The moment the calendar turned to July, the dialogue shifted towards what a Travis Konecny contract extension will look like, how much it would cost the Philadelphia Flyers, and whether or not it was a good idea to offer him one in the first place. After Konecny finally signed his mammoth 8-year, $70 million extension on Thursday, the summer of 2025 is set to be an intriguing one with Tyson Foerster, Morgan Frost, and Cam York among a few others needing new contracts.
Now that Konecny’s contract talks have finally stopped taking over the summer, perhaps the most important player to sign to a long-term deal now is actually York. The former first round pick from the 2019 NHL Entry Draft has slowly come into his own over the last few seasons and it wouldn’t be all too surprising if he took a step further in 2024-25 to entrench himself as the number one defenseman to anchor the Flyers’ back-end.
Playing alongside Travis Sanheim on the Flyers’ number one pair, both players turned over career seasons and formed a rather formidable duo – at least formidable in respect to what the Flyers have doled out in recent years. Beyond the Ivan Provorov and Matt Niskanen experiment in 2019-20, there hasn’t been a standout pair – let alone a top pair – for a very long time and that has really stunted their ability to win games and defend their helpless netminders.
Defensemen generally take a longer time to develop than forwards, but York finally got his opportunity to stake a claim at an every day roster spot in the second half of the 2022-23 season. After being one of the early cuts in training camp, York – and perhaps the rest of Flyers Nation – was disappointed but he took it in stride and listened to everything John Tortorella told him before his demotion. While with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, York tallied 13 points in 20 games before his eventual call-up and looked like a completely different player right off the hop.
He scored 2 goals and 20 points in 54 games played, averaged 19:39 TOI, and was only a minus-1 on the season. Offensively, he was a weapon for the Flyers as evidenced by his player card and 78 projected WAR%. Offensively, things took a turn in 2023-24, but that could have a lot to do with the misfiring power play and his newfound role as a 2-way defender.
He recorded 10 goals and 30 points in his first full 82-game season, he averaged 22:37 TOI, and blocked a whopping 174 shots. The new intangibles that he added to his arsenal allowed Tortorella to trust him even more down the stretch and his 174 blocks were 63 more blocks than he recorded in 87 games between 2020-21 and 2022-23.
In his final 24 contests, York averaged 24:55 TOI with 4 goals and 12 points to his name and was only a minus-2, which was something to behold considering the amount of blowouts that were taking place by the end of the season. In that 24-game stretch, York saw more than 25 minutes on 12 separate occasions and even surpassed 27 minutes five times with his season-high being 29:01 during a 3-2 overtime loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on the 21st of March.
York also blocked a shot in every game but 4 and he recorded double-digit blocks in 16 of those games and even surpassed 5 blocked shots on 3 separate occasions. Nick Seeler gets a lot of credit for his proclivity to get in front of the puck – and rightfully so but York really gave him a run for his money last year.
While we know the player that York has become and understand the potential that he brings to the table, what would a contract extension look like as we head into a pivotal 2024-25 campaign?
A good comparable right off the bat would be Ottawa Senators defenseman Jake Sanderson, who signed an 8-year extension in September of 2023. His deal will kick in this coming season and will run through the end of the 2031-32 season at a cap hit of $8.05 million per year. Heading into the 2023-24 season, Sanderson had just one NHL season under his belt but he still recorded 32 points in 77 contests. He was coming off successive seasons at the University of North Dakota where he scored 10 goals and 41 points in 45 games played and was also the 5th overall selection in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft.
While York’s playing time wasn’t as linear as Sanderson’s, he still recorded 5 goals and 30 points in his first 84 games, which puts him in line with Sanderson’s rookie totals. The NHL has shifted into a mode in recent years where they have started to extend players with a year remaining in their ELCs to long-term deals in the hopes that they can maximize on their potential and shave off a few million per season as they enter the prime of their careers and into their very valuable UFA years.
Owen Power of the Buffalo Sabres also signed an extension before the 2023-24 regular season started with his being a 7-year deal worth $58.45 million or a cap hit of $8.35 million per season. The former first overall pick from the 2021 NHL Entry Draft enjoyed a similar rookie season as Sanderson, where he tallied 35 points in 79 contests, was a plus-10, and averaged a ridiculous 23:48 TOI. He spent 2 years with the University of Michigan where he scored 6 goals and 48 points in 59 contests before making the leap to the NHL.
He enters the first year of his 7-year deal in 2024-25 and his contract runs through the end of the 2030-31 season. 2023-24 wasn’t a down year per se for the 21-year-old as he recorded 33 points in 76 contests, but it was not the season that the Sabres expected as a whole with a lot of their players underperforming compared to their 2022-23 season.
Perhaps Matt Boldy is not so comparable, but he was selected two picks prior to York and he earned himself a 7-year deal in the middle of the 2022-23 season that was worth $49 million. Boldy had an amazing rookie season with 15 goals and 39 points in just 47 games and improved to the tune of 31 goals and 63 points in 81 contests the following year.
In the 42 games prior to the contract extension, Boldy had 12 goals and 29 points with an even rating. In the 39 games that proceeded, he scored 19 goals and 34 points with a +1 rating. The Wild wanted to catch him before his ELC ran out and it looks like it worked out for both sides. The 22-year-old scored 29 goals and 69 points in 75 games in the first season of his new contract in 2023-24.
Looking back at his draft class in 2019, there were four defensemen taken ahead of him with Bowen Byram going to Colorado at number 4, Moritz Seider going to Detroit at 6, Philip Broberg to the Edmonton Oilers at 8, and Victor Söderström going to the Arizona Coyotes at 11 – which was previously owned by the Flyers who traded down to 14. The latter two have combined for 3 goals and 24 points in 134 games and have not taken the leap that their respective clubs had hoped for.
Seider is currently a restricted free agent and in need of a contract from the Red Wings as he is coming out of his ELC. He has 3 seasons of NHL experience under his belt, which includes 246 games played, 21 goals and 134 points, 22:51 ATOI, 564 blocked shots to go along with 569 hits, and a Calder Memorial Trophy as Rookie of the Year in 2021-22. His new contract should align with Sanderson’s and Power’s as he is the obvious quarterback for a Red Wings squad that is lacking fire power at that position.
Byram is an interesting case and perhaps the Flyers will wait to see what the Sabres end up doing with the former 4th overall pick. He was traded to the Sabres ahead of the trade deadline in exchange for Casey Mittelstadt. The Avalanche held onto Byram for dear life, even rejecting the Flyers’ advances back in 2022 with Claude Giroux and once again in 2023 with Cutter Gauthier. The trade itself was surprising to say the least, but Colorado needed more offensive weapons with Gabriel Landeskog out for the year and Valeri Nichushkin unavailable.
Byram joined the Avalanche during the 2020-21 season but made his mark the following year with 17 points in 30 regular season contests and then adding 9 assists in 20 post-season games en route to the Stanley Cup. Since then, he added 24 points in 42 games in 2022-23 and 11 goals and 29 points in 73 games split between Colorado and Buffalo. The youngster has dealt with his fair share of concussion-like symptoms dating back to his rookie season, which is why he missed so many games between 2020-21 and 2022-23.
In the same summer that York signed his 2-year deal, Byram got a 2-year bridge deal of his own that was worth $7.7 million. At the time, there was perhaps a lot more potential for Byram to unlock but as we head into the 2023-24 season, both defensemen seem to be on a near-even playing field. Byram has played in 164 games and has 26 goals and 72 points while averaging 20:08 TOI compared to York’s 169 games, 15 goals and 60 points, and 20:59 TOI. Both had career years in terms of games played, goals scored, points recorded, and in York’s case average time on ice.
Byram looked very comfortable with the Sabres during his short stint and with how much they value their young defensive core, expect Byram to receive a long-term deal. Rasmus Dahlin will be entering the first year of his 8-year contract that is worth $88 million, Mattias Samuelsson is entering the second year of his 7-year deal that is worth $30 million, and the aforementioned Power will be entering the first year of his 7-year contract.
The Flyers will certainly look to see what the Red Wings end up paying Seider, but the most important comparable might be Byram. The Sabres have not been shy in extending their core players and if Byram starts the year the same way he ended 2023-24, he will be in line for a similar deal as some of his defensive partners. The Flyers can assuredly jump the gun and try to settle before the year begins or even midseason like the Wild did with Boldy but the term handed out might be more important than the AAV.
Evolving Hockey projects that if York were to receive a 3-year deal then his AAV would be $4.823 million. If he were to receive a 4-year deal then it would equate to $4.872 million, if he were to receive 5 years then it would jump to $5.577 million, 6 years would figure into a total of $6.292 million per season, 7 years would be estimated at $6.047 million, and a maximum 8-year deal would come in at $6.554 million. They have predicted the 3-year deal.
I feel like these projections are a little too low, especially when you factor in the projected increases to the cap over the next few years. Giving York a 3-year deal worth about $5 million per season would work for both sides since that would avoid the albatross issues they have dealt with in the past when handing out long-term deals, and that would allow York to chase a more lucrative contract in his age-26 season. However, if they could get him at $6.5 million on an 8-year deal, I think Daniel Brière and company should jump at that opportunity.
With the cap expected to jump up another $4 million next year and come close to nine figures down the road, York at $6.5 million would be a steal of a contract, similar to Sean Couturier‘s deal that preceded his 8-year extension.
There’s certainly going to be conversation between both sides from this moment forward and throughout the 2024-25 season, but the Flyers need to understand the severity and importance of this upcoming year. Konecny, Foerster, York, and Frost represent a core that they have been trying to build for some time. They will all feature in much larger roles this coming season and should figure into their future plans moving forward. Being able to hammer down long-term but affordable deals will be of the utmost importance and they’re already one down with Owen Tippett receiving his extension last year.
Whether they go the bridge route or the long-term route, York is arguably the most important piece on the back-end. A bridge deal is more like a Band-Aid solution as they continue to trudge through their ‘New Era of Orange’ branded rebuild, but a long-term extension should be in the cards.
5-6 years is probably the sweet spot and if that is the case, expect York to receive upwards of $5.5 million-$6 million at the minimum – unless Seider and Byram’s deals come before and discombobulate the market, one way or the other.
