Deep breaths. It's going to be okay.

I woke up this morning, and after eating a very nutritious breakfast of Nutella with some white bread on it I booted up my computer and checked my email only to find this message from Schadenfreude.

"I'm sure you saw they traded Carter and Richie. At least not Danny though."

I'm fairly sure the noise I made right then was at a pitch only dogs could hear.

I'd been expecting a big trade to happen. It was necessary to clear cap space so we could sign a goalie, and since they were openly talking to Bryzgalov I knew that was on Holmgren's agenda. I'd also been expecting one of the group of Carter, Richards, Hartnell, or Briere to go. Out of those four, in fact, I'd been betting on Carter. There were rumors they'd been shopping him to the Maple Leafs, which I thought would be a good fit-God only knows the Leafs need a decent forward, and thanks to my obsessive love of Down Goes Brown I have enough of a soft spot for Toronto to not mind them getting Jeff. So trading Carter to the Blue Jackets was not a shock, although I don't think schtupping your teammate's wife should mean that you have to play in Columbus. In return, the Flyers got 21-year-old forward Jakub Voracek (one minute. Did I spell that right? Yeah, I spelled that right) and draft picks that are okay but not stellar. In short, there should be a large neon sign over this trade that flashes "THE FLYERS NEEDED CAP SPACE."

No, the reason I was squeaking was out of surprise that the Flyers had traded Mike Richards as well. Let me be clear about one thing first. I don't think it was a bad move. I had to take a few deep breaths and talk down the little voice in my head that was screaming incoherently about giving up Richards for Brayden Schenn and Wayne Simmonds, but after that I was able to take an objective look at the situation.

If there was one player out of those four I mentioned I had expected to have job security, it was Richards. He was the captain, the symbol, the franchise player. When you go to a Flyers game, half the crowd has his jersey. And I think that was, in the end, why he had to go. The Flyers are at a point in time in their organization where they have almost all of the pieces together to finally win the Cup. That doesn't happen very often to most teams, unless you're, say, the Detroit Red Wings. I suspect Holmgren wanted to shake things up, put together a different team than the one he's iced the past two years, and as a result, he needed an entirely new look.

With these two trades, Holmgren has managed to free up cash to play around with the roster. He's already signed goalie Ilya Bryzgalov to a 9-year, $51-million deal. As I told Schadenfreude, Bryzgalov better hold up his end of that bargain or I'll be shanking a certain Russian goalie in the night and it won't be Bob.

But overall, I think the Flyers will survive and be just as good without Carter and Richards. The other guys will step up and fill the gaps, and besides, THEY DIDN'T TRADE CLAUDE. As long as that's true, the world will keep turning and everything will be fine.

Well, that was long and probably boring and I doubt you read all of it and cared. SO. Let's have a picture of the Flyers' newest acquisition, Brayden Schenn!

Brayden happens to be the younger brother of Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Luke Schenn, who in turn happens to own both Evgeni Malkin and Tyler Kennedy (although to be fair, Claude Giroux owns Tyler Kennedy, so apparently it's not that difficult).

There. Picture of adorable new Flyer and links to two separate fights. Hasn't your day just gotten a little bit brighter?