Today’s draft day! Leading up to the event there have been plenty of rumors of top ten teams shopping their picks and inquiring teams being appalled by the asking price. Specifically, rumors broke Thursday night that the Philadelphia Flyers asked the Columbus Blue Jackets about the availability of pick number four and the cost of doing business was the 12th overall pick, the 32nd overall pick, one of their first rounders next season and a roster player.
In the modern day NHL, meeting price tag on a deal like that is practically unheard of, but for the Flyers, it’s not nearly as scary as it seems at face value.
First and foremost, the inclusion of a “roster player” is a pretty big variable in the whole thing. Is it a cap dump like Cam Atkinson to avoid using a buyout? Is it a depth player like Scott Laughton? Or is it a younger main roster piece with potential upside like Morgan Frost or Joel Farabee? Because each category changes the value that “roster player” brings to the table drastically.
Atkinson would make sense in this trade, as the longtime Blue Jacket still lives in Columbus and the basement dwelling team is probably open to add assets to eat a bad contract. Clearing his $5.8 million cap hit in its entirety would do wonders for the Flyers heading into the offseason, and could very well be worth incorporating the 32nd overall pick into a trade.
If it was someone like Laughton, whom the Flyers’ front office has been holding team’s feet to the fire for a literal year now trying to get max value for him via trade, and it has yet to materialize. It seems unlikely the Flyers would throw him in with three additional first rounders to move up, and it also feels like a bizarre addition for the non-competing Blue Jackets to make other than to flip him at the deadline.
That leaves someone like Farabee, who could very well be the odd man out with Michkov arriving, as the roster player in the deal. The 24-year-old forward was a 14th overall pick back in 2017. While he hasn’t done anything overly spectacular at the NHL level, and his contract (4 x $5 mil) isn’t great value, he’s still one of the Flyers’ best trade chips at the moment and should negate the addition of one of the first rounders in the deal.
Speaking of first round picks, three is a rather steep asking price for Columbus, but it’s not necessarily an outrageous ask when considering where those picks lie. Moving up from 12, which is the “crapshoot” section of the draft is a good thing. Losing 32 shouldn’t really mean all that much. Sure it’s a first round pick technically and could be used to snag a faller in the rankings, but on the whole, the chance for star power is pretty low in that range.
It also seems worth noting that the Flyers have two potential second round picks this year. Columbus can choose to give Philly their pick this year or next, this year’s being 36th overall, and the Flyers have their compensatory pick from not signing Jay O’Brien which will be 51st overall. Plus they own two seconds in 2025 as well. If Briere wanted to move up into the late first round to replace 32, it should absolutely be doable.
The Flyers hold two selections in the 2025 entry draft- their own and Colorado’s, which is top 10 protected. It’s unlikely the Avalanche are anything shy of a playoff team next year, but the protected pick means the Flyers won’t reap any substantial rewards if a collapse were to actually happen. That leaves them with their own pick. While the Flyers aren’t going to be a Cup team next season, they’re still expected to be a playoff bubble team again, meaning their own pick could be in a similar 12 to 16 range.
This year, the Flyers finished 12th and Colorado finished 24th. If the results are similar (or potentially worse if both team make and succeed in the playoffs) then those picks aren’t particularly valuable. If the Flyers were rebuilding properly and a bottom ten finish was the expectation, maybe dealing their own pick would be met with pause, but their goal is to compete, and thus, another pick in the early-to-mid teens is the assumption.
And the 2025 draft is still a year away. Burning a pick or two from that draft doesn’t really mean anything of consequence yet. They’ve got 365 days to replenish. If they really want to add an additional future first round pick they could always TRADE TRAVIS KONECNY INSTEAD OF HANDING HIM A GIGANTIC CONTRACT after all.
This is a kind of situation where the Flyers need to put up or shut up. They keep using the word rebuild but are attempting to compete on the ice. That lunacy has put them in a position where if they want to draft an impact player of substance then meeting an asking price of a team that is actually losing and rebuilding is just part of the gig they signed up for, whether that be this year or next. They can do both. They can attempt to make the playoffs and then hope to draft high, but they’re at the mercy of what those teams force them to pay. It’s part of the cost of doing business in the reality the Flyers have chosen to live.
Is there anybody the Flyers could take at 4 that’s worth the price tag? Who knows. The absurdity of this draft being a complete cluster behind Macklin Celebrini seems to indicate that a “home run” may not be as easy to scope out as it would be some other years, but at the same time, 4 holds better odds of producing a competent NHLer than 12 does.
At face value, the asking price of three firsts and a roster player is scary, but when broken down, it’s not nearly as concerning as it seems. It’s not to say it’s cheap or painless but, especially if the roster player is a cap dump like Atkinson, it could be a decent trade off.
Chances are, a deal won’t go down until tonight on the draft floor based on how the top three picks fall. If the Flyers have Ivan Demidov in their sights and both Chicago and Anaheim pick someone other than him, Briere could very well cough up the assets to make the deal. It’s a level of risk the Flyer haven’t seen in well over a decade and definitely paints the front office in a much better light with their “rebuilding while attempting to compete” gimmick. So where do the chips fall? We’ll just have to pull up a seat and hope the Flyers are ready to wheel and deal in Vegas tonight.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
brotherlypuck.com 