Trading Ivan Provorov was Danny Briere’s first big move general manager, and it was a doozy of a deal. To refresh: the Flyers sent Ivan Provorov to the Columbus Blue Jackets, as well has Hayden Hodgson and Kevin Connuaton to the Los Angeles Kings, and received a 2023 1st-round pick (from LA via Columbus), LA’s 2024 2nd-round pick, Columbus’s 2024 or 2025 2nd-round pick, Sean Walker, Cal Petersen, and Helge Grans. Pulling off a creative three-team trade like that for your first major move as general manager took some serious gumption from Briere. After years of milquetoast moves from former-GM Chuck Fletcher, this was a refreshing palate cleanser.
So, why look back on that trade now? Because every player in that deal has moved onto the next stage of their career, such as new teams or contracts, and every pick has been trade or made. Let’s see where all those assets are now, two years on, and how they’ve impacted the rebuild.
The Draft Picks
We’ll start with the big one: the 2023 1st-round pick, 22nd overall, that became Oliver Bonk. It’s still a bit early to tell if that was the correct selection but, given the risk of taking Matvei Michkov at 7th overall, using your second 1st-round pick on a projectable second-pair defenseman made sense. That same draft, the Flyers had no 2nd-round picks, so they used LA’s 2024 2nd-round pick to trade into the 2023 second round and select goaltender Carson Bjarnason. Columbus, meanwhile, opted to keep their 2024 2nd-round pick, kicking it to the 2025 draft. The Flyers then used that pick (45th overall) as part of the trade to acquire Trevor Zegras from the Anaheim Ducks.
In total, for all the draft picks they acquired in the Provorov trade, the Flyers ended up with: Oliver Bonk, Carson Bjarnason, and Trevor Zegras. That’s pretty good value for one 1st-round pick and two 2nd-round picks, and certainly added to the rebuild.
The Players
The headliner of the deal was, of course, Ivan Provorov, but the Flyers gave up two other players as well: Hayden Hodgson and Kevin Connuaton. Connuaton hasn’t played an NHL game since 2022, so that was mostly just to make the contracts work, but Hodgson has made quite the name for himself: first, he flattened Mark Stone in preseason game, and Stone didn’t take too kindly to it; then, he had an ugly hit in an AHL game that caused the other player to be taken out on a stretcher. Yeah, that’s the guy that Fletcher and other members of the Flyers front office were trying to sell fans on. Yikes! At least then-head coach John Tortorella saw what was blatantly obvious, and Hodgson never saw NHL time with the Flyers again.
Onto the incoming players: defensemen Helge Grans and Sean Walker, and goaltender Cal Petersen. Grans had a cup of coffee with the Flyers last fall, playing six games and registering his first NHL point (an assist), and has re-upped on a two-year bridge deal. With Rasmus Ristolainen likely missing the start of the 2025-26 NHL season, the 23-year old Grans–a fellow right-shot–has a chance to crack the opening night roster. Now, there are some fringe free agency signings that could keep Grans in the AHL for a while longer, but he can earn a spot just like anyone else. As far as Grans’s place in the Provorov trade, he’s a flier on a prospect that a rebuilding Flyers club could afford to swing on; we hear Kings defense prospects do pretty well for themselves once they’re traded.
Oh, Cal Petersen–we’ll always have that game against the Penguins. Petersen was a cap dump, plain and simple, to make the numbers work so that LA would retain on the Provorov contract. With a $5-million cap hit, it made sense to make Petersen the No. 3 goaltender behind Carter Hart and Sam Ersson but, once Hart left the team, Petersen became the backup–and boy, did he stink. It’s crazy to think that Petersen was, once, the heir-apparent to Jonathan Quick for the Kings.
Sean Walker, meanwhile, turned out to be the best player out of the three to join the Flyers organization. Walker and Nick Seeler turned out to be a dynamite pair on the backend, and their solid play contributed to the Flyers’ surprise playoff push in the 2023-24 season. Of course, on an expiring contract that would take him to UFA, Walker was absolutely trade deadline bait. Despite the Flyers’ successful season, Danny Briere knew the right decision was to trade Walker–though only if his price of a 1st-round pick was met. Lo and behold, the Colorado Avalanche met the ask, but the Flyers had to take on Ryan Johansen to get the premium pick. The Johansen saga has been a complicated one, with no resolution yet reached; as it stands, it’s the only loose end of the Provorov trade tree.
Back to that Colorado 1st-round pick: it wound up being 22nd overall in the recent 2025 draft. The Flyers, however, did not pick at 22; they traded the Avalanche’s pick (along with Edmonton’s 31st overall selection), to move up to 12th overall, where they drafted Jack Nesbitt. It’ll be some time before we see if that was the correct decision, but the Flyers never would’ve been able to move up if they hadn’t stuck to the rebuild plan and moved Walker at the 2024 trade deadline.
Where are they now?
Let’s review all of the players involved in the extended trade tree: Ivan Provorov, Kevin Connuaton, Hayden Hodgson, Helge Grans, Cal Petersen, Sean Walker, and Ryan Johansen. Connuaton and Hodgson probably won’t crack an NHL lineup again, and Johansen’s career seems to be over; Petersen’s now signed to a one-year league-minimum deal with the Minnesota Wild as a fourth-string goalie. Grans may be a depth defenseman for the Flyers who gets some NHL time this season due to injury, but we’ll see if he’s actually a player or not.
The major pieces are Provorov and Walker. Walker is signed to a $3.6-million AAV contract through 2030 with the Carolina Hurricanes, and his most common partner on defense has been another player that was a cap dump: Shayne Gostisbehere. Leave it to the Canes to find that sort of value.
Provorov, however, just signed what is being lambasted as perhaps the worst contract (or second worst, depending on your feelings towards Tanner Jeannot) of NHL free agency: a seven-year, $8.5-million AAV monster deal that is as baffling as it is shortsighted. What Blue Jackets GM Don Waddell was thinking is beyond us, but boy is it nice to not be the team that inked that deal.
Where the tree stands
To wrap up, let’s go over what assets the Flyers currently have in the coffers as a result of the Provorov trade: Helge Grans (part of the original trade), Oliver Bonk (used LA’s 2023 1st-round pick), Carson Bjarnason (used LA’s 2024 2nd-round pick to move up in 2023), Trevor Zegras (used Columbus’s 2025 2nd-round pick as part of a trade package), and Jack Nesbitt (used the Colorado pick from the Walker trade to move up in 2025). That’s some impressive asset management that made the Flyers younger and, hopefully, establishes some part of a core to build around–all in exchange for a player that no longer fit in the Flyers’ long term plans or the locker room.
Of course, the tree could always branch again, if any of the four mentioned players ends up traded for something else. We’ll be sure to check in again in a couple years if that happens.
