My first thought is that Chuck Fletcher would never make the Gostisbehere trade as it would make his defense weaker while not adding equal or greater value in other areas, but then again he's been dead set on making his defense as bad as possible this offseason so who knows lol

How did our defense get worse?

Flyers don't really need any more forwards.

Vegas doesn't need to trade Clarkson

Niskanen is washed (downward trend in his quality of play + he's 32, things don't get better from there) while Gudas is at least league average, Justin Braun is just bad, and the fact that Robert Hagg is gonna play NHL minutes for the Flyers next year is almost a criminal offence against Philadelphia. It's not the worst defense in the league, but it certainly didn't get better, and even if Gostisbehere and Provorov have good bounceback years, next year's D is likely worse than last year's.

Note: Braun and Niskanen are demonstrably mediocre to bad, as shown through sites like hockeyviz.com, evolving-hockey.com, and corsica.hockey (check them out, and then get mad at Chuck Fletcher for being bad at his job).

I think the preds would take the deal, unless they want to up his value this season (fingers crossed)

Niskanen is still a decent possesion player, good neutral zone defender. Braun is not bad lol, via evolving wild RAPM charts, at least not defensively (just pretty bad offensively). Provy and Ghost bounce backs should definitely make the d core better, question is by how much. I also think Niskanem was brought in to be more of a veteral leader/help fix the toxic culture. Also, Hagg will very likely not be playing standard minutes next year, for sure. Hagg is god awful. Pairings should go like:
Provy-Niskanem
Sanheim-Braun
Ghost-P. Myers

Your take is bad.

I can't deny Niskanen's leadership value; he's undeniably a positive locker room presence, and in a Brooks Orpik sort of way will be a good mentor for young flyers D. Just hedge your expectations on his play; he was a shutdown defender in washington until he suddenly was the exact opposite, and while last season was his first really really really bad season, skaters don't magically improve in their age 33 seasons, so don't fool yourself into thinking that he's gonna be a Norris caliber guy for philly next year. Appreciate you embracing analytics tho to refute my Braun claim, don't see enough of that kind of discourse on here enough tbh. Also, I can't wait to see what the pairings actually are next year; your pairings make sense and are probably pretty decent, but management/coaches don't always go with what makes sense now do they lol

Yeah, I'm willing to admit Caps won the trade player skill wise, but Flyers did get what they sought after in the deal (leadership). I think Nisky and Braun are just decent short term stop gaps for now, as it was alluded to by Flyers beat writers that Fletcher was eyeing Spurgeon a lot. I just pray Hagg is traded or plays very, very, very minimal minutes. Dude had the worst GAR for defenders last season iirc. Also trash defensively.