After kicking off trade deadline day with a bang, sending Bobby Brink to the Wild in exchange for a really intriguing defense prospect in David Jiricek, the Flyers’ second trade of the day is a more minor one, in comparison.
The Flyers announced this morning that they’ve made a swap of minor league players, having acquired forward Brett Harrison and defenseman Jackson Edward from the Bruins. Harrison, in his third season in the AHL, has brought a bit for them in the way of offense — with eight goals and 17 points in 46 games — but also brings some good positional flexibility, as a center/left wing pivot. And then Edward, in his second professional season, has bounced between Providence and ECHL Maine, and offers them a bit more defensive depth to bolster them in the wake of Roman Schmidt’s departure, and comes in as another player who can deliver quite a mean and physical game.
In these two players, they’re able to change up the mix of young players down the farm (both are still just 22), while also adding a bit more size (Harrison is 6’3 and 201 pounds, while Edward is 6’2 and 200 pounds), which feels somewhat tonally in line with the move to bring in Boris Katchouk that was finalized over the weekend.
And on the way out are forwards Massimo Rizzo and Alexis Gendron. Rizzo, whose stock has dropped pretty significantly since he signed with the Flyers at the close of a very successful college career, has been toiling away in Reading of the ECHL for most of this season, and in the final year of his contract, was likely on his way out of this organization no matter what.
But the decision to move on from Gendron is a more surprising one — one of the few players in the pipeline with true high-end speed, and coming off of a 20-goal rookie season, there was some really interesting potential in his game, even if this season has been more up and down for him. That said, though, the Flyers have been active so far this season in working to change the mix on their AHL team and find changes of scenery for players who they don’t see as having clear places in their long-term plan. And Gendron’s situation was growing more complicated — despite all of that potential, Gendron’s play this season has taken a bit of a step back, there have been some mistakes made, and he’s struggled at times to find his game within the Phantoms’ new system, and, what’s more, it was clear that more runway is needed for him to flesh out his game at the pro level, and the Phantoms with already a logjam of wingers and more on the way, just don’t have the minutes open to commit to that. Maybe Providence will be a better fit.
In all of this, perhaps there’s an outside the box approach to building for the stretch run unfolding here. That is, after last week’s close loss to the Providence Bruins, Phantoms head coach John Snowden made a point of emphasizing how the Bruins play hard, play the right way for success in the postseason, and how his team is going to need commit to playing that hard game if they want to get themselves in position to make a run. There’s quite a bit of internal work being done to raise their level of play, but maybe a way to help them close that gap is by simply acquiring players from the team they’re trying to model.
Whether this pans out for them, time will tell, but it’s certainly apparent that the Flyers are taking an aggressive approach to roster building at the AHL level.
