On the back of a second consecutive game where the Flyers got shutout and just five weeks before the NHL trade deadline, Danny Briere finally made a move! He dealt Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee to the Calgary Flames in exchange for wingers Andrei Kuzmenko, Jakob Pelletier and a pair of draft picks in the wee hours Friday morning.
Kuzmenko, 29, is a pending unrestricted free agent this summer and hasn’t really done much of note in the NHL since his 39-goal, 74-point rookie season in 2022-23. He has 15 points in 37 games this season. It is widely speculated by fans on Twitter that he and John Tortorella won’t exactly be besties given his on-ice conditioning issues.
Pelletier, 23 with a birthday in March, was a former 26th overall pick in 2019. He has 21 points in 61 career NHL games sprinkled over the last three seasons. He’s currently on a one-year, $800,000 deal that leaves him an RFA this summer.
They also picked up Calgary’s 2025 second round pick and their 2028 seventh round pick.
If you’re a regular reader here, you know we haven’t exactly been fans of the way Danny Briere has been operating over the last calendar year. The stagnation that lasted through the 2024 offseason leading to an identical, mediocre product during the 24-25 season has been painful to sit through and built up plenty of doubt in his abilities to lead the team.
As a fan, even though this wasn’t an Earth-shattering trade, it feels so damn good knowing the on-ice product will be slightly different next game. The roster has been so stale for so long that ditching two guys who were the pillars of the “why are you not better than you are” condition afflicting the team is a ray of sunshine in a increasingly dark situation.
At this point, swapping out multiple pieces, even if it just accumulates to moving deck chairs, is way better than doing nothing. It makes you want to turn on the TV during the next game and see what the new blood can do, rather than making every excuse under the sun to avoid watching the Flyers roll out the exact same group they have for nearly two full seasons. Change is good!
And credit to Briere on the timing of this trade. He didn’t wait five more weeks for the deadline and give more time for the ship to sink or public opinion to get worse. Even if this deal has minor consequences, it staves off the growing unhappiness and criticism that was quickly approaching a rapid boil. He may have just saved his own ass and bought some good grace and patience for the summer when he can work a little more freely.
The biggest win here was moving Joel Farabee’s $5 million cap hit (for three more years) in its entirety. Considering they have to re-sign Cam York and Tyson Foerster this summer and didn’t have any money coming off the books naturally, this was going to have to be addressed sooner or later. So to be able to clear it and get paid to do it, it’s easily the biggest win of Briere’s tenure as GM so far.
Losing Frost without adding a center back is interesting. The Flyers were incredibly shallow at the position of center with Frost, but now without him they’ve got Noah Cates, Sean Couturier and Rodrigo Abols holding down the fort, which is… not great. Presumably Scott Laughton shifts back to center for the time being, a position that hasn’t suited him well in years, and Ryan Poehling will take over for Abols whenever he’s healthy.
This move didn’t really indicate whether or not they’re taking the path as buyers or sellers ahead of the deadline, however. They replaced two random dudes with two random dudes more so in the name of change than picking a direction. But they’ve still got over a month to figure things out ahead of the deadline. Now it’s about Briere doing more, but for the first time in nearly two years, Danny Briere has some good grace and a little bit of trust ahead of the trade deadline.
Let’s see what else he can do.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: Getty Images
brotherlypuck.com 