While the Philadelphia Flyers could get plenty busy wheeling and dealing for the rest of the summer, as they try to maybe recover from not getting Leo Carlsson despite their historic offer sheet, the main piece of business they have to do is get a couple of restricted free agents signed. And now we know that they have just over a week to really get their business done.
Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale are two fairly high-profile restricted free agents for the Flyers, who should get sizeable raises from their contracts that expired. Especially considering that both players are entering their age where they could reasonable commit long-term to the Flyers and play through the remainder of their primes on this next contract, it’s obviously a big deal.
It’s such a big deal that both players decided to elect for salary arbitration. We combed through exactly what that means for everything surrounding their next contracts already, but in the most simplest way: It was a way for them to be ineligible for offer sheets, and some other stuff. Other stuff that included things like setting a deadline and guaranteeing them to have a new contract over a month before training camp — which is significant since they both had to miss training camp in Anaheim when they were going through hellish contract negotiations with the Ducks before they were eligible for arbitration.
The date for those arbitration hearings have now been set.
In an exclusive report from PuckPedia, we now know the specific dates for each arbitration hearing, and the Flyers don’t have a lot of time to figure out a contract before it can get ugly.
The arbitration date for Jamie Drysdale is next Monday, July 20, and the date for the arbitration hearing for Trevor Zegras is just two days later on July 22. While the hearings could go as late as August 1 for these hearings, it just so happens that the two Flyers players are going on the very first two dates available.
Those two dates are the absolute last opportunity to get a deal done before it gets nasty. Because, after all, no player or team really wants to go to an arbitration hearing — a player fighting for how much money he should make and then the team basically telling them how much they suck and how they’re worth fewer millions of dollars per year than that, isn’t all that fun. Contracts can get signed before that though — notably, zero of the 11 players that filed for arbitration last year actually had a hearing. So now the Flyers are on the clock to try and get a deal done.
What sort of contracts do we expect for Zegras and Drysdale?
As mentioned, both players should get a whole lot more money. Zegras was on a contract with a $5.75-million AAV, and Drysdale had a $2.3-million AAV. Both of those were just easy bridge contracts that they signed in Anaheim to get something done so that they could actually play some hockey games.
For the future, it’s much more complicated because they could go short and try to get unrestricted free agency, or they could stay committed to the Flyers and work out a long-term deal.
According to Evolving-Hockey, Zegras is projected to get a four-year contract with a $7.58-million AAV and Drysdale is projected for a five-year deal with a $6.15-million AAV. Those are contract projections before the recent ballooning of deals around the NHL.
While Leo Carlsson’s $18-million AAV is inflated because of getting him to sign an offer sheet, contracts like Pavel Mintyukov’s and other peers around these Flyers’ ages, certainly means that they should come in higher if they go that long.
Both players are set to hit unrestricted free agency in 2028 at very young ages for open-market players. Therefore, if the Flyers want to go long-term with either of them it is going to involve buying up a whole lot of years of free agency and that gets plenty expensive.
There’s no telling exactly what their next contract is going to look like, but it feels reasonable if their combined cap hits come in around $15 million, if they both sign for four years or more.
Should we be concerned if they go to arbitration?
This is the big question. Should we think that there is now some sort of fractured relationship that this contract negotiation once felt incredibly easy and now it might be heading for arbitration? It’s tough to say.
Because the elephant in the room is obviously the Leo Carlsson offer sheet. Could they both just watched the Flyers be willing to give $18 million a year to one single 21-year-old center (and former teammate to both) and after that failed, now do they want part of that action? Since they were going to sign a new contract even if Carlsson was heading to Philadelphia — now that he is not, could we envision them wanting to raise their own contract demands? It’s not impossible.
It’s not like we have any information whatsoever about what either player wants out of their next contracts, but it would make sense for them to want more than was projected just because of the new landscape we’re now in. Or, they could see Tyson Foerster signing an eight-year contract at a very reasonable $7.1-million AAV and know that to keep this team together, they should understand what the pay structure has to be.
And that’s all just to do with the demands.
If either Zegras or Drysdale actually reach arbitration, that could be its own problem. Since the Flyers have to poke holes in their games and give reasons why they actually sort of stink and should be asking for way less.
Then comes the length of whatever salary the third-party arbitrator decides that that player is worth. Since both players elected their own arbitration, and it wasn’t the team, the Flyers get to decide whether it is a one- or two-year contract at that cap hit. Since both of them are just two years away from unrestricted free agency, we have to assume that if it gets to that point, it will just be a one-year deal and that player will be a restricted free agency next year and we get to do this all over again.
It would be surprising if either player actually went forward with an arbitration hearing. It would mean that the contract negotiation is in such a worse spot that we could have ever imagined and the relationship between the player and the team doesn’t look too good.
So, let’s just hope that all of this is for naught and we see the Flyers have agreed to a couple of contracts before next Monday.
