shots for and against ratio makes a lot of sense for Bellemare and VandeVelde but less so for White.
Analytically speaking, White is the weakest link of the line but may soon become the top-paid player on it.
However, if that trio could get more consistent fourth line minutes and not be pushed into a third line role, perhaps they could produce a better shots-for ratio. It would also keep them fresher to regularly produce energetic shifts and kill penalties. All of which would greatly benefit the Flyers and the threesome.
As for White, keeping him aboard short term for about $1 million per year is the way to go. Yes, he’s a weak analytical player, but at this point he’s merely a special teams guy who should see less even strength minutes as time goes on.
Retaining White is by no stretch a crucial or key move, but it helps keep the chemistry of the fourth line intact and that’s something the bottom two units sorely need.
Dan Heaning is a contributing writer for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @Dan_Heaning.
