Flyers waive Zherdev
So much for experimenting with an attitudinal Ukranian. The Philadelphia Flyers have announced that they have placed Nikolay Zherdev on waivers.
“It had eroded to the point where they wanted to see what else is out there,” Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren said.
According to Frank Seravelli of the Daily News, Zherdev declined comment on the situation. He ducked out of the team’s practice facility and slid into a limo with a smirk on his face. Zherdev, not Seravelli.
Zherdev came to the Flyers as an upside guy. Talented as hell, but not known as a team guy. He loved to get his goals, but don’t ask him to buy into a system, play defense or bust his rear end.
The Flyers got exactly what they expected. He has 15 goals this season and has shown that, when on the ice, he can be really damn good. But that’s the problem; he hasn’t been on the ice for a while now. And it’s mainly because of his me-first play. 15 goals are nice, but four assists? If you are that productive on the offensive end, you’d have more than four assists. That’s pretty bad.
But, after repeatedly being a healthy scratch, he and his agent want to be done with the Flyers so he see if another team wants to put up with him.
“His agent and Nik, they obviously weren’t very happy with the situation here,” Holmgren said. “They asked us for other options. Nothing really came of that through trade. We’ll see what happens at noon tomorrow.”
Doesn’t seem like anyone was beating down Holmgren’s door to trade for him.
Holmgren was then asked about any future that Zherdev might have with the team.
“That’s a topic for another day,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. The request came to me to get him to another team and I’m following up on it.”
Holmgren then went on to try to explain where the whole Zherdev experiment went wrong.
“I’m not sure, I think about this all the time,” Holmgren said. “It was kind of an experiment to bring him here and see what he can do. There were periods of time it was good. He had 15 goals in limited power-play time and limited minutes.
“But over the course of time here, things have eroded. Nik’s work ethic has probably dropped off. Right now he’s just not fitting in. We’ll see what happens. I think everyone wants to play and I don’t think he’s any different in that regard. The fact that he wasn’t playing, maybe he didn’t respond the right way a lot of times.”
Good player, bad attitude. Pretty much what the Flyers thought they were getting in the first place.
