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Flyers Make No Big Moves in Free Agency |
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When all was said and done, the Philadelphia Flyers ended up making only minor moves as other teams went shopping in the free agent market. The fan reaction to the Flyers' offseason decisions, with the team coming off back-to-back poor seasons and having publicly promised a "blank check", an emphasis on adding "high-end talent" and hiring a high-profile veteran head coach, has been overwhelmingly negative.
From my perspective, I never did see where the cap space was going to come from as the months went by. The Flyers seemed to be scrambling to patch up miscalculations of the previous two seasons -- putting too many eggs in the basket of relying on injury-riddled defenseman Ryan Ellis to stabilize the top end of the blueline, overly aggressive moves made last off-season such as trading a first-round and second-round pick in the Rasmus Ristolainen trade and the eventual $5.1 million AAV cost on a new five-year contract to get the player to preempt unrestricted free agency.
I am not a Ristolainen basher. I am in the seeming minority who likes him as a player and feel that he added something the team needed. However, it's a question of cost. Relative to his ideal role in the lineup, the trade cost and re-signing cost were too high. Whether or not other teams were willing to trade a 2021 first-round pick plus a 2022 second-rounder last summer to acquire Ristolainen from Buffalo -- it has been confirmed from the outside the organization that the Flyers had competition at the price tag the Sabres set -- it didn't mean that the Flyers had to be the team with the highest end first-round pick to meet the ask. Doing so not only put the Flyers in position of having to re-sign the player so as not to lose their 2021 first-rounder plus a 2023 second-rounder (which could come quite early in Round 2) on a one-year rental. This was especially true because the team, thus far has been unable to extend prospective 2023 unrestricted free agent Travis Sanheim.
Paired with the massive uncertainty over when -- or if -- Ellis will play again, the Ristolainen trade and extension had direct effect in what the Flyers were able -- or more accurately, not able -- to do this offseason. The Flyers backed themselves into a corner.
Likewise, the Flyers did not get the major haul they expected from the Claude Giroux trade. As the main components, they got a talented young forward in Owen Tippett who has yet to translate his abilities into regular NHL production and they got a 2024 first-round pick. All things considered, it wasn't a bad return with Giroux only being willing to waive his no-movement clause to go to the Florida Panthers, but it wasn't to the level of what the Flyers might have been able to extract if they'd been able to create a bidding war among contending teams. As it turned out, the Colorado Avalanche still went on to win the 2022 Stanley Cup without trading for Giroux to put them over the top.
There was still at least one avenue by which the Flyers could have freed up enough cap space to sign Johnny Gaudreau -- who, by both on-the-record and off-the-record accounts, very much wanted to return to his home area and play for his childhood favorite club. Doing so via trading James van Riemsdyk apparently would have required the Flyers to trade their 2023 first-round pick (quite possibly a high-end lottery spot) for a single year of cap relief. Supposedly, prospective trade partners didn't want the Florida 2024 first-rounder. They wanted Philly's own 2023 first-rounder.
Frankly, the Flyers couldn't expect other teams to give them a break.
I was opposed to seeing the Flyers sign Gaudreau. Not because he wouldn't have come in, created some excitement, easily led the team in scoring and been an extremely popular player. It was because of the state of the team itself. The Flyers are not one star scoring winger away from being a contender. Moreover, Gaudreau will turn 29 year old before the start of next season. To pay him in the ballpark of $9.8 million for seven seasons, which is what he signed for in Columbus, would have created long-term headaches.
Here's the thing, though: The Flyers hired the 64-year-old, hard-driving Tortorella as head coach. They traded three draft picks and then committed a $5 million cap hit for two seasons to offensive defenseman Tony DeAngelo. They talked the talk of trying to land a high-end impact forward. Then they come away with only Nick Deslauriers (on an indefensibly long four-year term) and the return of Justin Braun as a third-pair right defense stopgap.
You can't tease big, win-now moves and go in half way without any kind of centerpiece acquisition. One way or the other, take a definitive direction. Demonstrate that there's a well-defined plan. But don't go in circles. Deslauriers and Braun do not move the needle at all.
The cap management around Oskar Lindblom also opened the Flyers up to second guessing. After getting bought out -- with one year left at a $3 million cap hit -- the player was snapped up on the first day of free agency by the San Jose Sharks on a two-year contact at a $2.5 million cap hit. That speaks to the fact that the player WOULD have been tradeable for Philadelphia, even if the return was modest. The Flyers got slight cap relief for 2022-23 by buying out rather than trading Lindblom but a) they're incurring dead cap space north of $600K for 2023-24 whereas they could have been free and clear of the contract; b) they signed a lesser player with the freed-up money, and signed him for four years; and c) Lindblom was actually showing signs of rebounding as a player in December of last season and portions of the second-half.
Deslauriers alone isn't going "to make the Flyers tougher to play against." That's a team matter. He's a 31-year-old fourth-line player. A physical one, yes. A hard-working one, yes. A tough guy, certainly. But worth a fourth year deal and $1.75 million on the cap when you are lamenting lack of cap space? No. Worth four years, especially on a team that is best served not to tie itself into anything long-term? No.
Other teams have gotten better. Are the Philadelphia Flyers a better hockey team today than they were yesterday? Not in any significant way.
Better than they were at the end of the 2021-22 season? Better than they looked on paper last summer? Have they closed the gap at all in the division and the conference? It's hard to answer "yes" with confidence.
The Flyers knew who'd be out there this summer. They had a year to plan for it or at least seven-plus months since Alain Vigneault was fired as head coach to make roster changes and put together a team that Tortorella can work with to the identity he wants. That HAD to start closer to the top of the lineup, not tinkering on the fringes.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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