Cleary, Not headed to Philly

The Dan Cleary saga of summer 2013 got a little exaggerated and is finally coming to a close. It is unusual that a player like Cleary, 34-year old coming off of his worst season since 2005-06 would have so much drama surrounding him this summer. There were several stories concerning what team he would sign with for the 2013-14 season starting earlier this summer with a report from the Detroit Red Wings that they had offered Cleary a 3-year $2.6 million deal and also reports that Florida and Dallas were interested. Then there was a report that the Red Wings gave Cleary a PTO option but he rejected it due to guaranteed contracts from other NHL clubs. Most recently, Cleary was on PTO and included on the list of players to take the ice this morning at the Flyers training camp but he had already signed with the Detroit Red Wings by this morning. Cleary had been with the Red Wings for 8 years and his heart is with that organization, good for him that he was finally able to lock down a deal in Detroit.

"I don’t know what happened there, I can’t speak to that," Holmgren said, "but I got a voicemail message from him this morning, and a text message. One of the things that makes him a good player is he’s a character guy and obviously he had deep roots to the Red Wings organization, and I can’t fault him for that. Actually, I probably think more highly of him now than I did two days ago."

The Flyers never actually had the cap space to sign Cleary and would have had to do some shuffling at the end of the month when the official roaster is due to the NHL, in order to fit him on the team. Most likely, after the Red Wings saw how serious Cleary was about moving to another team in their same division and with the Flyers not being about to sign Cleary right away, Detroit had the motivation needed to finally sign Cleary. The Flyers are still in need of a 3rd line left wing but thankfully no longer looking to add Cleary to their team, unfortunately there is no talk of opening that position up to Gagne either. Holmgren dropped the names of some players who might fill the 3rd line left wing position, like: Tye McGinn, Michael Raffle and Scott Laughton.