Philly Front Office

The Flyers haven’t been players in free agency in some time, but that wasn’t always the case. Back in 2012, Philly had money in its pocket, and were dead set on going shopping at the high-end stores that turn away people like me because of our shabby clothes. This wasn’t the only thing brewing.

Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025 at 7pm
Flyers vs Nashville Predators

XFinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, PA

Flyers Moves and Non-Moves

That summer, the Nashville Predators had two big free agents, one unrestricted Ryan Suter, and one restricted, Shea Weber. They were considered two of the best at what they do, and it was going to be tough for the Predators to retain both. The Flyers had their eyes on Suter as well as New Jersey Devils forward Zach Parise. After clearing out some of their big contracts the year before, we were flush with cash.

The Flyers had some other work to do first, work that ultimately didn’t work out. The summer started with Philly trading away young goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky to the Blue Jackets because he was stuck behind [JT Realmuto sigh and eyeroll] Ilya Bryzgalov. Bobrovsky won his first of two Vezina trophies the next year and just won back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Panthers. Next up was shipping out James van Riemsdyk for defenseman, and brother of Brayden, Luke Schenn. JVR didn’t work out twice in Philly, mostly because he wasn’t Patrick Kane. Schenn ended up playing for 18 years, but was merely okay in orange and black.

June 23, 2011: A Day That Will Live in Flyers Infamy

The Flyers reportedly offered Parise $110m in free agency. They probably offered something similar to Suter too. Instead, those two signed identical 13/$98m contracts with the Minnesota Wild. It was a coup and left Philadelphia baffled. Personally, I was sure we were going to get one of them considering all the money we had to throw around.

Shea Weber

The Predators were in an awkward situation with their captain Shea Weber at the time. For years he had been saying how much he wanted to stay in Nashville and they wanted to keep him considering he had blossomed into maybe THE premier defensemen in the NHL. They just didn’t seem to want to pay him. The year before, the team had initiated salary arbitration with Weber in the hopes that it would lead to a new contract. It didn’t and the team lost the hearing. Now Weber was sitting in restricted free agency for one more year. This meant that he could field offers with other teams and even sign a contract-to-be called an offer sheet, but the Predators would have 5 days to match the deal. That’s not all though. If the player switches teams, the new team owes the old team draft pick compensation.

The Flyers, after having struck out with Parise and Suter, still had a wad of cash burning a hole in their pocket and Weber was the target. On July 19th, 2012, Weber signed an offer sheet worth $110m over 14 years. At 26 years old, Weber was now guaranteed to sign the second largest contract in NHL history (behind Alex Ovechkin). The Flyers waited to see if the tight wallet of the Predators would open up or if they would have their young star to build around. 5 days later, Shea was still a Predator. The Flyers would have owed Nashville 4 first round picks had they declined to match.

Aftermath

The NHL did not exactly like all of this money and huge contracts being thrown around. 2 months after the Weber situation had come to an end, the owners locked out the players until the sides reached a new collective bargaining agreement. The work stoppage lasted 4 months and the next season was only played with 48 games. Notably, the contracts signed by Suter, Parise, and Weber would not be legal under the new agreement. Not that they were invalidated, they were just the last of their kind.

The Parise and Suter deals didn’t exactly work out for Minnesota even though it seemed like an exceptional offseason. The Wild made the playoffs all but once with the star duo but never made it past the second round. Both were bought out of their contracts after 9 seasons.

The Predators missed the post season the next 2 seasons and traded Weber to the Montreal Canadians for PK Subban after only 4 seasons. They made the Stanley Cup final as soon as the shipped him out. With Montreal, Weber was still good but had to eventually stop playing due to injury long before the mammoth contract was set to finish. He is technically still on the Blackhawks as his contract has been traded several times for cap purposes at this point. It finally expires this season.

Would things have been different had Weber signed in Philly? Well, the team had peeked 3 years earlier with a Stanley Cup appearance but made the playoffs just 4 times in the 13 years since that summer, only getting out of the first round once. It couldn’t be much worse. I don’t know if the 4 draft picks would have been consecutive or spread out through the life of the deal, but ironically, the Flyers took defensemen the next 3 years with only Travis Sanheim working out well for the club.

All in all, somehow everyone lost that summer.