General managers around the NHL swarm around the poor, the sick, and the wicked. If there’s ever a disgruntled star player, or a cap-strapped team loaded with talent, or even just a general manager who has made some lop-sided and bad trades in the past; other teams are well aware of these situations. The Philadelphia Flyers need to circle the Vegas Golden Knights like vultures from now all the way to the NHL Entry Draft. The Golden Knights have finally hit a bump in the road and the aggressively-retooling Flyers need to take advantage of what could be a quick fire sale in the summer.
The Golden Knights have had to deal with injuries all season and towards very important and expensive players. Whether it was Mark Stone or Max Pacioretty or even Robin Lehner, a large chunk of cash was alleviated because of LTIR. After they made a splash in acquiring Jack Eichel from the Buffalo Sabres, everyone around the NHL knew they would have to trade some large contracts whenever to got healthier. Once Eichel made his return, the Golden Knights were able to activate him because they placed Stone on LTIR, which essentially negated their cap hits.
They were hoping to do what the Tampa Bay Lightning did last year when they held Nikita Kucherov out until the first round of the playoffs. Vegas was in the driver’s seat in the Pacific Division for quite some time, but have recently fallen off rather abruptly. They are currently just inside in the Wild Card race as they sit one point ahead Dallas and two points behind first Wild Card holder-Nashville, but they have played four games more than Dallas and three more games than Nashville.
They’re 4-6-0 in their last 10, they are having issues scoring, defending, and even through their goaltending. At the trade deadline, they seemingly made a move at the 11th hour as they sent Evgenii Dadonov to the Anaheim Ducks as a cap-dump. The trade was voided the very next day because Dadonov had the Ducks on his 10-team no-trade list, but Vegas claimed they never received the list. The player and his $5 million AAV remained on the team and even though Mark Stone and Reilly Smith are close to being ready, they have to remain on the mend because the Golden Knights can’t afford to bring them back into the fold due to their very large cap hits.
NHL teams can still make trades after the trade deadline, but the caveat is that the players acquired can’t play in the playoffs. The Golden Knights can still orchestrate a trade for Dadonov if they can find a team that isn’t on his no-trade list, and if the Flyers aren’t on that list, they should be making a call right now. The Flyers aren’t making the playoffs, the Golden Knights don’t care what they receive in return because they’re looking to dump salary, the Flyers have room after trading Claude Giroux, Justin Braun, and Derick Brassard, while also having Sean Couturier and Ryan Ellis on LTIR. It would also go a long way in terms of making a friendly relationship with a team you can try to swindle in the summer.
The Golden Knights have $1.6 million in open cap space, which is not even close to being enough to activate either Stone ($9.5M AAV) or Smith ($5M AAV). The Flyers have $11.6 million open right now, which would allow them to swallow and engorge Dadonov’s $5 million AAV with relative ease. If Vegas can make the playoffs, then all bets are off with what they can do with Stone and Smith, but the road to the playoffs has become treacherous and almost out of the equation.
As things stand right now, heading into the summer the Golden Knights will have 17 players signed at a cap hit of $83.866 million, which would be a little over $1 million above the new projected salary cap of $82.5 million. They have several RFAs to deal with including Brett Howden and Nicolas Hague, with Reilly Smith being the only UFA of importance. Due to cap constraints, it’s very likely the Golden Knights let Smith and his $5 million AAV walk into free agency, but it does nothing to alleviate their current $83.866 million problem. Jack Eichel carries a cap hit of $10 million, Mark Stone has a cap hit of $9.5 million, Alex Pietrangelo has a cap hit of $8.8 million, Max Pacioretty has a hit of $7 million, William Karlsson carries $5.9 million, both Shea Theodore and Alec Martinez are upwards of $5.2 million, and Robin Lehner, Evgenii Dadonov, and Jonathan Marchessault bank $5 million each. These are all core players for the Knights but their wheeling and dealing has put them in a really tough spot financially.
The Flyers and Chuck Fletcher need to take advantage of this potential fire-sale because the Golden Knights are going to have to unload more than one premium player. Eichel, Stone, Pietrangelo, Pacioretty, and Lehner are locks to remain on the team, and are players the Flyers shouldn’t target based on their current trajectory. However, one player they should target without a shadow of a doubt is Shea Theodore. The 26 year-old defenseman is signed until the end of the 2024-25 season at a reasonable cap hit of $5.2 million.
Theodore was drafted near the end of the first round in 2013 by the Anaheim Ducks but they traded him to the Golden Knights before the 2017 Expansion Draft because the Ducks were in serious trouble. They had to protect players like Ryan Getzlaf, Kevin Bieksa, and Ryan Kesler because of no-movement clauses, so in order to protect and keep Josh Manson, the Ducks gave Theodore to Vegas if they drafted Clayton Stoner in the expansion draft. It was one of many diamonds-in-the-rough deals the Golden Knights finagled which helped them become an established contender right off the hop.
He’s a key player on the back-end who has recorded 8 goals and 38 points in 64 games this season while averaging 23:29 of ice time. He plays in all situations, is a good skater, a responsible defender, and has a rocket of a slap-shot, which is something the Flyers are currently lacking. In his five years with the Golden Knights, he has scored 47 goals and 192 points in 328 games, while averaging 21:40 of ice time, with a slight increase in TOI every single year. His career high in goals and points were 13 and 46 respectively in 2019-20, in which he tallied 16 power-play points.
With all the bigger names surrounding him, as well as the bigger contracts, the Golden Knights might have to be forced into making a deal of such importance. Dadonov is signed for an additional season at $5 million, so that could hurt the Flyers a little, but the impact that Theodore could make right off the bat is immense for the future of the franchise. We already know that the Flyers are working the phones with other teams about larger moves in the summer, players like James van Riemsdyk ($7 million AAV), Ivan Provorov ($6.75 million AAV), Travis Konecny ($5.5 million AAV), and Travis Sanheim ($4.9 million AAV) have been the major talking points.
If there’s one certainty in relation to Fletcher as a general manager, is that he will always make a big move. He is never shy of picking up the phone and making franchise-altering moves that involve large amounts of money. The Flyers will have around $8 million in open salary next season so trading a contract like van Riemsdyk’s to a rebuilding team while attaching a draft pick will be in the cards for the oft-aggressive front office. They’re trying to contend as soon as next year and a move with Vegas makes a lot of sense under that train of thought.
Theodore would be a boost on the back-end, he’s currently playing better and has a better track record than Provorov, and if the Flyers are actually going to trade the Russian minute-munching rearguard, then replacing him with Theodore is a good start. A Sanheim trade is only in the rumour mill because several teams are knocking on the Flyers’ front door. Extending Rasmus Ristolainen had a lot to do with Sanheim and moving forward they seem confident with Ryan Ellis, Sanheim, and Ristolainen representing three of their top four defensemen.
There is going to be a lot of maneuvering, a lot of money going back and forth, but it’s something the Flyers should complete. The Flyers haven’t been able to take advantage of many situations or general managers in recent history but this is finally their time to strike. They want to re-model their defense, they have space on their books right now for both players if need be, and Dadonov could either stay on the Flyers or they could look to move him, perhaps maybe retaining some salary in his final year. The Flyers will not look the same next year, which is what transpired from 2020-21 to 2021-22, as it’s going to be a nerve-racking summer in terms of player movement, but if they can snatch a player like Theodore from the very cap-strapped Golden Knights, then things will finally be looking better for a change.
