On June 6, 2011, the Flyers traded Matt Clackson and a future 3rd round pick for the exclusive negotiating rights with pending free agent goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov. The Bryz was about to turn 31 years old and had just come off two all-star seasons where he finished 2nd and 6th for the Vezina Trophy. Phoenix simply did not want to pay Bryzgalov the money he was asking and were happy to let him go in free agency. Same as it ever was, the Flyers needed a goaltender1 and were happy to come to the table.
The Flyers were now a full year removed from a Stanley Cup Finals appearance and were coming off a 106-point season in 2011. The team had youngsters Claude Giroux and James van Riemsdyk to go along with veterans Scott Hartnell and Danny Briere. They also had two young centers entering their primes in Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, two fan favorites. Well, to make room for their new goalie, they would have to move some of these guys. After all, they couldn’t pay everyone right?
Around midday on June 23, 2011 news came out that the Flyers were trading Richards to the LA Kings for Wayne Simmonds, Brayden Schenn, and a 2012 2nd round pick (Anthony Stolarz). Both were young and cheap. As crazy as it sounded, this didn’t seem like a bad deal at the time. Schenn was a needed defenseman prospect and Simmonds was a completely different kind of forward from the young offensive studs the Flyers had. Still, Richards was at the center of the Flyers identity. This was a shock.
A few minutes later, more news out of Philly that Jeff Carter was being traded to Columbus for nothing front liner Jakub Voracek, a 1st, and a 3rd round pick. Carter had just led the team in goals 3 years in a row. Awful! What the hell were the Flyers doing?
Then the biggest news of the day came out. The Flyers signed Bryzgalov to a 9/$51m contract. That was why they had moved Carter and Richards. Both were on expensive long-term deals. Carter had signed the year before to an 11/$58m contract while Richards was right in the middle of his 12/$69m contract he had signed in 2007. At long last, the Flyers finally found their solution in goal…right?
What Happened?
The 2011-12 regular season was solid. The Flyers finished with 103 points but 3rd in the Atlantic Division. They were the 2nd highest scoring team in the league and led by Scott Hartnell’s 37 goals and Claude Giroux who finished 4th in MVP voting (97 points). On the ice, Ilya Bryzgalov’s season was…fine. His stats were solid, but he wasn’t exactly the elite goaltender the Flyers had hoped for. Still, he was good enough for the Flyers to beat the Penguins in the first round of the playoffs. The Flyers won the series 4-2 with Giroux providing one of the most memorable starts to a game you will ever see with The Shift (still gives me goosebumps and I want playoff hockey so damn bad!).
Bryzgalov was brought in for when things get tough though. The Flyers had been swept out of the playoffs in the 2nd round the year before by eventual Cup Champions Boston. This year they would face New Jersey who had finished just below the orange and black in the standings. After winning Game 1, the Devils ran the table winning the next 4. Bryzgalov wasn’t very good, letting up 15 goals in those losses to ageless Martin Brodeur’s 7.
Nobody really remembers what Bryzgalov did on the ice though. They remember what he said off of it. When he gave interviews and on HBO’s 24/7 show, he sounded like a crazy person: (Bryzness Casual: Top 9 Quotes From Former Flyers Goaltender)
- Great news, I’m not playing tomorrow night. Good news, we have a chance to win the game
- I don’t wanna play goalie no more. Can I sit in the office accepting calls like, ‘Hello’. 1-800 let me transfer to a different department
- If you kill a tiger like this? Death penalty. If you kill a tiger, and they find you? You’re dead. That’s it.
- I’m not afraid of anything. I’m afraid of bears. But bear in the forest
- I will try to find peace in my soul to play in this city [this one is especially bad in Philly, like raw meat being thrown to lions]
- I don’t know. Right now I’m very into the universe you know. Like what is it? Like how it was created. The Solar system is so humongous big, right? But if you see like our solar system, our galaxy on the side right it’s so small you can’t even see it… and you think like, we have some problems here on the Earth we worry about? Compared to like? Nothing. Just be happy. Don’t worry be happy right now [edited for rambling]
It’s not easy for professional athletes to be funny. At least not athletes with big contracts. I don’t know if that’s what The Bryz was trying to do in these quotes, but his up and down play, big contract, and being the impetus for the removal of Carter and Richards really didn’t help. The fans and the media were ready to turn on him by the time the season ended. His teammates weren’t exactly fond of him either.2
The next season was shortened by labor strife and Bryzgalov simply wasn’t as good. The Flyers missed the playoffs and the team was sick of their expensive netminder. Thanks to a new collective bargaining agreement, Bryzgalov was released in a compliance buyout that thankfully took him off the cap sheet (they still had to pay him though).
The Contract
[Hat tip to Dean @dean.gatorsphilly.us for reminding me about this part]
So, what happens to a contract when it gets compliance buyout-ed? First off, Bryzgalov doesn’t actually get the whole thing in the end. As part of the new CBA, compliance buyouts acted differently from a regular buyout. Instead of a fully guaranteed salary, Bryzgalov and other compliance buyout recipients get 2/3 of the contract over double the remaining length of the deal. That initial contract paid him $10m for 2011-12 then almost $4m for 2012-13, the only seasons he played in Philly. Normally he would have continued to collect the remaining $37m in roughly $5.25m increments over the next 7 years ending after the 2019-2020 season. That’s not how this worked though. In his buyout, Bryzgalov only gets $23m of that $37m remaining for the next 14 years! The Flyers end up paying him $1.6m-ish per season until the end of the 2026-27 season. Yup, they are stilling paying The Bryz for 2 more years.
Aftermath
- Bryzgalov was signed by the Edmonton Oilers the next season and traded to Minnesota. The Ducks picked him up the next year but was used sparingly. Following his 2 years with Philly, he would only appear in 40 more NHL games.
- Jeff Carter played 13 more years in the NHL, including 10 with the Kings. Columbus traded him to LA in the middle of his first season to pair with his once and future teammate Richards. The pair would win the Stanley Cup that year and another two years later.
- Mike Richards production fell off a cliff in his 4th season with LA. His contract was terminated by the Kings that year due to an incident with prescription medication at the US-Canada border. Richards had previously been known for heavy drinking in his days with Philadelphia. He was picked up by Washington the next season, but was even worse. He was out of the league by age 30.
- The return in the Richards trade ended up solid especially in comparison to what happened to Richards (2 Cups notwithstanding). Neither Schenn brother ever lived up to their top prospect pedigree but Wayne Simmonds became a solid Flyer and fan favorite. He scored 20+ goals in every full season with the Flyers before eventually being traded.
- The Carter return ended up being huge. With the first round pick they received, the Flyers selected Sean Couturier. Couturier is a fan favorite and became an elite defensive center regularly contending for the Selke award before finally winning in 2020. His career has been slowed by injuries including missing all of 2022-23. Voracek turned into a solid first line wing who twice finished Top-5 in assists, forming a great pair with Claude Giroux.
- Sergei Bobrovsky was traded to Columbus and promptly won the Vezina in his first season as a Blue Jacket. Because of course he did. He would be a regularly solid goalie from there, but was regularly lights out in the playoffs, winning the last two Cups with Florida
What to make of the whole business? Well, it all seemed worth it at the time. And it probably would have been too if Bryzgalov was better and not a nutcase. The Flyers just put their chips all in on the wrong guy. Both trades ended up being solid returns and rid the team of some massive contracts. Despite the Cup wins, neither Carter nor Richards were ever as good with their new teams as they were with the Flyers. They sold at the right time! You have to wonder what would have happened had either Bryz been better or they simply used his money in better ways and kept Bobrovsky. The best laid plans of the Flyers never seem to work out.
All stats courtesy of http://www.hockey-reference.com
Philly Front Office 
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