Rich Hofmann: Flyers' Briere thinks kiddie core learned from last season

MOST FLYERS FANS, understandably enough, will begin the season with one eye on Chris Pronger and the other eye on Ray Emery. It makes sense. Take another look, though. Take another look from another angle.

Take the projected top nine forwards for the Flyers. Add the top six defensemen. Line them up by age, with Pronger at the front of the line and James van Riemsdyk at the back.

The guy in the middle is Jeff Carter.

He is 24.

You forget sometimes because the NHL is such a young league anymore, and because players like Carter and Mike Richards and Braydon Coburn - just three of the 24-year-olds on the roster - already have been here for so long. The truth is, it will not be much of a topic of conversation this season, what with everyone fixated upon the uberimportant additions during the offseason, upon Pronger, upon Emery.

But if this team is to make a real run at the Stanley Cup, the maturation of this young core of players will be a real key. Two years ago, they were celebrated as precocious for going to the third round of the playoffs. Last year, they were questioned as immature following a first-round exit.

Now comes the truth-telling.

"I have no doubts about what Chris Pronger can give us," Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren was saying the other day. "He's proven it for years. I have no doubts what Ray Emery is going to give us in goal, either. He's shown it in the past. They are not questions in my mind, not at all."

But you talk about the roster, about the kids, about the young veterans, about Carter and Richards and Coburn, to name three. They're all 24 years old. They're all counted on, after several years on the roster, to play big roles. They have all had their success, all endured their injuries and their doubts.

"The league seems to get younger every year," Holmgren said. "You look at Jeff, Mike, Coburn now, Matt Carle, I'm sure I'm missing somebody else. But those guys are all 24 years old, 25 years old, and they've been pros for a while.

"To me, those guys are the engine of this team," he said.

Holmgren, coach John Stevens, all of them have been talking about getting off to a better start than last season. Some of it, to be fair, was the early struggling of goaltender Martin Biron. Some of it, also to be fair, can be meaningless. The NHL is notoriously all about how you finish - like the NFL, for that matter. Last season, the Pittsburgh Penguins were flailing around until Christmas before finally pulling things together (after firing their coach, among other things).

So the start will not determine anything. What it will be is a clue, though - about where the young heads on this team are.

A good start? "It would help, definitely," said Danny Briere, who will turn 32 next week and who has his own things to prove after a banged-up, beaten-down 2008-09 season.

"It's going to be a process," he said. "It's not something that's going to happen overnight. We believe we have the tools to build . . . but it's going to be up to us, the way we come together as a team."

Why is he optimistic?

"I think the mentality is probably different than last year," Briere said. "I think last year we were maybe a little overconfident, a little too loosey-goosey. Where, this year, [we have] a little bit of an attitude change. I think we were just too comfortable last year with all of the taps on the shoulder we got all over Canada and the U.S. about our play and making it to the third round [2 years ago]. I think we all just got a little too comfortable."

But that is a natural process for a young player. People have made a lot of Holmgren's stated concern that the fellas might have been having too much fun between games. Two points: First, the whole thing was probably overstated because it's a fun thing to talk about and, second, if a 20-something millionaire professional athlete doesn't have some fun, what exactly is the point of being a 20-something millionaire professional athlete?

It's all a process. It's all about growing up, about not getting too comfortable, as Briere said. It's all to be expected, in many ways, all part of the deal.

"As a player and as a team, too," Briere said. "You've got to learn from that. I've been part of teams before where kind of the same thing happens. You have to learn and come back strong. I think, this year, we'll definitely be ready for it."

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