When the Flyers initially signed Christian Dvorak to a one-year, $5.4-million contract last offseason, the justification was that the high price was a trade-off in order to avoid having to give Dvorak any sort of long-term guarantees. It would allow the Flyers to be flexible at the deadline and with their future plans without having to factor in multiple years of Dvorak’s cap hit, which would have been somewhere closer to $4 million on a longer deal.
It was a bet on a high floor, low ceiling veteran who had proven to be a dependable two-way player that could win faceoffs. It filled a need in the moment, but wasn’t viewed as a true long-term solution.
Nobody was thinking that Dvorak would revitalize his career, be on pace for career numbers across the board, and be fourth on the team in points after the new year. That simply wasn’t part of the plan, and when Dvorak came out and looked like a whole new player alongside Trevor Zegras, it forced Flyers management to reassess how important the player ultimately was.
With a weak class of free agent centers upcoming, and a crop of prospects at the position that still look a couple of years away, Dvorak was able to cash in, signing a five-year deal worth $5.15 million per year that will keep in Philadelphia until 2031.
The contract includes a full no-trade clause for the first two years, as well as modified no trade clauses in years three and four. The Flyers brass made their decision, and they deemed Dvorak was worth keeping long term. That leaves the Flyers with a center corps of Dvorak, Noah Cates, and Sean Couturier, all locked up until 2029-30 at the earliest.
Flyers fell in love with who they had
Everything went according to plan, a depth veteran’s value was rehabilitated, and Dvorak overperformed to a level that seemed nearly impossible prior to this season. But when the time came to capitalize on the found money, the Flyers did what they always seem to do: they fell in love with a role player. After going through a similar situation with a player like Ryan Poehling, and subsequently reaping the benefits of trading him almost immediately, Daniel Briere and Keith Jones could not resist the appeal of a Rick Tocchet-approved veteran option for the foreseeable future.
While it’s not as if signing Charlie Coyle or Adam Henrique in the upcoming offseason instead would’ve been an improvement — as those are really two of the better centers available in free agency — the crucial part that seems to have been ignored is that they did not have to do anything.
The purpose of Dvorak’s acquisition originally was as a stop-gap player, a guy to fill a need until some of the prospect potential was fully realized, or a trade for a real top-six center materialized. An admittedly fantastic start from Dvorak should not be enough to uproot the entire frame of thinking that existed just half a year ago.
The focus should not simply be on finding and immediately securing a Christian Dvorak, rather, it should be on finding the next Christian Dvorak. Who is the next run-of-the-mill free agent who you can stick next to Zegras and then flip for surplus value? While it is fair to say that the partnership of Zegras and Dvorak has been mutually beneficial, the numbers, as well as common sense, say that Dvorak has benefitted much more from the presence of Zegras rather than the other way around.
And when viewed through that lens, it almost seems as if the Flyers pulled the wool over their own eyes, as opposed to doing it to the rest of the league. They have seemingly latched onto the idea that Zegras’s (long overdue) renaissance is in no small part due to the presence of Dvorak alongside him.
Now, the Flyers will have to continue to play the two together for the foreseeable future in order to really get the most out of Dvorak and justify their decision. And with Zegras set to be fed as many minutes as he can handle, Dvorak will be deployed as a true top-six center night in and night out.
Questionable move makes Flyers’ future ceiling uncertain
While it isn’t a back-breaking amount of money, locking down a depth veteran for years to come just echoes the Flyers of yesteryear, of teams that repeatedly tried Michael Raffl as the first-line left wing, or Michael Neuvirth as a potential number one goalie. While they aren’t moves that will destroy a franchise, it’s questionable as to whether or not you can truly build a contender with three centers in your lineup who last season had a combined average of 38 points.
Maybe the new and improved Christian Dvorak is here to stay, maybe his partnership with Zegras was meant to be, and those two will latch onto one another for the next few years and only get more and more comfortable playing alongside another. Perhaps the Flyers have found a sensible two-way player to play along Zegras who can do some of the less glamorous jobs on the ice, while benefitting from the chances that Zegras, and whatever other winger is on the line with them, create.
But that is the high water mark, that is the best case scenario over these five years. You get a serviceable center to play next to Zegras for the time being, whose offensive numbers will undoubtedly fall off a cliff if you move him off the line. The cap hit becomes more and more palatable as the contract ages, and he can get bumped down the lineup, or even play on the wing, if he ages poorly in the last couple years of the deal.
The worst case scenario is that Dvorak has to be moved from alongside Zegras, and transforms immediately back into the low-upside third-line forward that he has been for essentially a decade uninterrupted. That he and Couturier essentially play the exact same role on a team that also has Noah Cates and Jett Luchanko down the middle, and suddenly you built a team without a center that can be counted on to score over 60 points a year.
The thought process surrounding Christian Dvorak was sound until we got to the part that actually mattered. Outside of this 39 game stretch, he’s never shown to be this good throughout his entire career, not when he was a highly touted prospect coming out of the USA Under-20 program, and not when he made his first move to Montreal. Rather than using the high-floor asset they found to take a bet on a high-ceiling player like the aforementioned Zegras, the Flyers have settled for what they think is good enough.
Let’s hope that it is.
