After defeating the Florida Panthers on the road last night, the Philadelphia Flyers had an unsurprisingly quiet morning and early afternoon as the rest of the NHL ramped up their trade conversations with the 3 pm deadline fast approaching.
It was believed by many that covered the Flyers that at the very least, Daniel Brière would be looking to acquire a depth forward but not much else with his big trade of Sean Walker taking place on Wednesday.
However as we approached 2:00pm Eastern Standard Time, Anthony Di Marco was the first on the spot when it came to Wade Allison being traded before Elliotte Friedman confirmed that it was for Denis Gurianov of the Nashville Predators.
Wade Allison was a promising prospect that was selected in the 2nd round of the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, just 4 picks after the Flyers selected Carter Hart. He spent 4 years with Western Michigan University where he scored 45 goals and 97 points in 106 games but had endured a couple of injury-riddled campaigns.
He made the leap to professional hockey in 2020-21 where he played in 14 games for the Flyers and another 10 games for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. Between 2020-21 and 2023-24, Allison had played in 75 games for the Flyers where he scored 13 goals and 22 points and spent another 84 games with the Phantoms where he tallied 24 goals and 43 points.
He sustained several injuries during his time with the Flyers but 2022-23 was going to be his first real opportunity to try and stamp his name into the everyday lineup. He managed to play in 60 games but suffered through 3 different injuries throughout the season and could only muster up 9 goals and 15 points. John Tortorella even had a few choice words near the end of the season:
“It’s hard to be consistent when you’re always hurt. That’s my struggle,” Tortorella explained. “You see him come, you see him come – now he’s out again.
“Listen, I don’t want to take anything away from his effort, either. I’m not trying to run him down, I think he needs to have — for him to be an effective player — he needs to have that (energy and intensity) in him. He just can’t get hurt.”
Allison spent the entire 2023-24 season with the Phantoms where he scored 10 goals and 17 points in 46 games but he was never happy about the initial demotion to the minors.
As for Gurianov, the former 12th overall pick from the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, has struggled to play up to that moniker. He spent his first 6 seasons with Dallas where he scored 46 goals and 103 points in 257 games, including a career-high 20 goals in 2019-20 and 31 points in 2021-22.
He was then moved to Montréal in 2022-23, where he chipped in 5 goals and 8 points in 23 games before signing with the Nashville Predators in the offseason. In 14 games with the Predators he tallied 1 goal and 1 assist, while also scoring 12 goals and 30 points in just 27 games for the Milwaukee Admirals of the AHL.
The soon-to-be 27-year-old stands in at 6’3” and weighs in at around 205 pounds, is a left-handed shot, plays the right-wing primarily, and still has a knack for scoring goals and should provide the Flyers with good tertiary scoring for the bottom-6 if and when he cracks the lineup.
Gurianov is also a pending unrestricted free agent and comes in at an AAV of just $850,000.
