Their total takehome from Frost and Farabee after flipping Kuzmenko: 2nd, 3rd, Pelletier.
Farabee was a 24-year-old winger coming off a 50 point season and Frost a 25-year-old center who plays decent two-way and can chip in 40-50 points, maybe 50-60 on a team with a decent PP. Those players were not valueless 6 months ago.
Their value tanked this season because they've been playing for a coach who doesn't know how to utilize them, doesn't know how to work with players who don't respond well to his lone motivational tactic (benching), and refuses to make adjustments that could open up more offense--evidenced by his loyalty to the worst PP coach in the league for 3 years running. He gave up on those guys and they gave up on him.
Torts has all sorts of problems deploying players whose personalities and play styles don't perfectly align with his mold. York and Andrae are 2 of the 3 best defensemen on the Flyers. They're modern puck-moving defensemen. Both are constantly in his doghouse. Brink is their second-best passer and playmaker behind Michkov, but he was getting demoted and benched for not spending enough time digging in corners. Even Tippett, a one-trick pony who happily embraced Tortsism, has fallen off when his one trick stopped working and the coach couldn't find any other way to get production out of him, so he just punted him to the 4th line for a while.
Contrast that with coaches who have succeeded recently. What makes Cooper, for example, such a good coach is that there isn't a "Cooper-type player," in either their style or mental makeup. He finds different ways to utilize and motivate different skillsets and personalities.
Interested to see how all the castaways look next season. I think a big part of why Laughton and the F boys look so lost in their new homes is they're basically having to relearn NHL hockey, because what the Tortorella Flyers play is just remedial shot-block-dump-and-chase-and-pray shlock.
