The Philadelphia Flyers could be heavily involved in the trade market in the next few months and according to one report, they might be looking over there to the west coast for some acquisitions.
On the latest episode of 32 Thoughts: The Podcast, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman was going over how the Flyers season is going — highlighting goaltender Dan Vladar as one of the NHL’s best free agent acquisitions is a nice touch — but then he got into the rumor mill. Specifically, how Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet could be a logical connection to his former team, the Vancouver Canucks, performing a massive fire sale and Philadelphia could be a destination for some of their veterans.
Elliotte Friedman speculates Flyers to trade for some Canucks veterans
“I had a couple people tell me that Vancouver has players that Rick Tocchet likes,” Friedman said. “And I don’t know if it’s Sherwood, it would fit, but nobody knows the Vancouver players better than Tocchet does, right? And so a couple of people said to me, ‘You better keep an eye on Philly when it comes to Vancouver’s players.’
“And they’re not even talking about Hughes. Like, everyone likes Hughes, that’s just crazy talk and I don’t think there’s anything going on there right now. But, as the Canucks talk about some of their veterans, the question you should be asking is:’ What veterans there does Tocchet like?'”
The Canucks are preparing to sell off a whole lot of their players as they are currently experiencing a not-so-great season. A 10-13-3 record as of Monday morning puts them near the bottom of the entire league and there’s not really a way out of the hole they’re in — unless the currently injured players like goalie Thatcher Demko, suddenly come back and are immediate game-breakers. So, the sale is expected to start and while the biggest fish is certainly world-class defenseman Quinn Hughes, who the Flyers could be interested in, the most logical start is all the veterans they have on their roster.
Wingers Conor Garland and Kiefer Sherwood are the two most logical players to depart from the team before the trade deadline in March, but as Friedman speculated, it might not necessarily be one of them. Sherwood, the best hitter in the league that is on a shooting percentage bender that makes Jonathan Cheechoo blush, does kind of fit the traditional Flyers mold but he should be getting suitors from actual competitive hockey teams.
On the blue line, there are older veterans who could make sense to land in Philadelphia, like Marcus Pettersson or Filip Hronek, but they both have full no-move clauses so the potential of them coming over to stabilize the Flyers’ own back end and play for Tocchet once again, might be a little bit more lofty.
The connection between Tocchet and the situation in Vancouver is certainly interesting and the Flyers do seem like a team that would try to pick away at the rotting corpse of that team, to see who excelled under the same bench boss they currently employ.
Flyers severely disappointed in potential free agents re-signing
Another little note that Friedman in the same Flyers-branded segment is that they are the first team that comes to mind about front offices being let down about the upcoming free agent class.
Big names like Connor McDavid, Kirill Kaprizov, Jack Eichel, and even someone like Adrian Kempe or Martin Necas, were all slated to hit the open market in the summer of 2026. And while expecting them all to run through the rest of their contract and be willing to move to a new team is a little bit lofty, there was some hope that at least a couple big names would fall through.
Well, none did and Alex Tuch is probably the biggest name next summer. That’s the state of that class.
Friedman that piles on to say that the Flyers and general manager Danny Briere is the most prominent team disappointed that they couldn’t go ahead and be in a bidding war for some of the best players in the world.
“The other thing there that I would say is, I would bet you that one of the teams most disappointed that some of these guys have come of the market is Philly,” Friedman said, meaning the big free agents potentially available to sign next summer. “Yeah, like there’s still Panarin. You know, he’s still out there. But I think Philly is a team that really wanted to take a swing. Like, if Kaprizov had gotten to the market, I would have loved to have seen what they would have thrown on the table. But you know what Kyle? We will never know.”
We all heard and read the rumblings that the Flyers want to make a big splash, and they certainly still could but it is most likely now in the trade market rather than in free agency.
