After sitting idly by for what seemed like an eternity, the “selling” Philadelphia Flyers finally made 2 trades – both on deadline day – but they weren’t ones we necessarily expected or had on our radar.
Their first deal in relation to an expiring contract was sending Zack MacEwen to the Los Angeles Kings for Brendan Lemieux and a 2024 5th-round pick, then with 3:00 P.M. on the horizon, the Flyers traded Patrick Brown to the Ottawa Senators for a 2023 6th round pick.
As the clock was ticking away, hours turning into mere minutes, potential suitors kept dropping – one by one. The Detroit Red Wings jumped in at the very last second, seemingly had a deal done, then dropped out with 10 minutes left, leaving the Flyers with mush on their face as they were forced to keep van RIemsdyk. Chuck Fletcher whiffed on the easiest task at hand this season, he hurriedly tried going back to the other teams that had offers on the table before Detroit entered the race but it was too late to get anything done.
The lead-up to the trade deadline was extremely exciting with notables like Bo Horvat, Vladimir Tarasenko, and Ryan O’Reilly being moved weeks ago, which was then followed by a frenzy of trades that included Patrick Kane, Jakob Chychrun, Timo Meier, and Mattias Ekholm among several other notables leading up to the final day. It’s been an arms race in the Eastern Conference where the top-3 teams in each division have loaded up one after the other in an attempt to outdo the other. Toronto, Boston, Tampa Bay, New York, New Jersey, and Carolina have improved vastly and it’s going to be interesting to see who gets bumped out of the first round after all the moves that were completed. The Flyers on the other hand stood pat as nearly every team had a hand in a deal, whether they were the contenders acquiring a key piece to the puzzle or a rebuilding team looking for future assets, or even a third party brokering salary retention.
Things became even more bleak when the very teams that were interested in van Riemsdyk each completed a trade within 24 hours of each other last week. The Vegas Golden Knights traded for Ivan Barbashev from the St. Louis Blues for prospect Zach Dean, the Dallas Stars acquired Evgenii Dadonov from the Montreal Canadiens for Denis Gurianov, and the Winnipeg Jets traded a second round pick for Nino Niederreiter from the Nashville Predators. Then earlier this week the suddenly interested Carolina Hurricanes traded for Jesse Puljujarvi, the Stars doubled down and went after Max Domi, and the Minnesota Wild went after Marcus Johansson and Gustav Nyquist, which started narrowing down the shortlist even more.
Then deadline day appeared and the doomsday clock started ticking away. Several venerated sources were claiming that Minnesota, Winnipeg, Calgary, Colorado, Vegas, Seattle, and New Jersey were sniffing around, seeing if they could pry van Riemsdyk out of Philadelphia. Few weeks ago it seemed like a second round pick was plausible, then the Flyers waited and it turned into a third round pick at best. The Flyers waited again and as comparable players started being dealt, the asking price dropped even further. The Jets and Devils made respective deals today in acquiring Vladimir Namestnikov and Curtis Lazar – each for a fourth round pick after rejecting the Flyers’ offer of a third rounder.
James van Riemsdyk’s recent stretch of games didn’t give opposing teams that much confidence but that seemed like a leverage tool they were using against Fletcher. His underlying numbers were great even though his offensive numbers took a hit – in his last 22 games he has scored 3 goals and added 4 assists.
Fletcher’s target from the Minnesota Wild in Jordan Greenway got dealt to Buffalo with close to 45 minutes left for a second and fifth round picks, players like Dmitry Kulikov fetched a third round pick but ultimately at the end of the day, you’re not always trading solely for the player, you’re trading and negotiating with the general manager. Unfortunately for us Flyers fans, we have one that has lost all respect around the league and that was first brought up this summer when he was being lowballed for Travis Konecny, Ivan Provorov, Travis Sanheim, and even van Riemsdyk when he was trying to offload his contract in an attempt to clear cap space.
The Red Wings jumped in with close to a half hour remaining, they seemingly edged out the Kraken and Golden Knights, and it sounded like a deal was done with Steve Yzerman and the Red Wings, but it was reported a few minutes later that something was holding up the deal and they eventually pulled out.
To most hockey fans, it seems like the Flyers did the unthinkable by holding onto expiring contracts ahead of the deadline with the team sinking further and further in the basement of the NHL’s standings. However, as Flyers fans, it’s almost as if the worst is yet to come, things just keep getting worse off by the week, by the month, by the year, and the front office is just completely inept when it comes to making deals around the NHL.
This was quite possibly the easiest task at hand for Chuck Fletcher and company, they had months to figure it out, trade deadline deals have been going on for close to a month, yet they waited till the final minute before realizing they messed up.
Not only did the Flyers whiff on James van Riemsdyk, but they also missed out on trading Justin Braun, who was never going to fetch much but the return would’ve been comparable to at least what they got back for Patrick Brown.
