What We Learned: What happens if the Flyers fail?

There are certain teams that just don’t rebuild in the cap era.

They’ll “rebuild on the fly,” they’re “retool” and they’ll even say they’re rebuilding while still signing some of the biggest-name free agents in the league and then surrounding them with kids and low-cost veterans. You know who these teams are. They’re the big-name franchises that are on national TV once or twice a week, every week, all season long.

We can have a discussion about the efficacy of tearing it to the studs — hasn’t worked in Buffalo, hasn’t worked in Arizona, etc. — but there are certain franchises that won’t even really pretend they’re doing it. They might do it by accident and get a couple of top-three picks out of the deal, but for the most part, we’re talking about teams like the Philadelphia Flyers.