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The Philadelphia Flyers are currently tied with Pittsburgh with the third-highest point total in the Eastern Conference, eight behind the Rangers and just one behind the Stanley Cup champion Bruins. That type of success through the first two-thirds of the season would usually indicate that a team would be looking to bolster their lineup at the trade deadline, with wins in just three of their last ten games, the Flyers’ downward trend could result in just the opposite.

The motivation behind trading some of their older veterans such as Jaromir Jagr or even Daniel Briere is rooted in the fact that the team as currently constructed is too seriously flawed to compete for a Stanley Cup this Spring, and no trade deadline acquisition would be able to rectify that. There are no true number one defensemen available that would be able to make up for the absence of captain Chris Pronger, and even if there were, it might not be enough to overcome the inconsistent play of goalies Ilya Bryzgalov and Sergei Bobrovsky.

However, just because the Flyers shouldn’t be overpaying for a rental player, it doesn’t mean that they have to start selling off assets. Even with their sporadic success over the past two months, the team will still be good enough to make the playoffs. And in the NHL, where even an 8 seed is a viable threat to make it to the Stanley Cup Finals — as the Flyers did just two seasons ago — that’s reason enough to not get rid of proven postseason performers like Jagr, Briere, or Kimmo Timmonen.

The Flyers committed to a rebuilding process this past offseason with the trades of Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, and no one expected them to have even this much success right away. For that reason, it’s true that they shouldn’t be jettisoning any of their young players for a marginal upgrade on defense. But in that case, the best course of action would be stand pat rather than sell off assets, and to simply go to war with the squad they have now when playoff time comes around.