Futures of Claude Giroux, Nolan Patrick are Linked

By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor

It didn’t matter who the Flyers selected with the second overall pick. With two clear prospects at the top of this season’s draft class and the miraculous jump the Flyers made from 13th to second to select one of them, there would be a link between the newly-drafted center and the current Flyers captain.

We now know that pick to be Nolan Patrick, who signed an entry-level deal on Monday, essentially starting a process to his NHL debut. Whether that comes in the 2017-18 season or later remains to be seen, but it doesn’t change the projected future Patrick carries and how it goes hand in hand with current Flyers captain and top-line center Claude Giroux.

The two are linked already, and that will continue as long as both remain part of the Flyers roster.

The link between these two players isn’t something that will be felt during the next few weeks. For now, there is Patrick’s recovery from sports hernia surgery and attempt to make the team in training camp. No matter how ready the hockey world may think he is — before and after the surgery — Patrick is not locked into a roster spot yet.

Even if Patrick does make the team, nothing really changes for Giroux. He’ll remain the fixture of the top line. He’ll remain the captain of the team. But it is in future years where things will get interesting.

Giroux’s leadership is something that should be valued over the next few seasons. He is the longest tenured Flyer at the moment and will be as his eight-year contract starts to wind down. As that happens, a changing of the guard could certainly happen.

It was a bit of an assumption, and a fair one at that, that whomever the Flyers selected with the second overall pick was going to be Giroux’s eventual successor — the future face of the franchise, the future top-line center and potentially the future captain. Those things are more in Nolan Patrick’s hands than anything else.

But it’s the timing that makes this discussion a worthy one. Giroux is set to turn 30 in January. The entrance of the 18-year-old Patrick not only brings in a fresh face, it’s gives the future an even bigger identity. It also brings in some competition for Giroux.

Not matter how much the current team was in an identity crisis or seemingly lacking in leadership, members of the current roster who could have potentially supplanted Giroux as captain, like Wayne Simmonds or Jake Voracek, defended the captain as a leader. There was no change coming.

Some competition can light a fire under any player. For Giroux, fresh off his lowest point total since his first 82-game season in 2009-10, this is a critical year, especially if Patrick is already in the picture.

Giroux is an interesting case from a distance. For Flyers fans, he’s obviously under a microscope every game as the captain and expected leader of the offense and forwards. But when you look at the Flyers, do they really have a superstar player?

For several seasons, Giroux was quietly that superstar player. He wouldn’t come up among the likes of Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin or Patrick Kane, but had put together 376 points over five seasons from 2010-11 to 2014-15, which was the most in the NHL. Even in the last seven seasons, Giroux ranks fourth in total points with 501, trailing only the three aforementioned players.

But in a city where fans focus on “what have you done for me lately,” missing the playoffs in three of the last five seasons and consistent regression in point totals are a cause for concern and a reason to believe that something isn’t working.

Here’s what isn’t working.

Giroux is the face of the franchise to any common hockey fan. Only recently have players like Simmonds and Voracek have started to make some noise as All-Stars. That said, Giroux is the player that the hockey world focuses on when the Flyers are mentioned. But Giroux is not the typical face of a franchise.

There was a time when Giroux was the focal point because he could change a shift. But as he became the last remaining player from a team that came within two wins of a Stanley Cup, the Flyers couldn’t replace the talent that Giroux had around him when he rose to success.

And this is where Patrick comes in. It may not have been an overly deep draft like the last two, and the top two players in this year’s draft may not be on the same level as Connor McDavid or Auston Matthews, but Nolan Patrick was one of two players that oozed with tremendous potential, the type of player a team has to be lucky to acquire.

What the Flyers needed was more flash. Giroux was almost becoming too businesslike with his approach. That’s not a problem for an individual player, but the Flyers needed someone to provide the flash.

Giroux’s most successful years were with additional talent around him. He was an under-the-radar up-and-comer when Mike Richards and Jeff Carter were the leaders. Even in the years after the blockbuster trade sent Richards and Carter out of Philadelphia, Giroux had Danny Briere, Jaromir Jagr, Scott Hartnell and eventually Simmonds and Voracek.

As players left, the Flyers didn’t have much talent to support Giroux when it came to generating even strength chances. The Flyers became a team that relied on power-play success.

Help is on the way. It could include Patrick in October. It could also include Oskar Lindblom. Other players like Jordan Weal and Travis Konecny have shown potential to rise into top-six roles. That’s where Giroux could get some necessary help. It was becoming too easy to gameplan against Giroux and the Flyers top line.

With more talent to break up game-planning against the Flyers offense, Giroux could be in for a better season points wise.

That said, the age and experience of Giroux will eventually make way for Patrick. Giroux’s future with the Flyers doesn’t seem to be in jeopardy, no matter how the rumors may swirl at times. But his future with the Flyers will have to be re-evaluated down the road as he enters the twilight of his career.

And it could be Patrick, the newly-drafted prospect generating all the buzz, that takes over in Giroux’s current role when the time comes, continuing the link between the present captain of the Flyers and the potential future face of the franchise.

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