Morgan Frost, the now 25-year-old former 27th overall pick in 2017, is one of the more polarizing figures on the Philadelphia Flyers’ roster today. Depending on who you ask, he’s the greatest hockey player to lace up a pair of skates since Wayne Gretzky, while others will tell you he’s a dime-a-dozen average dude who, after all these years, still haven’t carved out a niche in the NHL.
His skills have improved year over year and he’s, by default, the “best” option the Flyers currently have down the middle, mainly because the Flyers’ in-house options at center are limited to say the least. Their main roster group of Sean Couturier, Scott Laughton, Ryan Poehling and Morgan Frost may be among the least intimidating foursome in the league, and their pipeline took a massive hit when Cutter Gauthier wanted out and that leaves Jett Luchanko, the 13th overall pick in 2024, as the lone notable prospect in the near future.
Frost, who will turn 26 shortly after the conclusion of the 2024-25 season, is a pending restricted free agent and the Flyers are faced with a question- do they keep the same tired player or do they move on from him and find center help elsewhere?
Keep
Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with Morgan Frost topping out as a middle-six, 50-point player. It’s a perfectly fine bar to hit as an everyday NHLer. It may not be what everyone envisioned when he was drafted, but he’s come a long way at the professional level from where he was when he debuted in 2019. The problem is a majority of the Flyers’ roster tops out as random middle-six 50-point dudes and Frost doesn’t have the favor of Tortorella to stand above the painfully average crowd.
The 2025 offseason bears yet another dry free agent class for reinforcements down the middle and most trades are way too rich for the Flyers’ stingy blood these days, and that’s where the argument for keeping Frost starts. There’s no bonafide upgrade to be had, so they have to keep the one guy that’s slightly capable until an outside option can be attained.
Moving on from Frost just to hand a massive deal to someone like Nick Bjugstad as a desperation move to just have a fourth body at center doesn’t really make any sense. Or do they throw all their eggs in the basket of Jett Luchanko again at age 19 and just hope he’s a top guy out of the gate?
Frost may not be the guy, but at this point in time there’s no outside obvious guy to chase down and replace him with.
Trade
As a restricted free agent already coming off a bridge deal, another short-term cheap contract may not be quite as easy to hammer out. Frost may not be very good, but he’s got the leverage to ask for more money as the de facto top center on the roster. And given how the Flyers hand out massive contracts like halloween candy, they may not even try to low ball him in the first place. They’ve already painted themselves into a corner financially, they can’t really afford to do it with Frost too, and that’s where a trade may come in.
The obvious question when it comes to trading Frost is what is his value on the market? The reality is that it’s probably pretty low if the Flyers were going to sell him individually. A 40-point 25-year-old isn’t exactly a hot commodity for most teams, unless they see him more as a rehab project, but even still, that isn’t prime value in a trade. Though it is worth noting that many teams seem to be looking for center depth. It may artificially inflate his value a bit, but if the Flyers are trying to sell him because he can’t sustain play as a top six center, someone probably isn’t going to go out of their way to acquire him for a role on their team either.
Their best bet is to bundle him with someone like Joel Farabee, whose contract is going to be a big hinderance from getting peak value for him, and hope that two younger players with ceilings that aren’t materializing in Philly could be enough to at least snag one player that’s a better fit for the Flyers’ immediate needs.
The hope was that Matvei Michkov would elevate the game of Frost, but that hasn’t been the case. In fact, Frost has been the center who has played the most minutes with Michkov and if anything, both statistically and analytically, the case can be made that Frost is dragging Michkov down, not riding his coattails to success.
Conclusion
The Flyers have a pretty massive problem at center the front office has just openly chosen to ignore for years now. Their last real attempt at a band-aid was signing Kevin Hayes, which was nearly six years ago already.
They named Sean Couturier captain and he’s got five years left on his contract, they’ve refused to trade Scott Laughton at any point over the last few years, so it’s growing increasingly safe to assume he sees out the rest of his contract here, and they have Ryan Poehling under contract for another year for… reasons. They seem committed to this group for better or worse, with Frost being the only outlier at center where an upgrade would be feasible.
It’s really no secret Torts hasn’t been the biggest fan of Morgan Frost. Tortorella has had very little patience with him since the beginning of his tenure behind the bench. And it still feels like Frost is having to remain on his best behavior to be handed even just basic responsibilities, let alone break free of the short leash he’s been on for two years now. And after the 2023 offseason where everyone who opposed Tortorella got shipped out of town or demoted to the AHL, the fact Frost remained on the roster beyond then is a borderline miracle.
But that highlights the problem- he’s here because they really don’t have a choice. A weak in-house center group, no immediate internal help and continued weak free agent pools and overpriced trade targets has left them with little choice but to keep running back Frost even when it’s clearly not working.
On the other hand, the fact that the Flyers keep signing and running back near identical rosters year over year is why they never make any real progress. Trading away Frost and bringing in a short-term stop gap like Bjugstad, as mentioned earlier, may not be guaranteed progress, but at least it’s something different, which may be enough to spark an ember of change throughout the forward group.
At some point, both the front office and fanbase need to get over the love affair with mediocre, unexceptional players. Does Frost have more to give at the NHL level? Possibly. The flashes of raw potential are there from time to time, but he’ll never achieve his peak in this lineup with this coach, and the Flyers won’t make progress relying on the mythical two-point-per-game pace he had in juniors to materialize at the NHL.
We’re six years into Frost’s time with the Flyers. He is what he is. There’s no magic breakout coming. There’s no untapped ceiling he’s going to hit. The Flyers need to properly address the center position if they ever hope to be competitive. They don’t necessarily need to move Frost to make that happen, but there’s no good reason to bring him back again either, especially if they somehow manage to snag a bonafide top six center to hold down the fort.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit:
brotherlypuck.com 