The Philadelphia Flyers might not have a summer filled with general manager Danny Briere and his front office team doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff, but they could still pull off a potentially big move to set the team up for the future.
According to multiple reports, the Carolina Hurricanes are taking calls on 25-year-old forward Martin Necas. The Czech winger who spent most of the year on a very good team’s top-six, could be on his way out due to just a logjam of players and potential contracts.
Necas is a restricted free agent this summer and he is not the only one in that situation in North Carolina. The Hurricanes need to sign fellow restricted free agent Seth Jarvis to a new team and clearly see the 22-year-old winger as more of a long-term option than Necas. Additionally, recently acquired Jake Guentzel, heartbeat of the team Jordan Martinook, stellar bottom-six forward Stefan Noesen, and long-time two-way stalwart Teuvo Teravainen are all set to hit the open market this summer among the forward group. And that’s not even mentioning Jalen Chatfield, Brett Pesce, Brady Skjei, and Tony DeAngelo all being unrestricted free agents on the blue line.
Simply put, the Hurricanes have lots of thinking to do and contracts to offer this summer to try to contend once again. There is flexibility galore and with that, trades can be made for players under team control to potentially flesh out that roster and fill those holes.
Now, this is where the Flyers come into play. According to David Pagnotta over at the sometimes-accurate TheFourthPeriood, the Flyers are one of the teams that have expressed some level of interest in acquiring Necas from the intradivisional team.
And that certainly makes sense. The Flyers themselves have some level of flexibility this summer with the rebuild very much still intact. While there are not many expiring contracts freeing up some cap space — the Flyers actually have the highest cap hit heading into the summer in the entire NHL — they could certainly be spreading that money around the league in the form of selling a whole lot of roster players. Scott Laughton and Rasmus Ristolainen feel like the most obvious candidates to get moved and that is about $8.1 million in cap space right there — just about what it would take to get Necas signed to a new deal, most likely. Interesting.
But does Necas fit into what the Flyers are trying to do? It all depends what they see him as. Necas was originally drafted as a center but has spent most of his time with the Hurricanes on the wing since they have Sebastian Aho, Jordan Staal, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, or Vincent Trocheck in recent seasons — much more natural centermen. If the Flyers view Necas as a potential top-six center, then they could feasibly trade some picks, prospects, or current roster players (because the Hurricanes need to ice an actual team next season) to make it work and give the Czech forward a new home.
And the skill is clearly there. During the 2022-23 season, Necas hit a career-high 71 points in 82 games, and he followed that up with scoring a respectful 53 points in 77 games his most recent season. It’s nothing to scoff at and it most likely will take some solid package to sway the player over to Philadelphia, but it is certainly not impossible, and he could end up being the top offensive weapon for the Flyers as they try to make their way back into playoff contention.
We will just have to see if the Flyers want to make that big splash now or later.
