It's official. Philly trades Gagne to Tampa for Matt Walker and a 4th round pick in 2011. Philly basically replaced Gagne with Zherdev for $2M instead of $5M. I think that this is actually a domino effect from the Meszaros trade. Since acquiring Meszaros, Philly was over the cap. The Flyers will have one of the toughest defenses in the league but their goaltending will always be a question mark with Boucher and Leighton.
They are definitely on the rise. They got a nice top 6 but they are still weak on D and they have very little depth beyond their top 6. I don't think they are a playoff team yet but they may very well be one of those teams fighting for the final 2 playoff spots in April.