The tricky part is you can't just trade Lilly the day that Hakanpaa is activated. You need to see if Hakanpaa's knee can actually take the rigours of the NHL.
- Atomic Wedgie
You know also on the roster is Philippe Myers - a man who has consistency managed to fail to impress in 3 different markets. He's 6'6 and 220 and is right-handed. Does he pair well with Benoit? There would be no puck mover and neither defenseman would be particularly fast, but giving him a look could tell you if you could afford to part with Liljegren and deploy Timmins/Myers as the #6 RD until Hakanpaa is ready to take on more active duties.
Once upon a long ago Myers did look relatively decent in Philadelphia in his second season - pairing well with Sanheim in the top-4 and with Gostisbehere on the third pair. In his third and final season in Philly things fell apart - the team didn't do well, but that 2nd pairing got eaten alive. Myers didn't fare that badly in the bottom pair, for the record, but they counted on him as a top-4 guy, and off he went to Nashville. You could look at Philly over the next couple of years and speculate that Myers wasn't the only thing wrong with their D, but it shouldn't absolve him of being out of his depth in the top-4. He really couldn't compete in Nashville with the 6 they already had (although their bottom pair of Borowiecki and Benning was a disaster and they should have been trying anything but those guys together!) and he fell further out of the NHL the next two years in Tampa.
I say all of that by way of saying that Myers is certainly not someone you can count on, but he is someone who has an NHL history, a history of moderate success as a third pairing defender - as long as you know what you're getting from him - and can add size, some strength and a little physicality (less than you'd want) to your back end. His is a role we might use more than Liljegren's.
