The Flyers came back from the Olympic break and picked up where they let off, with another loss. After losing 6 out of 7, the team is now 25-21-11 and good for 14th place in the Eastern Conference. We were flying high after beating Cutter Gauthier and the Ducks on January 6th and thinking playoffs.1 That optimism is long gone now.2
The NHL Trade Deadline is on March 6th at 3pm eastern. The Flyers are firmly sellers at this point, 8 points out of a playoff spot and 3 points from a decent lottery spot. Considering the team’s lack of high end talent, getting value for what they can now is just a good idea.
Unfortunately, this team doesn’t have much to sell. As you parse through the cap sheet, there are basically two types of players on the Flyers: young guys we want to keep and expensive guys nobody wants. It’s a brutal list:
Young Guys We Want to Keep
- Trevor Zegras – The only way Zegras gets moved is if extension talks are just impossibly far apart and the sides do not see a long union in their future. There’s no indication that this has happened. He will be a restricted free agent in the offseason.
- Jamie Drysdale – Zegras’s best friend will be a restricted free agent next year, but he is also their best hope at a breakthrough player on the defensive end. He would also have to be impossibly far apart on extension talks to get moved.
- Matvei Michkov – It has not been the sophomore year anyone hoped for, but this team is in the business of making Michkov a star rather than moving him for the next star.
- Denver Barkley and any other prospect – you hold on to these guys
- Dan Vladar – He isn’t exactly young at 28, but the Flyers are not going to get rid of him. He’s been a steal of a free agent pick up and will continue to be next season at only $3.5m. If they had someone in the pipeline a trade makes more sense, but they don’t.
Expensive Guys Nobody Really Wants
The Flyers have a lot of long term deals on the books that weigh down the long-term cap outlook of the team and simply do not provide the type of production commensurate with their deals. Moving any of these guys for anything worth actually moving them for will prove very difficult.
- Travis Konecny – It would be really nice if Konecny was our 3rd or 4th best player rather than our best because his 8/$70m extension just started this year. That’s just too much to move for his production. That being said, if the Flyers are looking to shed long term salary for anything, Konecny does seem like the best bet to move
- Sean Couturier – He is simply not the same player that signed his 8/$62m contract back in 2021. With 4 years and $31m left at 33 years old, the Flyers are going to see this one through
- Travis Sanheim – So many 8-year contracts on this team. Sanheim still has 5 years remaining at $6.25m per season. He turns 30 in March, but even with a rising cap and his Olympian status, his deal is not getting any more valuable.
- Owen Tippett – Does anyone else see Owen Tippett as the Rhys Hoskins of the Flyers? He’s very streaky and doesn’t provide enough real value to justify a big extension. The difference is that the Flyers gave him one while the Phillies did not. His 8/$50m deal should age just fine, but fine isn’t something that will get any good offers at the deadline. They could probably move him just to move him which isn’t ideal.
- Christian Dvorak – Any time you can sign an again average player to a long term deal at the height of his value, you have to do it! This was like lighting $5m per year on fire. That’s not exactly a ton, but it’s not exactly nothing either. I can’t imagine there is a line waiting to trade for him.
Is There Anybody Who Might Get Traded?
The most likely two guys to move are defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen and right wing Bobby Brink. Risto just had a solid Olympics and makes $5 this year and next. That’s not great but not crippling either. He’s been seemingly on the block his entire time with the Flyers. As for Brink, he is a restricted free agent at the end of the season and the Flyers are not in a position to give him anything that he would likely want. The Flyers not only have right wings, but they have more on the way too.
Defenseman Nick Seeler is another possibility, and it would really help the tanking situation if he were moved. He is only making $2.7m over the next 2 years but has a no trade clause which could pose a problem.
There are other expiring contracts on the roster that could move too, but they will not gain much in terms of value: Rodrigo Abols, Nicolas Deslauriers, Carl Grundstrom, and Noah Juulsen.
The big decision the Flyers will need to make is how badly they want to shed salary. If this is a high priority, then more moves become possible like Konecny and Tippett above. Moving them though would be a terrible look on the current front office. After all, they signed these guys in the first place.
Rough Deadline?
The Athletic did a list of top 50 trade candidates and the only Flyer who made the list is Ristolainen at #19. Yikes. As a veteran of many an NBA trade deadline with Sam Hinkie, it was always good to know that the Sixers were basically spending the whole year preparing to sell at the deadline. It was fun because the team was prepared. Even deadlines where you are buying can be fun because you usually know what your team needs. Unfortunately, this seems like much more of a Daryl Morey deadline where the team seems genuinely surprised and unprepared for the future. The Flyers find themselves out of contention not by plan but by failure and it leaves them with little to actually sell. This team seems hopelessly average with little ability to improve the long term outlook. I hope I’m wrong.
- They were 22-11-7 after this game. That means they are 3-10-4 since then. That’s gross. ↩︎
- 6.8% chance of making the playoffs as of publishing ↩︎
Philly Front Office 
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