Rich Hofmann | Keep Holmgren in the GM job

IN A MATTER of a few months, Paul Holmgren's title has gone from assistant general manager of the Flyers, to interim general manager, to general manager until the end of the season. Yet the guy who prints the business cards has not been the busiest person at the Wachovia Center. Holmgren has.

Left with a shambles after the resignation of general manager Bob Clarke and the firing of coach Ken Hitchcock, Holmgren has begun the reconstruction - and there is much still to do, and there can be no doubt about that, even after Holmgren obtained a new starting goaltender yesterday at the NHL trade deadline, Martin Biron from Buffalo.

The first move, though, should be this one:

Holmgren should get the job for good. He should be the one who makes the next set of moves this summer, when the Flyers' general manager gets to make use of the draft choices and salary-cap space and trade assets that Holmgren has so assiduously acquired.

But will he?

"I plan on it, yeah," he said yesterday, after the news conference to announce the Biron deal.

But has he been told?

"No, not necessarily," Holmgren said. "It was laid out to me, when Clarkie stepped down and then when they removed the interim tag, that we would discuss it when the time is right. I was fine with that then, and I'm still fine with it."

With 19 games to go in the season, the time is coming. Holmgren has a significant body of work already. Forget the years when he ran the Flyers' amateur scouting and drafting departments. Just this season, he has pushed and probed and moved around the pieces. Some of it has been fairly pointless - I mean, Mike York? - but a lot of it has brought a real benefit to the team.

Moving Peter Forsberg when he wouldn't commit to the future was the absolute right move, and the package he received in return (Scottie Upshall, Ryan Parent and two draft choices) was better than he had a right to expect, and sort of intriguing.

Trading Alexei Zhitnik this week for a big, fast, young defenseman named Braydon Coburn also makes you think, well, that's interesting. In a three-cushion bank shot with Detroit and Chicago, the underwhelming Kyle Calder was sent away and the Flyers ended up getting another Finnish defenseman, Lasse Kukkonen, to pair with the immature, up-and-down Joni Pitkanen. That, too, seems worth a shot.

And then there is Biron, about whom the Flyers have kind of been whispering about/coveting for years. Their goaltending has been weak all season. It has been underdiscussed, given everything else that has gone on, but it has been a real problem. This looks like a good solution - and for a second-round pick, they can have a chance to sign Biron long term before he goes on the free-agent market this summer.

The Flyers paid a fairly high price - it could be the 31st pick in the draft - but it seems a solid move, proactive. The whole thing has left people around the Flyers believing that the worst really might be behind them.

"I'm happy with it," Holmgren said. "In the assets we acquired, the draft picks, I think we're very happy . . . I think we've really added some good, young pieces to the puzzle here. But we need to add some other pieces, and that can't happen until the playoffs are over.

"I still think we need to look at our defense. But with Coburn and Kukkonen now, we really need to evaluate what we have over the next [19] games. And then, up front, we have some holes to fill."

First-line center? Yes, a hole. The truth is, that linchpin player is not yet in the house. The team's best defenseman might not be here yet, either. The team has no identity, and isn't likely to have one until some more moves.

"It's still in flux," Holmgren acknowledged.

But the transition has begun, a transition-by-dynamite that has left the young core players - Simon Gagne, Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, Pitkanen and R.J. Umberger - intact. Richards, Carter and Pitkanen must develop into this team's spine. If they don't, this will take years and years; you can do only so much in free agency, even with a lot of salary-cap room.

So they must grow, and the key additions must be made this summer. You tell Holmgren this is only half-done, and he says that is a fair comment.

"But the part that's half-done is looking pretty good, in my opinion," the Flyers' general manager said. That, too, is a fair comment. *

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