Back on opening night before the puck dropped to signal the start of the 2022-23 NHL campaign, The Flyers inked 27-year-old defenseman Travis Sanheim to a massive eight-year, $50 million ($6.25 mil aav) contract extension. It was a mind-bogglingly stupid move at the time and looked substantially dumber as the Flyers officially entered a rebuild less than 12 months later.
As Briere gets to work during his first summer of GM, there have been plenty rumors flying after his blockbuster trade featuring Ivan Provorov a few weeks ago. Travis Konecny, Scott Laughton, Carter Hart and Kevin Hayes have all heard their names whispered in the rumor mill, but recently Travis Sanheim found himself on the block, despite his new contract lingering overhead.
Sanheim’s new contract (and subsequent full no-movement clause) doesn’t kick in until July 1st. Until then, the Flyers have carte blanche to trade him, meaning Briere has to craft a deal in the next-week-and-a-half before the NTC headache starts.
Frank Seravalli spun the Sanheim extension in an interesting way on DailyFaceoff on Tuesday-
“The big question: Given the thin free agent crop, would a team sign Sanheim to that contract if he hit the free agent market? The answer is likely yes, as it will look more and more reasonable as the cap continues to increase. What could the Flyers get? The value may be in not having Sanheim on their books at all.”
When stated that way, it’s makes far more sense and is substantially less intimidating than pulling up his CapFriendly page and the overwhelming dread of seeing him under contract until 2031.
Calgary Flames’ defenseman MacKenzie Weegar and Columbus Blue Jackets’ defenseman Damon Severson are on recently-signed matching eight-year, $50 million contracts, and Ryan Pulock, Hampus Lindholm, Colton Parayko and Jonas Brodin are all on similar ranging contracts as well. It’s just a ballpark number of what slightly above average defensemen are going for these days.
Briere does have a built in alibi when it comes to dealing Sanheim- it’s Chuck Fletcher. Re-signing Sanheim was an incredibly ill-advised move at the time, and aged like milk in the sun when the Flyers unsurprisingly sucked for another season that cost Fletcher his job and left an unsightly extension on the books until 2031 when the team has admitted to entering a full-on rebuild.
Briere doesn’t have to get a major return for the guy, just managing to get his contract off the books is a win at this point. Even if the return is close to nothing, maybe just a mid-round pick, it’s the price of undoing a stupid move by his predecessor as the organization goes in a different direction, not the fault of Briere being bad at negotiating.
The same line of thought really works for DeAngelo too. There’s practically no way the Flyers can deal him and get a return close to what Fletcher paid for him last summer, but if they can move the last year of his deal and get, say, a third rounder in return, hey at least he’s off the books, a mistake has been removed and it’s a win moving forward, all despite the fact they may be a net-negative trade when looking at the assets they got in return.
Briere and Jones have stated that this rebuild is going to focus on (once again) fixing the blueline. And if Sanheim is here for the next eight years, not only does that mean a mediocre player is stuck on the roster, it means it’s actively taking away a spot from prospects who are more than likely better players than Sanheim ever will be. He’s just a big stupid wrench in a game of defensive hot potato among the young guys looking to make an NHL impact.
Recently, the Flyers and Travis Konecny have been linked to the Oilers and Philip Broberg, a struggling 22-year-old defense prospect with some potential left to be unearthed. Though with Cam York, Egor Zamula Nick Seeler and Travis Sanheim fighting for a spot on the left side, it didn’t make much sense for the Flyers to add another body who may not be better than anybody else. But if Sanheim is off the books, not only do the Flyers save $5 million in cap going from Sanheim to Broberg, but it actually gives him an uncontested NHL spot to actually play and develop.
At the end of the day, extending Travis Sanheim before puck drop on opening night in 2022 will go down as potentially Chuck Fletcher’s dumbest move as GM. If Danny Briere can manage to get his contract extension off the books before the July 1st deadline, he’d be a hero. Not only would the fans love him for it, it will make his own job significantly easier over the coming years, even if the Broberg deal never materializes.
Briere is going to have his plate at overflowing levels of full over the next 10 days with the draft, free agency and about half a dozen players in his own roster to potentially deal away. Even though they need to get good value back for guys like Konecny and Laughton, sometimes addition by subtraction is the best thing for the team moving forward, and clearing Sanheim’s gargantuan extension before it officially kicks in is a saving grace for the next decade of Flyers hockey.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: nhl.com
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