Welcome to RANKED. Each week we will be ranking players, moments and anything else we can think of, hockey or not. This week, with the NHL’s trade deadline happening this Friday, we are taking the most significant deadline moves the Flyers have made since the 2004-05 lockout, and ranking them.
Transactions might be the second-best thing about sports aside from actually watching the game — and in some instances, on some teams and when it comes to some players, they are at the very top by about a mile.
With the NHL’s trade deadline quickly approaching this Friday, and before the Philadelphia Flyers make any moves, it is the perfect time to take a look back at all the significant transactions our favorite hockey team has made over the years. And of course, we’re ranking them from downright awful to actually turning out to be pretty good for the team.
Instead of looking at every single transaction, we have decided to filter out the bad ones. Sorry, Patrick Brown going for a low-round draft pick to the Ottawa Senators is not going to be on this ranking, we are sticking with the actual sizeable moves. And instead of going through every single year, we have decided to just go from anything after the 2004-05 lockout. Otherwise, we would be here all day trying to think if the Flyers acquiring Bob Wilkie for future considerations should be higher or lower than them trading Glen Cochrane to the Vancouver Canucks for a third-round pick.
We would like to live our lives.
With that being said, let’s look at some terrible moves and some pretty good ones.
12) Acquiring Andrew MacDonald from the Islanders
We are starting off with a doozy. In 2014, the Flyers wanted some help on their blue line so they rung up the New York Islanders to acquire what was thought of as a rental for some defensive help. In comes big ol’ Andy Mac and all it cost the Flyers was AHLer Matt Mangene, a third-round pick that ended up being the Ilya Sorokin pick, and a second-rounder that was traded to the Boston Bruins, for them to select defenseman Brandon Carlo.
There could maybe not be a further discrepancy in the talent of the player and the players that were selected with the draft picks traded for them.
Of course, it didn’t end there. The Flyers decided to infamously keep MacDonald around with a six-year, $30-million contract that was bought out after four years of misery. A failure of a transaction.
11) Acquiring Pavel Kubina from the Lightning
Oh, look. Another rental defenseman. At least this time, the Flyers didn’t end up keeping him.
In 2012, clinging onto the core that would eventually be dismantled and sold for parts or just thrown away, the Flyers made a splash to get the towering defenseman from the Tampa Bay Lightning, in Pavel Kubina. They paid a second-round pick, a fourth-round pick, and Jon Kalinski, to just make the numbers work.
Kubina went on to play 17 regular-season games and five playoff games for Philadelphia and then never laced his skates up in the NHL again. What a way to go out.
10) Wayne Simmonds sent to Nashville
While the Flyers acquiring some not-so-good defenseman is bad, sending what should be deemed as a modern Flyers legend to the Nashville Predators for essentially nothing, is a tough pill to swallow. Maybe it’s our rose-colored glasses getting in the way of wanting the best for Wayne Simmonds, but he shouldn’t have gone out like this.
In return for Simmonds, the Flyers got Ryan Hartman (who then went on to be traded to the Dallas Stars for nothing before having a career year with the Minnesota Wild) and a fourth-round pick. That fourth-rounder actually ended up then being part of the cost of the Flyers getting Derek Grant. That just sours the trade even more.
For some reason, thinking about this just leaves a sour taste.
9) Trading for Nicklas Grossmann from the Stars
It might not be sexy, but getting a player that would end up sticking around for a little bit longer, and not just as a rental, is sometimes good business. Nicklas Grossmann wasn’t really an impact player, but he was just simply there throughout some modern memories in Philadelphia.
At the 2012 NHL trade deadline, he was acquired by the Flyers for a second- and a third-round pick, and at least one of those picks would end up haunting us. The second-rounder was used for Devin Shore — a serviceable minor-league tweener that would bounce around to different bottom-six forward groups — but the third-round pick was then eventually used by the Penguins for Jake Guentzel. Funny how that turns out, right?
Grossmann would re-sign with the Flyers to a four-year deal before eventually being sent to the Coyotes as part of the Chris Pronger cap dump. What a career.
8) Getting Simon Gagne back from the Kings
Okay, now time for some levity. Those previous four trades might be only abhorrent trades the Flyers have made in the weeks leading up to the trade deadline in this modern era. If it’s not, well, we’re sorry.
We don’t need to really spill much ink about what Simon Gagne means to the Flyers, so when thinking about how they eventually had a reunion three years after he left to go and eventually get his name on the Stanley Cup with the Los Angeles Kings, it’s pleasant.
And the Flyers didn’t even make the playoffs that year. All they wanted was to hang out with their old friend again for the cost a fourth-round pick that eventually turned into nothing. And now, we get to think of cool things like how Gagne got to actually play with Scott Laughton during the current Flyer’s first ever appearances.
7) Kimmo Timonen trade to the Blackhawks
For the decrepit, old body of Kimmo Timonen, at the age of 39, the Chicago Blackhawks send a pair of second-round picks to the Flyers in a final attempt at just getting some leadership for their upcoming Cup run. Well, they ended up doing it and Timonen got to live his Ray Bourque moment and lift the Stanley Cup after 16 years in the league.
It ended up going really well for the Flyers, outside of getting some pretty solid draft picks for a player who didn’t even get any points in the playoffs for his new team that year.
The first second-rounder ended up being part of the trade to the Maple Leafs for the Flyers to move up in the 2015 NHL Draft to select Travis Konecny. Toronto drafted Jeremy Bracco with that pick, who is currently playing in the KHL. And the second, second-round pick ended up being the pick where the Flyers took Wade Allison. It might not end up being great, but for a while, he looked like a mainstay on this roster. Pretty good transaction!
6) Acquiring Daniel Carcillo from the Coyotes
Carcillo might have been initially acquired with a sheen of what a Flyer is supposed to look like, and after he already had what would be his best season in the NHL, but it is fun to just get a rascal of a player that fans fall in love with.
For getting him from the Coyotes, the Flyers sent Scottie Upshall and a second-round pick that would end up becoming Lucas Lessio, a guy who never made it to the NHL.
And what the Flyers got, was, well, a guy who was annoying to play against and racked up the penalty minutes. Plus, we’ll always have his overtime goal against the Devils during the 2010 run.
All in all, not a bad trade and Carcillo stuck around in Philadelphia and then signed in Chicago before getting his name on that big ol’ trophy.
5) Trading for Martin Biron from the Sabres
There is just something about the Flyers and falling in love with their deadline acquisitions enough to then eventually keep them around with a contract extension. On an expiring deal, Martin Biron was sent to the Flyers from the Buffalo Sabres for a second-round pick that would be used for AHL All-Star (we mean that as an insult) T.J. Brennan.
But, Philadelphia decided to keep Biron as their starting netminder for two more years after that, re-signing him to a contract from the 2007-08 season through the 2008-09 season. And, surprisingly enough, he played very well during his first seasons out of Buffalo. Through 133 games with the Flyers, Biron earned a .915 save percentage and a 2.71 goals against average. He really kept his best years for Philadelphia. A whole lot of teams would give up the 31st-overall pick for some stability in between the pipes.
We will ignore the 2008 playoffs where he just completely fell apart and the team just needed to ramp up the offense to make up for his mistakes.
4) Acquiring Braydon Coburn from the Thrashers
In 2007, the Flyers were selling some pieces off. After a lengthy career, the Flyers cast off Alexei Zhitnik to an Atlanta Thrashers team that was actually going to make the playoffs. In exchange, the now-defunct team would sent a 21-year-old defenseman by the name of Braydon Coburn. He went on to play 576 games for the Flyers, while Zhitnik was in the KHL by 2008.
You really don’t know how these one-for-one trades are going to workout, especially when it is young-for-old but Coburn had a really good career in Philadelphia that would end up with him winning championships for another team.
He was a serviceable minute-muncher and the Flyers just sold to a team that wanted to really buy into their first big playoff run. A simple win by the good guys.
3) Claude Giroux trade to the Panthers
At the time this trade went down — because it is still fresh in our brains — we would have ranked this much lower. But thanks to Owen Tippett actually turning into a regular 30-goal scorer and the first-round pick being an enticing option this summer, we just have to hand it to Chuck Fletcher (ew) for pulling this off. Maybe it’s just al luck, but this really turned out for the better.
Giroux got to try his best to win a Cup in Florida (that did not pan out), and now is back home in Ontario playing for a crap Ottawa Senators team. Meanwhile, the Flyers are reaping the rewards from the Panthers not developing Tippett well and can use the upcoming draft pick anyway they want.
If the first-rounder ends up being a mistake a decade down the road, maybe we’ll re-visit this ranking and decide that it wasn’t that good. But for potentially the greatest Flyer of all-time, it was fine and good.
2) Peter Forsberg to the Predators
Okay, stay with us here. On its face, sending Peter Forsberg to the Predators for Scottie Upshall, Ryan Parent, a first-rounder and a third-rounder is not that pretty, but we just have to dig deeper here.
The two players didn’t do much in Philadelphia so we can ignore them. The interesting part of all of this — and simply why this transaction is considered a big win for the Flyers — is the first-round pick the Flyers got from the Predators. They ended up trading that pick back to the Predators a few months later for two guys: Kimmo Timonen and Scott Hartnell.
The eventual 13th-overall selection was used for Jonathan Blum who played a total of 110 NHL games, but Timonen and Hartnell were crucial ligaments in the backbone of an entire era of Flyers hockey. They moved on from a legend to then set them up with a solid era-defining foundation of players, and that should be considered a big win for what it eventually turned into. Especially considering the Predators got a whopping 22 games with Forsberg on the roster.
1) Braydon Coburn to the Lightning
No one can resist a big defenseman that plays a lot of minutes, especially the Tampa Bay Lightning. After Braydon Coburn ran his course and played through his 20s in Philadelphia, he was sent to the Lightning in 2015 for Radko Gudas, a first-round pick, and a third-round pick.
Gudas went on to be an extremely underrated defenseman in Philadelphia and has continued to be a very good defender up to this very day, but it’s the first-round pick that adds another bit of intrigue to this trade. That first-rounder was involved in the flurry of transactions that saw the Flyers move up to take Travis Konecny — another deadline move that caused the Flyers to take their current best player in the draft.
For an expiring Coburn, who would then go on to enjoy hockey again in Tampa and win a Cup, the Flyers set themselves up with a replacement in Gudas and managed to snag a piece of what it took to get Konecny. Such a win, and what we think is the very best move the Flyers have made at the trade deadline since the lockout.
