Flyers GM Holmgren blows up nucleus he helped create

The nucleus of a sports team gets only so many chances to define itself. Injuries intervene. Pucks bounce oddly. A better opponent gets in the way. Age happens. And then, almost always sooner than anyone ever predicts, it is time to trade away a piece or two in an attempt to create a better karma.

THAT PARAGRAPH was written only 2 months ago, on the day after the Flyers somehow survived 2 weeks of playing Three Goaltender Monte - "Boucher's under the middle shell, I'm positive" - against the Buffalo Sabres. It was a reminder about clocks and calendars as the second round against the Boston Bruins loomed, and it was followed by a statement that while these Flyers should be mindful, there was no reason to believe they would have been broken up had they lost to the Sabres.

Well, then.

Yesterday, it was Darroll Powe and Dan Carcillo heading out the door - Powe in a trade to Minnesota for a third-round draft choice in 2013, and Carcillo because the Flyers reportedly did not offer him the minimum tender required to keep his rights. Those are the kinds of moves that happen every year for every NHL team, shifting inventory.

But Jeff Carter and Mike Richards do not happen every year, or every decade. The shock remains, several days later. Nerves are still raw. Carter didn't even have a full-scale conversation with his new team, the Columbus Blue Jackets, until they sent a contingent to this area to meet with him yesterday. And as for Richards, he said last night on Twitter, "Really starting to get annoyed by everyone keep saying to me that 'it's just business'."

It is hard to imagine what went through general manager Paul Holmgren's mind as he made these moves. The Flyers' 2010-11 season was an unusual tangle of events, and trying to figure out the right moves was going to be terribly hard under any circumstances.

Remember back. There was the big lead in the Eastern Conference in January. And then there was the bored lurching toward the finish line of the regular season, with defenseman Chris Pronger injured. Then came the first round of the playoffs, when coach Peter Laviolette spun the goaltender carousel again and again and again and again. Then came the second round, the awful sweep by the Boston Bruins, with Pronger hurt again.

So what was it? The goaltending? Pronger? The penchant of this nucleus toward immaturity? Something missing at the core?

Those were the questions facing Holmgren as the season ended. Again: Separating out all of those matters was always going to be hard. Still, it seemed obvious that they needed a veteran goaltender - if for no other reason than to give the team its best chance to win while Pronger (and teammate Kimmo Timonen) can still play defense at the highest level.

But what of the rest? The immaturity? The core?

Holmgren birthed Carter and Richards as professionals, back when he ran the draft as the Flyers' longtime assistant general manager under Bob Clarke. He selected them, and he hired the people who molded them, and he celebrated them, and he convinced himself that they were going to be the heart of the franchise's future, and he signed them to humongous, long-term contracts.

Quietly, though, in both of the contracts, Holmgren also retained the right to trade Carter and Richards without their approval until next summer. And it is clear now that the ticking of that particular clock grew louder and louder in the general manager's head.

Was it how the stretch run of the regular season went down? Or something longer term? If Holmgren harbored no doubts about Carter and Richards, they both could still be here and the Flyers still would have been able to sign goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov. It would have been tight, but doable - although Ville Leino likely would have had to go.

Instead, the architect tore up his plan. Moving the pieces around, Holmgren made the Flyers bigger and younger - but no one knows, not for sure, if they got better.

They just got different.

You wonder if we'll ever find out why.

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