Why the Flyers havent been active before NHL trade deadline day

Publish date: 2024-05-23

The 2023 NHL trade deadline has been a firestorm of activity. Since the blockbuster deal that sent Dmitry Orlov and Garnet Hathaway to Boston on Feb. 23, there have been a whopping 36 trades executed in just over a week.

The Philadelphia Flyers have been involved in one of them: sending out-of-favor prospect Isaac Ratcliffe to Nashville … for nothing.

“Yeah. It’s a waiting game now,” Justin Braun said on Thursday.

No kidding.

It’s not that things haven’t happened in Flyers World this week. Head coach John Tortorella delivered the two-pronged “we’re not making the playoffs” and “we’re selling” announcement on Monday, and then a day later, general manager Chuck Fletcher all but announced a full-fledged organizational pivot to a rebuild (but not tanking) mentality.

Lots of talk. No real trades. And the result is a fan base waiting with justified impatience and players wondering when — if ever — the last shoe is going to drop.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of talk,” Patrick Brown said, referring to the locker room — not the front office’s preference thus far for stating their future intentions rather than executing on them. “You know, it’s our job. We’ve got the NHL Network on, so we see the trades coming across the bottom there.”

But none have included the Flyers. And with just hours remaining before the 3 p.m. ET deadline on Friday, there’s not much time left. Why has this turned into, as Braun put it, a “waiting game”?

In short, it boils down to this: the Flyers don’t have the kind of assets that other teams believe deserve to be prioritized. They’re either fallback rentals, or veterans that would require the kind of complex negotiations that don’t usually go down at the deadline. Acquiring an available Flyer is either so simple that it could happen with seconds to spare before the deadline, or so complicated that it might not even be possible until the summer.

That’s a recipe for “last-minute” trade deadline in Philadelphia.

James van Riemsdyk, of course, leads the list of likely players to be moved. He’s now No. 1 on The Athletic’s Trade Board, and he’s very much available to the highest bidder. But that a trade hasn’t yet been executed has some fans worried that he might not be moved at all.

“We’ll see,” van Riemsdyk said on Tuesday. “We could we could be here chatting again on Saturday, maybe. You never know.”

Still, it would take a failure of epic proportions on the part of the Flyers front office for JvR — who is very much not in the organization’s future plans — to still be in Philadelphia come the weekend.

Yes, van Riemsdyk is struggling at the moment, which Tortorella himself even said on Tuesday, in what might go down as one of the worst trade deadline sales pitches by a head coach in recent memory. But Teddy Blueger brought back a third-round pick this week. So did Pierre Engvall. Gustav Nyquist doesn’t even have a timeline for return from his injury, and he warranted a fifth-round pick. The idea that there is no market at all for van Riemsdyk — who for all his faults still has graded out well by play-driving metrics this season and has scored like a low-end second-line forward at five-on-five as well (1.70 Points/60) — is difficult to swallow, doomer concerns in the Flyers fan base notwithstanding. Someone is going to want JvR, right?

That said, they’re probably not going to be willing to pay a ton for him. Fletcher’s decision to dress van Riemsdyk in Wednesday’s game against the Rangers hinted as much.

During the broadcast, TNT’s Jackie Redmond reported that Fletcher “never even considered” scratching van Riemsdyk for trade-related reasons, vowing instead to “put the best team that he (could) on the ice.” But that’s a patently ridiculous explanation, given that just last season, Fletcher scratched Claude Giroux (return: first- and third-round picks and Owen Tippett) and Braun (third-rounder) in the games before their respective trades. It’s not like Fletcher has been philosophically opposed to the practice in the past.

Last deadline, however, Fletcher did dress Derick Brassard for the final pre-deadline game, and that was telling. He clearly didn’t see Brassard — who ultimately brought back a 2023 fourth-round pick — as worthy of “protection” due to the likely-to-be-lackluster return. Instead, Fletcher probably hoped that JvR would deliver a big final night in Philadelphia that would catch the attention of interested clubs and lead to them upping their offers. (He didn’t.)

My guess is that draft-pick wise, the Flyers might still be able to swing a third-round pick for van Riemsdyk. Or maybe, Fletcher gets creative, as he tried to do when he injected JvR into the Denis Gurianov sweepstakes this week. Either way, however, a van Riemsdyk trade should be viewed as a near-certainty, even if it takes a little extra effort to deliver JvR the news.

“Yeah, I actually keep my phone on airplane mode for most of the time, so they’re gonna have to send a smoke signal or something,” he joked this week.

Then, there are the Flyers’ other two notable rentals: Braun and Patrick Brown.

Braun, of course, has been through all of this before, as he was shipped out by Fletcher at last year’s deadline as well. This is old hat to him at this point.

“I probably won’t even be paying attention to it much, I’ll be watching the kids,” he said on Thursday. “On a day off (from practice), usually that’s my job.”

Brown, on the other hand, is in the midst of his first full NHL season, and still is holding out hope that the team that gave him that shot might choose to hold onto him and discuss the possibility of a 2023-24 return.

If either garner interest on Friday, however, they’ll gone.

Neither will have clubs banging down the door to acquire them. But Braun at the very least should bring back a late-round pick, and Brown very well could, too. Braun fits as a depth right-handed defenseman capable of blocking shots and suppressing chances— a solid insurance policy to sit in the press box during the playoffs in case injuries ravage a team’s blue-line corps. Brown is basically the forward version of Braun, except replace blocked shots with faceoff wins. It’s not difficult to imagine a contender seeing Brown as a useful 14th forward who could see action if a specific matchup requires a strong righthanded faceoff man to come off the bench as a mid-series adjustment.

Van Riemsdyk, Braun and Brown are the “simple” negotiations — either teams want them, or they don’t. Nick Seeler would be similarly easy to move, if the Flyers have a mind to cash in on his solid season rather than keep him as a cheap third-pair blueliner for 2023-24.

Kevin Hayes and Ivan Provorov, however? That’s a different story.

Let’s start with Hayes. There remains no guarantee that the Flyers move him at the deadline, due to all the hurdles that must be cleared to do it. Hayes has three more years left on his contract, at a whopping $7.14 million cap hit that no team is likely to take on without significant salary retention. And then there’s the 12-team no-trade clause, which cuts down on his potential market even further. A Hayes trade was never going to be easy to pull off, even if the Flyers were motivated to move him.

The events of this week, however, sure make it seem like the Flyers are motivated to move him.

First, there was Fletcher’s response on Tuesday to the direct question regarding whether the soon-to-be-31-year-old Hayes fits the timeline of the Flyers’ new rebuilding strategy, and if he could be moved either at the deadline or in the summer as a result.

“Yeah, potentially. It’s a fair question,” Fletcher acknowledged.

That’s about as straight-up of a “yes, this guy doesn’t fit with our plans anymore” as a GM is ever going to provide on the record to the media.

Then, two days later, Tortorella further hinted at a looming divorce between the Flyers and Hayes.

“I think you’re always trying to improve your team. OK?” he said when asked about Hayes. “And when players are getting up in the 30s — and we’re in this process here trying to get younger but also try to stay competitive while we’re doing that — his name has to be brought up. It has to be talked about.”

OK then.

Hayes, for his part, doesn’t want to leave.

“I love it here,” he said. “I love my teammates. I love the city. I love the fans. Organization’s great.”

And while Hayes and Tortorella have butted heads at times this season, it’s not like the situation between player and coach is untenable. Sure, they have their disagreements; after all, Hayes is still playing the wing. But they’re not at each other’s heels.

“Torts and I are fine,” Hayes said Tuesday. “He has an opinion on my game. I have an opinion on my game. We meet in the middle.”

Tortorella concurred.

“I’ve been very honest with Kevin as we’ve gone through here. You guys think we argue but we don’t,” he said. “We’ve handled ourselves as two men just speaking on situations, whether it be his play, whether it be the deadline, where he fits. Those have been honest conversations between him and I.”

But the organizational concerns about Hayes’ fit are very real. His age makes him not ideally suited for a rebuild that very likely will outlast his remaining three contract years. And his biggest selling point — the main reason why he was signed by Fletcher in the first place back in 2019 — was his ability to be a solid second line center, a position still of great need for Philadelphia.

Under Tortorella, he’s barely played in the middle since November.

“I don’t know if they see me as a center here in the long run. I’ve read that they need centers,” Hayes said with a slight smirk on Tuesday.

Kevin Hayes. (Kyle Ross / USA Today)

In other words, the writing is on the wall for a Hayes trade on the Flyers’ end. Hayes may love his teammates and think he can be part of the solution here. But it doesn’t sound like those above him are nearly as convinced.

Does it happen on Friday? I’m skeptical. But it sure sounds like it’s coming.

And finally, we come to Provorov.

Provorov, regardless of his eye-catching re-emergence in trade rumors this week, has long been “available” — basically since January. My understanding has always been that it’s less about the Flyers being desperate to jettison him, and more both sides coming to a conclusion that everyone might benefit from a parting of the ways at some point.

Tortorella praised Provorov on Thursday when asked about the blueliner. But he also didn’t hide the fact that Provorov hasn’t always been happy this season.

“When I first started coaching him, I’m sure he doesn’t like some of the things that have gone on, as far as conversations at certain times this year,” Tortorella said. “Which is, to me, it’s just another day at the office when that happens. I think if there’s honesty between a player and a coach, there’s always going to be disagreements. But as long as you handle it the right way, saying it to the person, and him saying it to you, whatever he needs to say — which he has, of which I have done — then let’s go.”

Tortorella specifically has appreciated the fact that Provorov has continued to keep his head down and work, in spite of those disagreements. But he didn’t try to hide the fact that there has been conflict.

“He has been a great competitor,” Tortorella said. “Has handled a lot of things that we’ve asked him, as begrudgingly and probably is still upset of some things that have gone on. But he goes out and plays every night. So I don’t have one problem with the way Provy’s handled himself this year and how he’s played. So not sure where it’s all coming from here, as far as his name being popped up.”

My read? The status quo surrounding Provorov is basically the same. He’ll end up with a new team at some point down the road. But the Flyers haven’t suddenly become more motivated to move him immediately; there’s no newfound urgency here.

As with Hayes, there’s likely an internal front office hope that the rapidly-shrinking number of players available on deadline day leads a desperate team or two to up their offers into a range that the Flyers would deem acceptable. And perhaps that does happen. Hayes strikes me as a more likely candidate than Provorov, due to the fact that the front office appears significantly more motivated to move Hayes at the moment. Provorov, given his contract and age, however, would almost certainly have more trade value.

So what is the likeliest outcome for the Flyers on deadline day? It’s nearly impossible to envision a scenario in which no moves are made. But it’s very possible that the deadline proves a humdrum one for Philadelphia: they trade van Riemsdyk for a middling return, nab late-round picks for Braun and Brown, and then call it a day.

Yes, the waiting will cease. But be prepared for the strong possibility that the NHL Network ticker won’t be lit up with an eye-catching Flyers trade in the lead-up or immediate aftermath of the deadline.

(Top photo of James van Riemsdyk: Eric Hartline / USA Today)

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Why the Flyers havent been active before NHL trade deadline day