It is the loudest secret in the hockey world that the Philadelphia Flyers need to improve at the center position. General manager Danny Briere might as well be standing at the corner of Broad and Pattison waving around one of those massive medieval bells yelling if anyone has a skilled center available.
Sure, they technically have enough to ice a hockey team and they aren’t going out there every night with someone who barely knows how to play the position — some might say that there is a player who is better suited to play down the middle than where they are right now on the wing — but they have no present and not future player who is guaranteed to be a top-six contributor at the center position. And, well, you kind of need one of those to be a playoff team and you need a couple of those to actually make some noise when you make it.
Well, it just so happens that one of those is reportedly available to trade for.
As the St. Louis Blues continue their spiral down the standings and are now looking to try to maximize their draft lottery odds and move on from a whole whack of their current players, center Robert Thomas could be had for the right price. According to multiple reports and multiple trade boards, Thomas’s name is out there in trade talks.
Robert Thomas fits the Flyers almost too well
Thomas would fit what the Flyers need almost too perfectly. The 26-year-old center has been one of the more consistent players through the last few seasons and has regularly made an impact in all three zones on the ice, and specializes in actually being able to transition the puck very well. It’s a total package.
Before this season (where he has had a dip in production due to how terrible the Blues are), Thomas averaged exactly 1.04 points per game through the last four seasons. A total of 297 hockey games played, and he has just been extremely consistent — never dipping below 65 points in a season and having 86 points be his high mark. You almost know too well what you’re going to get from him.
And it’s not like he’s a flight risk either. Thomas is under contract through the 2030-31 season at an extremely reasonable $8.125-million AAV. He becomes an unrestricted free agent at 31 years old so whoever is going to be trying to nab him from St. Louis is getting only good years left out of his career and isn’t really taking on much of a risk.
That basically sums it up and just after those few paragraphs, most Flyers fans should be screaming at their screens. Drooling at the thought of him coming to Philadelphia and instantly taking the first-line center mantle and him never leaving from that spot — instantly having that massive box checked on the to-do list to make this team competitive once again.
This sort of move only makes more sense when considering just how the Flyers front office is planning to get back to that stage.
Flyers handed massive opportunity to make their rebuild plan work
Much has been said about the way the Flyers are going about their rebuild. It’s not the strip-it-down-to-the-studs kind where we saw the Chicago Blackhawks and San Jose Sharks manage to do and time it well when there was actual elite talent available at the top of the draft. No, the Flyers want to remain some level of competency and keep really good players around — like they did with Travis Konecny and Travis Sanheim — while continuing to add younger and younger talent and filling holes.
The only problem with that is the most common and simplest and easiest path to finding those game-breaking elite talents is at the top of the draft. And if the Flyers don’t plan on making their draft picks up there, then the task only becomes so much more difficult.
There are always gems that slip through and really good first-line players that develop after being selected in the middle of the first round or later, but it’s more of a task than just falling into a Macklin Celebrini.
That leaves basically just free agency and the trade route for the Flyers to get these sort of players. And, well, we know that there won’t be any elite players available via free agency for at least one more year — and waiting and praying that the Devils don’t re-sign Nico Hischier right now feels like a fool’s errand. So, it’s really just up to some top-line centers shaking loose from their respective teams and the Flyers pouncing on a trade immediately.
That is the path that the Flyers have taken and in Robert Thomas lies the hypothetical player that the Flyers would target. They have decided to go forward with this “competitive rebuild” situation and with this made bed to lay down in, it’s banking on situations to pop up just like what is happening in St. Louis and with their own first-line center.
A trade like Jack Eichel happens just once in a generation — it is now taking the medium risk of getting a player that their own team doesn’t want for some reason, and being happy if they even turn out to be just an average first-line center.
The Flyers just need to accept that while what they could give up could be substantial, this is filling a hole that will haunt them (and has haunt them) for several years if they don’t do something about it right now. Who knows if even a player of Thomas’s caliber will become available again? The fit feels too real and too good to pass up and the Flyers clearly want to move this along.
