It’s been barely a week since the Flyers traded Scott Laughton, Andrei Kuzmenko and Erik Johnson at this year’s trade deadline. We’ve written extensively about these trades here at Broad Street Hockey, and we’re going to highlight one more aspect: how all three players were sent to a desirable location despite a lack of trade protection. Laughton’s now playing for his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs; Johnson spent over a decade with the Colorado Avalanche and won a Stanley Cup there. The only exception might be Kuzmenko but, considering his brief tenure as a Flyer, he hadn’t “earned” the right to choose a destination–though to be fair, there are worse things to do than chase a Stanley Cup in sunny Los Angeles.
A lot has been said about the ability of Philadelphia to attract important free agents or get contract extensions done if this rebuild is to succeed. An eccentric head coach much of the league doesn’t want to play for, years of missing the playoffs, and over a decade of mediocrity aren’t going to lure top-end players here–and that says nothing of the ~taxes~. Danny Briere and Keith Jones have their work cut out for them rebuilding not just the roster, but the image of the Philadelphia Flyers to players around the league.
Before the salary cap, the Flyers could pay whoever they wanted as much as was necessary to get them to sign; Ed Snider wasn’t concerned about money as long as it brought the team closer to winning a Cup. It’s taken quite a while for the Flyers, as an organization, to lose that “spend, spend, spend” mentality in a cap world. They handed out bloated contracts to players who didn’t deserve them (lookin’ at you, Andrew MacDonald and Ilya Bryzgalov), thus hamstringing their ability to support their best players with high-end reinforcements. Now, in a cap world, every team has to operate under those guidelines, and with top free agents getting similar contact offers, players are looking at more than money when it comes to choosing a destination.
Take Mikko Rantanen, for example: he signed an eight-year, $12-million AAV contract with the Dallas Stars last week. There were reports that he was offered even more by the Carolina Hurricanes, but he ultimately decided he didn’t want to play there. We’ll never know Rantanen’s exact reasons but, from the outside, ownership’s penny-pinching, hardball tactics, and underwhelming investment in the team may’ve played a role. Carolina ran away with “worst facilities in the league” in the player poll linked above, and owner Tom Dundon is reviled by agents everywhere.
So how are the Flyers going to set themselves apart from other franchises? It starts with taking into account that the players are people, too, and not just video game characters you can joystick around. For years, many of us have bemoaned how being a Flyer gives you an inside track to a front office job with the organization that you may not be qualified for. Hell, the two most powerful people in the organization are former Flyers! It doesn’t have to be that high stakes though, and last week’s deadline shows a methodology that favors players, but not at the expense of improving the team or overcommitting to “good soldiers” in front office positions they have no business being in. It can also be as simple as management passing through the locker room after a game and building that connection with the players.
In a recent interview, Briere said there were numerous teams calling about Laughton. He didn’t go into the specifics of offers received but, considering the deal the Flyers ultimately accepted, one has to imagine there were 1st-round picks involved. Laughton, of course, has zero trade protections on his contract, and the Flyers could’ve sent him to Winnipeg if the Jets made the best offer. They didn’t do that, though–they traded him to his hometown team, close to his family where his father-in-law recently passed away unexpectedly. The Flyers sent a veteran player to a team they knew he’d be happy to join in a place he’d be pleased to live–they did as right by Laughton as they could have under the circumstances.
Then, you have Erik Johnson, a veteran, pending-UFA defenseman without trade protections on his contract. The Flyers could’ve sent him wherever a good offer came from (or not moved him at all), but instead they returned him to the team he got a ring with in exchange for Givani Smith who, fun as he may be, is an AHLer. Johnson was contemplating retirement at the end of last season, so these are surely his last few months in the league–and the Flyers sent him to a place they knew he’d be happy to retire.
Doing right by a player is not nothing, and others in the league will notice that: if you pay your dues and put in the effort, the Flyers will do what they can to do right by you. That was a big part of the organization’s allure in the Snider days, and it kind of got lost over time. It’s harder for franchises to stand out when everyone is under the same spending restrictions, but every organization has to find its niche and use that as a lure to get players to sign. Briere and co. are trying to restore that old appeal, and how they handled last week’s deadline hints at part of their approach.