Summer Skate: Philadelphia Flyers

Using the VUKOTA projection system of Hockey Prospectus, Insider is taking the temperature of key players on every NHL team, continuing with the Philadelphia Flyers. For a detailed explanation of Prospectus' proprietary GVT value metric, read more here.

Summer Skate -- Philadelphia Flyers

The Flyers could easily have taken a huge step backward in 2011-12 given the departure of franchise cornerstones Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, a career-threatening concussion to captain Chris Pronger and an unbelievably bad first half of the season by big-money signee Ilya Bryzgalov. Instead, Philadelphia got excellent contributions from pickups Jakub Voracek, Maxime Talbot and Jaromir Jagr and fantastic debut campaigns from youngsters Matt Read and Sean Couturier. For good measure, the Flyers were able to oust archrival Pittsburgh -- arguably the Cup favorites -- from the playoffs in a wild and woolly six-game series.

Trending up: G Ilya Bryzgalov
Last season: 0.6 GVT | VUKOTA projection: 2.9 GVT

To read the full story about the Flyers' summer projections, plus Insider's complete NHL coverage, sign up for ESPN Insider.

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Craig Custance

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• Senior NHL writer for ESPN The Magazine
• Wrote for Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• Wrote for The Sporting News