Quick Hits: September 28, 2020
1) The Flyers have re-signed RFA defenseman Robert Hägg to a two-year contract extension with an average annual value (AAV) of $1.6M.
2) Last Friday, Jason Myrtetus and I interviewed Flyers assistant general manager Brent Flahr about preparations for the 2020 NHL Draft and the offseason. The interview can be heard in its entirety in a two-part episode of Flyers Daily on the Flyers Broadcast Network. Part 1 is
available today and Part 2 will go live tomorrow.
Additionally, portions of the interview were used for a feature article on 2020 Draft preparations that will be published later today on the Flyers official website. I will post the link when it's available.
3) On Sunday, power forward Chris Stewart announced his retirement as an active player at the age of 32 (he will turn 33 on Oct. 30). Stewart played 668 NHL regular season games for eight teams including the Flyers, finishing his career in Philadelphia this past season with 16 games for the Flyers. He also appeared in six American Hockey League games this season for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.
Today, the Flyers announced that Stewart has been hired as a player development coach.
For his career, Stewart collected 160 goals, 322 points and 750 penalty minutes in the NHL. His best years were his early season in Colorado and St. Louis before injury setbacks. He appeared in 39 Stanley Cup playoff games, posting six goals and 11 points. Although much better known for his brute force than his finesse, Stewart had good hands that enabled him to be effective on shootouts and penalty shots. For his career, he went 12-for-28 (42.9%) on NHL shootout attempts, and 3-for-3 on penalty shots.
A close friend of Wayne Simmonds since childhood and the brother of former NHL player and current broadcaster Anthony Stewart, Chris Stewart is one of the co-founding members of the Hockey Diversity Alliance. His name was in the news last month when James van Riemsdyk and Scott Laughton sought his advice on what to do in regard to social justice protests
across the sporting world.
4) Today in Flyers History: The Acton-Peeters Phantom Trade
Today marks the 31st anniversary of the events that triggered the league’s “Acton-Peeters Rule”, which prohibits NHL teams from immediately reacquiring a traded player. Back in 1989, the NHL still had an annual waiver draft at the end the preseason. Each NHL team could only protect a certain number of veteran players from the draft, and it was not uncommon for other teams to claim a player or two that the original team would have preferred to keep on the roster.
Flyers general manager found himself in this situation. He did not have room to protect either checking center Keith Acton or backup goaltender Pete Peeters from the waiver draft. He wanted to keep both players without exposing them to the draft. So what could he do?
Clarke’s solution: Find another team willing to stash Acton and Peeters on their own protected list and then return the two players to the Flyers immediately after the waiver draft. He found an agreeable accomplice in Winnipeg Jets general manager Mike Smith.
On Sept. 28, 1989, the Flyers traded Acton and Peeters to Winnipeg for future considerations. On Oct. 4, the Jets returned the two players — who never reported to Winnipeg — to Philadelphia. In exchange, the two sides agreed to cancel the future consideration and the Flyers sent the Jets a 1991 5th-round pick that originally belonged to Toronto.
The draft pick was eventually used by Winnipeg to select Finnish forward Juha Ylönen, who later spent four-plus seasons with the team (which by then had become the Phoenix Coyotes). So at least the club did end up getting something out of the arrangement that was essentially one GM doing another one a favor.
The NHL permitted the trade but made clear it was not happy with what the Flyers had done. All of the parties involved denied that what happened was anything other than a coincidence.
Acton and Peeters claimed they had no advanced knowledge that the initial trade was an on-paper transaction, and they’d end up staying with the Flyers. Peeters said he went back to his home in Alberta for a few days and was preparing to report to the Jets when he learned he’d been traded back to the Flyers. Acton cryptically said he’d been “here and there” in the interim (translation: he never left the Philadelphia area) and was “relieved” to find out he’d been re-obtained by the Flyers.
Clarke said the trade was made in good faith and, while the Flyers didn’t want to lose either player to the waiver draft, he had no idea the team would be able to get them back on the roster. Clarke said that Smith called him a few days after the trade and told the Philadelphia GM that the Jets had re-evaluated their opening night roster plans, and there wasn’t room for Acton or Peeters after all.
Smith told NHL president John Ziegler the same story. Winnipeg claimed there had never been discussion of stashing the players in exchange for a draft pick, and that Acton and Peeters would have stayed with the Jets had there been available spaces when the club determined its opening-night roster.
In permitting the trade reversal to go through, Ziegler declared that there were no rules broken by deal. Additionally, he found direct evidence of a prearrangement by the two teams to reverse the trade right after the waiver draft. However, the NHL soon adopted a new rule that specifically prohibited similar transactions from taking place in the future.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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