The main point of contention and debate between fans of the Philadelphia Flyers this summer has to be whether or not they want the team to re-sign winger Travis Konecny. The team’s no-doubt offensive leader has just one year remaining on his current contract, will become an unrestricted free agent after next season, and the team can sign him to an extension as early as July 1.
Essentially, they have just a few weeks (and an entry draft) to not have the fan biting all their fingernails off, waiting in anticipation for the signing or trade announcement.
While nothing can be made official quite yet, the two parties are clearly in talks and negotiations about what they view as a potential future in Philadelphia. In a recent interview with The Athletic’s Pierre Lebrun, Flyers general manager Danny Briere made it clear that no matter what, he wants Konecny to stay in Philadelphia beyond just this upcoming season.
“One thing is, we’re not going to negotiate through the media, and we agreed with his group that we wouldn’t do that,” Briere said. “The one thing I can tell you is that we love him. We love him as a player. He knows that. His agency knows that. He’s an important part of our team.
“And we hope that we have Travis Konecny with the Flyers for a very long time. But we’ll see what happens in the future with that.”
It is the everlasting tug-o-war between deciding to re-sign or trade the player this summer. Konecny is certainly a player that most teams want in their lineup — a competitive, grind-it-out winger that can score 80 points in the right environment. And they might end up having to pay quite a high price for him, that would certainly accelerate the Flyers’ current rebuild and add a player or two in their current crop of young, talented players who should remain with this team for a quite a long time, as well.
But on the other hand, Konecny is exactly the type of player that the Flyers will eventually want when they want to make a big splash as a regular playoff contender. So, if they can’t get enough of a trade return for him, should they just keep him and let him gracefully age in the place where he feels destined to be?
We won’t be diving deep into the debate (that will be another article later on, most likely) but we know the obvious, and that’s the general manager who is currently in a contract negotiation with his best player likes to talk him up to the media.
In other news that Briere spilled in the discussion with The Athletic, the topic of bringing back perfect-fit defenseman Sean Walker as a free agent was brought up, and unfortunately for all of us who like a competent blueliner, it’s a tricky one.
“Yeah, because of the cap, because of the guys we have to try and re-sign, it makes it tough,” Briere said. “Obviously we think very highly of him. … It hurt losing him down the stretch, there’s no doubt about that. But where we’re at — how we’re positioned with our cap situation — it kind of makes it tough where we realize he’s going to command probably more money than we have available this summer.”
Before any signing is made this summer, the Flyers currently have the highest cap hit in the entire NHL with roughly $500,000 in cap space heading into the offseason. That will obviously change with any trade they make (looking at Scott Laughton and Rasmus Ristolainen, specifically) but it is a whole lot of money tied up into, well, what Briere himself calls “dead money”.
“It’s a little bit of a weird offseason for us,” he said. “We have a lot of dead money going into next year. Part of it is our fault. We did that to position ourselves better for the future. But it’s kind of tied our hands this summer as far as free agency goes. … I would say don’t expect much movement from us, as far as free agency. But you know, we’re always open to hockey trades if there’s something that makes sense to help our team, both in the future but also in the short term if it fits our timeline.”
The dead money on the Flyers’ cap next season includes a $1.66-million buyout cap charge for one Tony DeAngelo, $3.57 million in retained salary on Kevin Hayes’s trade to the St. Louis Blues, $6.25 million on LTIR for Ryan Ellis plus one final year of Cal Petersen at $5 million. And that isn’t even including a player like Ristolainen who ended last year on Injured Reserve and Sean Couturier who feels just one bad bump away from being out another whole season — that’s almost an additional $13 million right there.
There are simply a lot of players the Flyers are currently paying to not play for the Flyers. And even some players — like Cam Atkinson and his $5.875-million cap hit for one more year — who are playing for the team take up a large chunk of the cap and will be playing lower in the lineup than what a player earning their salary should.
While it looks extremely bad right now, the Flyers will certainly make some moves to free up some cap space this upcoming season. Whether that is a trade of a roster player or maybe a contract buyout, something will be done and we should have a clearer picture if Travis Konecny is going to be here for a long time.
