End to End: What Is Flyers' Biggest Offseason Need?

Each week, we'll ask questions about the Flyers to our resident hockey analysts and see what they have to say.

Going End to End this week are Tom Dougherty, Jordan Hall and Greg Paone, all CSNPhilly.com producers/reporters.

The question: What is the Flyers' biggest offseason need?

Dougherty
It's been their biggest need for the last few years, and no, it's not defensemen. The Flyers have to find a way to acquire skill wingers for both their NHL roster and the farm.

Flyers general manager Ron Hextall has done a masterful job building the system from the back end out, stocking up on defensive prospects and goaltenders. The next phase is stocking up the forward talent, which Hextall began last June with Travis Konecny.

Let's not get carried away with this season's playoff appearance. This Flyers team is still a year or two away, and the focus should still be on tomorrow. That starts with the draft, which has proven to be Hextall's desired path to build this team.

The Flyers have 10 picks in this year, five of which come in the first three rounds. They have two seconds and two thirds and are picking 18th in the first round. For Hextall, it's a perfect scenario, as he can stockpile skill wingers.

As for next season, the early bet here is for Konecny to make the 2016-17 roster. There's just not much left for him to prove in junior and he's underage for the AHL. That said, it's uncertain what role Konecny would be in should he make the team. It's just unreasonable to bank all your chips on a 19-year-old to solve the Flyers' scoring problems.

So Hextall will have to take a look at free agency and try to find a short-term solution, a player or two that will come at an affordable clip with reasonable term. He can't - and won't - hand out contracts that will strap him in coming seasons. Take this into account: With all these young players coming up, you have to remember they'll need contracts too. Welcome to the cap world. I don't expect a big offseason yet. But what they need is skill on the wing and they can do that with the draft.

Hall
Ron Hextall said it best.

"We need some upgrade up front," the Flyers' general manager said two and a half weeks ago. "We need some goal scoring, playmaking - [that] would be our number one need."

It's what separates the perennial contending teams from the fringe playoff ones.

The elite clubs that vie for Cups have talent and facilitators across the board, not just at the top.

To be fair, the Flyers faced the NHL's best team in the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Washington owned a top-five offense, defense, power play and penalty kill. The Flyers met one of the more aggressive, disruptive defensive teams in the league.

Claude Giroux was playing hurt. So, too, was Jakub Voracek.

But the Flyers have suffered a glaring dip in goal scoring.

Each season from 2007-08 to 2013-14, the Flyers ranked in the top 10 in goals. The past two seasons, they've dropped to the bottom 10.

More than anything, the Flyers' most demanding need is an added dimension to scoring the puck.

Goaltending can be lights out, defense can be stout, physicality can be through the roof - but you won't win if you can't score.

Paone
Hextall's first order of business this summer is to re-sign restricted free agent Brayden Schenn after the 24-year-old forward's career season. But since Schenn is a RFA and the Flyers can match any potential offer that may come, the assumption is the deal gets done for him to stay in Philadelphia. Same goes for RFA defenseman Radko Gudas. Nick Cousins is also a RFA and Ryan White, a UFA who has fit very well the last two seasons, would like to be back.

As the team's retooling advances to its next stage, the attention then turns the talented prospects in the system and which one(s) will be the next to join the big club. Two issues there: First, with as well as Schenn and Gudas played this season, they are going to get raises. Same likely goes for Cousins and White. Second, with the logjam of contracts the Flyers have and the salary cap reportedly not going up all that much from this past season, Hextall will have to be creative to move out money and find spots for the prospect(s) who are ready to come up, whether it's Travis Sanheim, Sam Morin or anyone else.

Sam Gagner's $3.2 million cap hit will be off the books, as will Evgeny Medvedev's $3 million hit. R.J. Umberger's $4.6 million hit will likely be bought out. But will that all be enough? Maybe money-wise, but those players were all healthy scratches for extended lengths this past season. It comes more down to making spots available.

Mark Streit ($5.2 million cap hit for one more season) might be the most attractive option for other teams via trade. Maybe there's a team willing to bite on Matt Read ($3.625 million hit per for two more seasons). Or maybe there's a wild-card move in play somewhere. Don't discount the resourcefulness of Hextall, who was able to lift the anchor that was Vinny Lecavalier's massive contract.

Working in the Flyers' favor here is they can once again retain salary in any trade now that the season is over and those contracts they were retaining salary on are up. The league limits teams to retaining salary on three contracts a season and the Flyers reached that limit when they held onto money from the contracts of Nick Grossmann, Luke Schenn and Lecavalier. That's why it was especially difficult to pull off any moves at the trade deadline in February. But Grossmann and Schenn are now unrestricted free agents and Lecavalier kept his word and retired once the Kings were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

Working against the Flyers here is that defenseman Ivan Provorov and Konecny, the Flyers' two first-round picks from 2015 and arguably the two best prospects in the system, are both 19 years old and ineligible to play in the AHL with Lehigh Valley next season because the league has an age minimum of 20 years old. With the way those two players tore up their respective junior leagues, is it really beneficial for them to go back to juniors for another season and risk complacency setting in?

Hextall preaches patience with prospects, but, let's face it, with the talent the Flyers have stacked up in system, the odds of at least one pushing for a spot with the Flyers before next season begins is high.

But it's all a moot point unless money can be moved out and spots with the big club can be created.