Happy Deadline Day, Flyers fans!
For the first time in (what feels like, at least) a long time, this ought to be a busy day for Chuck Fletcher and the Flyers organization. The word “ought” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence but hey, we’re just a bunch of hopeful idiots over here at Broad Street Hockey. Just to run things down, for posterity, the following Flyers have found themselves to be a part of trade rumors over the last few weeks. Some rumors more likely or reliable than others, but an exhaustive list feels appropriate:
- Claude Giroux
- Justin Braun
- Martin Jones
- Derrick Brassard
- Keith Yandle
- Ivan Provorov
- Travis Sanheim
Obviously the biggest rumors heading into the weekend surrounded Claude Giroux, the Flyers’ most valuable trade piece and arguably the biggest name that will be moved during this year’s deadline frenzy. Chuck Fletcher made a trade with the Florida Panthers Saturday afternoon, as you all know. With the Captain out of the picture, the focus turns to the smaller pieces.
The next four on that list are on expiring contracts, which makes them attractive to clubs making a push this year who need some depth or shoring up but have no interest in long-term commitment. A team may look to Martin Jones as a bit of an insurance policy in goal; a team might look at Justin Braun as a steady veteran who can shore up their blueline depth ahead of the bruising madness of the NHL playoffs. Maybe some GM thinks Keith Yandle is a nice man and they would like to have him around to say “sonk” in the locker room, for morale. Derrick Brassard is another good depth piece for a team going on a run. These are the kind of mid-tier players that get moved a lot at the deadline, because when you’re trying to win a Stanley Cup you can never really have too many useful warm bodies at your disposal.
Sanheim and Provorov are a much different story; each of the defensemen have been named in very speculative ways by trusted sources like Elliotte Friedman in his 32 Thoughts column, as well as all over social media by…well, less trusted sources. Would we pull up DraftKings and try to place a bet on either of those two defensemen being traded? No, absolutely not. But like we said, exhaustive list.
Looking outside of the Flyers, defensemen appear to be the hot commodity on this year’s market. Six of the top ten players on TSN’s TradeBait board are on D, and while The Athletic’s Eric Duhatschek only features four defensemen in the top ten on his Big Board, he’s had Seattle’s Mark Giordano in the top spot before he was traded to Toronto Sunday afternoon.
As has been the case the last few years, the deadline day action got underway days before actual deadline day. In addition to the Claude Giroux and Mark Giordano trades mentioned above, we also saw Hampus Lindholm moved to Boston, Robert Hagg sent to Florida, and a few low-level players-for-picks moves between Canadian teams. You can find a full list of this weekend’s trades as well as today’s trades as they happen on what is, in my humble opinion, the gold standard of deadline day trackers, the TSN Trade Tracker.
This post is sponsored by DraftKings, so we thought it might be fun to look at Claude Giroux’s weekend through that lens. On Saturday morning, Giroux was on a team whose odds to win the Stanley Cup are +100,000. On Saturday night, he was the newest member of a team whose odds to win the Cup are +550. One hundred thousand. To five hundred and fifty. That’s wild.
We’ll be updating this article with any Flyers moves as they happen, so check back here for details this afternoon.
