On the outside looking in, the Kevin Hayes trade that was finalized earlier today looks extremely underwhelming when you factor in that the Philadelphia Flyers are retaining 50% of his contract for the next 3 seasons and only received a 6th round pick ahead of the 2024 NHL Entry Draft.
However, let’s not forget that the market changed completely when Ryan Johansen was traded on Saturday for pennies on the dollar with half of his contract retained, while configuring into the equation that not many teams were lining up for Hayes anymore.
On Saturday, it seemed like the Johansen trade set the benchmark for whatever the Flyers were going to have to do with Kevin Hayes. Fast forward a few days later, and it is now official that the Johansen deal played a major factor in what the Flyers had to do to get Hayes off their roster. The Nashville Predators shipped him off to the Colorado Avalanche for the rights to Alex Galchenyuk – who they don’t intend on signing. The Predators were retaining half of Johansen’s contract which had 2 years remaining – one less year than Hayes – with an $8 million AAV.
Saturday was an extremely emotional day in terms of how we all felt collectively during the mid-afternoon hours. Shortly after the Nashville trade was made official, rumours starting to intensify after Blues reporter Andy Strickland reported that there were conversation about Hayes and the Blues the week prior, but nothing materialized. Hayes didn’t have the Blues on his 12-team no-trade list and for all the rumours that circulated around both clubs in the past couple weeks, it was actually centred more around Hayes than Scott Laughton or Travis Konecny.
For weeks leading up to the NHL Entry Draft, we’ve heard rampant rumours regarding Hayes, Sanheim, DeAngelo, Konecny, and Laughton and how for some of them – Konecny and Laughton – the Flyers were playing hardball and wanting the best package available, otherwise they would’ve been more than happy to keep them around.
News continued to funnel out slowly with the Flyers and Blues reportedly being involved in an even larger deal that would’ve involved more than just Kevin Hayes. Names started being thrown around with some stating Scott Laughton, Tony DeAngelo, and Travis Sanheim all being involved in the same deal. With everyone nervously refreshing their Twitter feeds, the trade was said to have been finalized but was put on hold because a player on the Blues had not waived his NTC.
For a while, it was sounding like a deal was coming to fruition with almost every insider and analyst involved saying the exact same thing. It got stalled because a player from the St. Louis Blues was not willing to waive his no-trade clause, and that sparked a debate as to who it could be. Torey Krug, Justin Faulk, Brayden Schenn, Brandon Saad each carried full NTCs, while Marco Scandella and Pavel Buchnevich held modified NTCs.
Crossing Broad’s Anthony SanFilippo sent out a thread hours later saying that the player unwilling to waive his NTC was most likely Krug and that Daniel Brière was looking to see if he could flip him to another team that he would be willing to play for and subsequently waive his NTC for.
The main pieces coming out of Philadelphia would’ve been Hayes and Sanheim with a lot of cap being retained from the former, and in return the Flyers would be receiving a package surrounding one of the later first round picks owned by the Blues – 25th or 29th.
He finished it off by saying that while everything else remained fluid, things could still change, and if Krug becomes the backbreaker, the Blues would have to re-route their deal and possibly cough up more to replace the value of the defenseman – if they were still interested in acquiring Sanheim.
The Athletic’s Jeremy Rutherford then posted an article shortly after essentially saying that if Krug was still to be involved and then subsequently flipped to another team, the pieces would remain the same; in Kevin Hayes and Travis Sanheim going to St.Louis and the Flyers receiving a late first round pick with Krug.
However, if Krug could not be involved, then the Flyers would just send a retained Hayes for a late first round pick, either which way giving the Flyers what they wanted all along for a player and a contract they no longer needed – oh how things have changed.
As that was starting to die down, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman decided to bring the Flyers back to the forefront of news and mentioned how Tony DeAngelo was going to be traded back to Carolina. His contract would be retained at 50% and the Flyers would be receiving a prospect in return. Charlie O’Connor of The Athletic prefaced things by saying that we should not get our hopes up as the prospect won’t be at the top of the Hurricanes’ pipeline.
So as Saturday turned to Sunday, it seemed like both teams were doing damage control after all the leaks that came through the previous days. No information was coming out and everyone was reverberating the same message that with Krug refusing to waive his NTC for the Flyers, both sides were back to the drawing board.
One thing that was interesting was the fact that players like Justin Faulk, Nick Leddy, Brandon Saad, and Brayden Schenn were reportedly not asked to waive their NTCs as the Blues were more fixated on subtracting Krug from the roster. On the surface, a trade surrounding Marco Scandella and another player making $2 million-$4 million could’ve worked.
Due to the fact that the Krug deal seemed improbable to follow through, Sanheim’s name started fluttering elsewhere with the Flyers trying to move him before his NTC kicks in on the 1st of July. His 8-year deal will kick in for 2023-24 and it seems like the new regime is trying to undo many of Chuck Fletcher’s mistakes in one fell swoop. Sanheim carries trade value even with the albatross contract since he is a steady defenseman who can benefit from a change of scenery and mid-level partners.
On a better team with better defensemen, he can be sheltered and protected and actually succeed on a consistent basis for once. Winnipeg and Toronto were thrown out as suggestions, with the Jets having had interest for a few years while also holding onto a valuable first round pick, and the Leafs wanting to trade their first rounder for immediate help.
TSN’s Pierre LeBrun wrote how the Krug situation had 3 possible scenarios: 1) After careful deliberation, Krug actually decides to waive his NTC for the Flyers, 2) Krug doesn’t waive and they focus solely on a Kevin Hayes trade, or 3) the deal is completely off the table. He mentioned how he suspects certain players from the Flyers have contacted the defenseman about waiving his NTC.
Which brings us to Elliotte Friedman’s 32 Thoughts podcast from Monday where he went into more detail on LeBrun’s final remark about people in the Flyers organization trying to convince him to waive:
“As of Sunday night, I don’t think anything had been presented to Krug that was going to get him to change his mind, he was still in the same place. Now I think they’ve worked at him. You know John LeClair was hired by the Flyers. John LeClair’s agent when he played was Lewis Gross, who is Krug’s agent, so I think they’ve tried it that way. I think there are some Flyer players who have tried to talk him into it. The one guy I suspect because he’s a really respected and popular guy would be Cam Atkinson. I don’t know that for sure, but I would believe that Atkinson would be a guy to be dispatched to see if they could make this work.”
Despite their efforts to try and convince Krug to change his mind, the veteran defenseman remained firm on his decision and put the kibosh on the original trade as of Tuesday morning. The Flyers shifted all of their focus on Hayes and will be retaining 50% of his contract – $3.571 million AAV for the next 3 seasons.
At one point in time, it was conceivable that the Flyers could’ve received a much better return than a measly 6th round choice, however the ruptured relationship between player and head coach also had a lot to do with it. John Tortorella’s impact cannot be forgotten or swept under the rug, nor should it come as a surprise.
The fiery head coach was the essentially the face of the franchise this past season, sheltering the front office from the media firestorm they should’ve received but also preaching about patience, rebuilding, and most importantly subtracting before making any additions. It is also no surprise as to who those players would’ve been, look no further than the ones traded away – Kevin Hayes and Ivan Provorov – and the ones being dangled – Tony DeAngelo and Travis Sanheim.
Hayes’ agent, Bob Murray, came out with this choice quote after the trade was finalized.
“It’s been stressful for Kev. He really liked Philadelphia, he liked the city, he liked his teammates…everything was good until December-ish when things started to go the other way. It’s been a difficult, stressful time for him.
“He’s very happy to get settled now and he’s really happy with it being in St. Louis. They’ve got a real good team. They’ve got a good organization. They’ve got a good coach. It’s a nice city for players.”
As we all remember “December-ish” was when Hayes was benched in a game against the New Jersey Devils and then made a healthy scratch the following game against the New York Rangers. At the time of the move, he was the leading scorer for the club, but his effort on defense and lackadaisical play in general could not be missed by Tortorella, who had handed out similar punishments prior to players like Travis Konecny, Wade Allison, Owen Tippett, and Morgan Frost. Hayes had been benched twice already and the decision to make him a healthy scratch made sense to those of us in Philadelphia.
It shouldn’t have been such a drama-inducing move as both sides never saw eye to eye after. In fact, Hayes was a ghost near the end of the season, with just 9 points in his final 32 games, including a 23-game goal-less drought. He never shied away from his feeling and he let it be known at the end of the year that he understood where the team was heading and that he probably was no longer part of that vision.
Both sides drift away towards greener pastures and even though it might seem ridiculous to hold onto $3.571 million in the next 3 seasons, it would’ve been more expensive to buy him out and the Flyers don’t have to worry about salary cap for the next 2-3-4 years as they embark on a rebuild.
The Flyers have $10.372 million in cap space right now, that should increase to $12.872 million after trading DeAngelo to Carolina at some point in July, and then it should increase once again to 19.122 once Ryan Ellis is placed on LTIR. As things stand right now, looking ahead to the summer of 2024, the Flyers will have close to 40 million to work with but that number will change once Noah Cates, Cam York, and Morgan Frost among other RFAs sign their new deals.
Cutting loose from Hayes was important for 3 primary reasons: 1) getting him off the team was needed for the locker room to be free of discontent and ruptured relationships, 2) retained salary means nothing to the Flyers right now who could very well be a penny shy of reaching the cap but as long as they have the draft capital, prospects, and expiring contracts to be rid of, then the rebuild is succeeding with flying colours, and 3) he was a road block for prospects and younger players who could better utilize the roster spot and the minutes.
Some were way too focused on the fact that Hayes scored 54 points and was named an All-Star, as it essentially became a moot point with the relationship between player and coach being irreparable. He was unhappy with the situation at hand, and with Sean Couturier expected to return, there would be a log jam down the middle with Noah Cates and Morgan Frost deserving higher and more intensified roles.
As for the DeAngelo hold up, that was one was a little more mystifying because of how information was being presented. First they made it known that the Flyers and Hurricanes were engaged in trade talks regarding DeAngelo. Then it was being said that the Flyers will be eating 50% of his final year and that a trade is all but done, which was then finished off by the notion that this was going to be a cap dump and the Flyers will be receiving a prospect of barely any value. Some were speculating that Brière wanted a better prospect – not a great one but better than a throwaway player – for an offensive defenseman at only $2.5 million AAV.
As for a resolution for the mystifying news, it was reported earlier Monday morning that the league actually vetoed the trade because they felt that the two clubs were circumventing the cap. They mentioned how Carolina has already traded DeAngelo less than 12 months ago and now they’re trying to reacquire him with retained salary. The Flyers tried to argue that 1) it was Chuck Fletcher who orchestrated the deal, not Daniel Brière, and 2) the contract was signed with the Flyers, not with Carolina. The league will either come to its grips and sign off on it or inform the teams to wait until the 9th of July if they’re still interested by then.
With the draft being held on Wednesday, Brière is probably not done wheeling and dealing as they would like to move Sanheim, acquire another first round pick, potentially move up to draft Matvei Michkov, and acquire a second round pick as well.
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