Philly Front Office

The Flyers are sending winger Nic Deslauriers to the Carolina Hurricanes for a conditional 7th round pick. No idea what those conditions are. He is currently in his 4th and final year of a 4/$7m contract and will become a free agent at age 35 this summer. Deslauriers’s role is that of enforcer and has not exactly filled up the stat sheet this season, registering 1 point. This is essentially a small slary dump with some upside for the Hurricanes.

Massimo Rizzo (what a name) and Alexis Gendron go to Boston while Brett Harrison and defenseman Jackson Edward come to Philadelphia in what is a big haul of first names (4 total).

I don’t know much about these guys, but Rizzo (24), Gendron (22), and Jackson (22) are all former 7th round picks while Harrison is 22 and a former 3rd round pick of Boston who has stagnated after some early hype.

The Flyers have sent winger Bobby Brink to the Minnesota Wild in a 1 for 1 deal to acquire defenseman David Jiricek. The move kicks off the final day of the NHL trade deadline with a sort of muddy idea of what the Flyers are planning. Are they adding? Are they rebuilding? No idea yet. Not that this was a bad move.

Brink was one of the two most likely Flyers to be dealt today because he is at an incredibly crowded position and is a pending free agent. With Porter Martone coming very soon, the Flyers would simply not have much room for Brink going forward and were certainly not going to pay him.

Jiricek was selected 6th overall by the Blue Jackets in 2022 (one pick after the Flyers selected Cutter Gauthier) and is a very tall defenseman. Do yourself a favor and do NOT look at his statistics at this link right here. For a guy who is supposed to be offense first, it’s rough. In 25 games so far this year, he is still at ZERO points. In his 4 years as a pro, he has simply not established himself as a full time player yet despite his draft pedigree. On the brightside, he is still only 22 and was traded to the Wild from Columbus for a haul just before last season (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th round picks but different years). The Wild faced a similar but much more extreme depth situation as the Flyers in that they are LOADED at defenseman with the recent acquisition of Quinn Hughes.

Like Brink, Jiricek will be a restricted free agent in the offseason. 4 hours until the deadline.

Last night, the Flyers agreed on a contract extension with center Christian Dvorak. The total value is $25.75m and averages $5.15m per season over 5 years. Dvorak has been a surprise hit with the Flyers after signing a 1/$5.4m contract this offseason. He was set to be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year.

Dvorak (besides having a very cool name) was known as a defensive center for his career in previous stops with Arizona and Montreal, but has had a breakout offensive year with the orange and black, so far totaling 25 points in 39 games. His career high is 38 in 70 games as a 23-year-old 7 years ago. Now 30, Dvorak will add another contract to the Flyers core of Travis Konecny, Sean Couturier, Travis Sanheim, Cam York, and Owen Tippett who are signed long term at $5m+ AAV.

The 2026-27 NHL season will see a cap increase of $8.5m (close to 9%) to $104m then another $9m the following year. Considering the Flyers signed Dvorak at $5.4m this season, this seems like a solid deal for both sides. Maybe you don’t like 5 years, but considering the increasing cap and his solid base defensive play, this contract should age decently well.

The only two free agents left on the Flyers ledger for next year are Bobby Brink and besties Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale. All are restricted. The Flyers currently have around $67m on next years cap, leaving plenty of room to get everyone signed and then some.

While I was on vacation I missed my first bit of Flyers news, Egor Zamula was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins for Philip Tomasino. Luckily for me (but not the Penguins), things got even more interesting after the trade went down. Zamula has refused to report to the Penguins AHL affiliate. Here is what is going on…

Zamula was making $1.7m in his second season of a 2-year pact paying him $3.4m. At the time of the trade, he had already been demoted and hadn’t played for the Flyers in over 3 weeks. He had seen action in only 13 games this season, his 6th partial season with the team. Now a few days after the trade was finalized Zamula has refused to report and his contract will be terminated by Pittsburgh. Thankfully this does not affect the Flyers at all. Even though he refused to report, the Flyers part of the trade is final. However, for Zamula he will lose the remaining guarantee on his contract and become a free agent. This was probably his goal all along considering he very recently changed representation.

For the Flyers, Tomasino is a former 1st round pick of the Nashville Predators, 24th overall of the 2019 NHL Draft. Nashville traded him to the Penguins last year for a 4th round pick in the upcoming draft. Tomasino is a center and veteran of over 200 NHL games, but only 9 this season. He is still only 24 and accepted his assignment to the AHL Phantoms. He is under contract for just this season at $1.75m.

I started with the Phillies News and Rumors page for the offseason and it has gone pretty well. I want these to be easily accessible and updateable spots for talking about more minor transactions and newsworthy rumors when a full article would either be premature or simply make the homepage more crowded. Going live for the Sixers and Eagles too.