5 buyout candidates for the Flyers

The Stanley Cup Final is just one Florida Panthers win away from ending and Lord Stanley\'s Cup being handed out for the 2023-24 NHL season to officially come to a close. While that means joy and happiness for one particular fan base, it also means something for every team in the league: The buyout window has been opened!

That\'s right, 48 hours after the Cup has been awarded and passed around player-to-player on the ice, the first buyout window of the offseason opens up until the day before free agency, June 30. All 32 teams can then proceed with spending the cash to not have players play for them and then get dealt with a buyout cap penalty. It is something we are so familiar with in Philadelphia, so we shouldn\'t really need to explain it.

For the Flyers, this summer could certainly prove to be one of the most interesting offseasons in team history. As the team transitions from a surprisingly good season into a couple years where they still want continue the rebuilding process, the summer could really kick things off with some substantial transactions. Whether that is a trade or a smart free agency signing, is still to be determined, but one way where they can kick everything off even before they get to the 2024 NHL Draft, is to buy a player or two out.

There are some obvious candidates for this to happen to -- players we were thinking that they would certainly buyout for years now -- as well as some low-key options that seems unlikely but still a possibility. Let\'s look at some potential buyouts, folks.

Cam Atkinson

The most obvious buyout candidate on the Flyers has to be winger Cam Atkinson. The 35-year-old has already found some difficulty staying in the lineup under John Tortorella and is heading into the final year of his current contract that carries a $5.875-million cap hit. It\'s an equation that has a result of an almost necessary buyout.

With just that single contract year left, the buyout penalty that would affect the Flyers would be cap hits of $2,358,334 for the 2024-25 season, and then $1,758,332 for the 2025-26 season. Essentially, they would be saving just over $3.5 million in cap for next season, to then have that $1.75 million be a pure penalty for doing so. Put that all together and the penalty isn\'t even all that bad considering the substantial cap hold that this upcoming one, single year has.

Do the Flyers really need to do this though? I mean, they won\'t be competitive so why do they need to stretch out his contract into a year where he would be gone from the team anyways?

The main reason to is that he is simply taking up a roster spot they could use for a player who would actually be in Philadelphia when this team is good again. If there is a Ryan Poehling-esque young, unrestricted free agent this summer that could use Atkinson\'s roster spot, that would be so much better than having the rotting corpse of a veteran just hanging out and making more money than the vast majority of his teammates.

This buyout feels almost like a foregone conclusion, but are they going to do more than one?

Cal Petersen

Cal Petersen was a bad goaltender for the Flyers last year. Thrown into the Ivan Provorov trade as the Los Angeles Kings paid a little bit extra to dump his contract in Philadelphia, he was sub-par at best when he was wearing the Orange and Black. But, does this really mean a buyout is coming?

Petersen has just one year left on his deal that carries a $5-million AAV, and some of that right now is buried in the AHL, resulting in a $3.85-million buried penalty on the Flyers\' books. If they were to buy him out with this one year remaining, it would have a $1-million cap penalty for 2024-25 and then a $2-million penalty for 2025-26. Those are some interesting numbers.

Considering that Petersen would certainly start the season in the AHL, we should think that his contract actually is a $3.85-million cap hit. So, the Flyers are saving just $2.85 million to then pay a $2-million cap hit for the following season, when they didn\'t need to. It feels like a greater risk than it needs to be, especially with him being a goaltender.

Right now, the Flyers depth in between the pipes is rough. Sam Ersson and Ivan Fedotov are the NHL tandem, and Alexei Kolosov is developing in the AHL. Unlike Atkinson, Petersen actually serves a role in this organization, despite having a brutal contract. He is a buffer so that Kolosov doesn\'t need to face an onslaught during his first year in North America and also, in case Ersson or Fedotov ever gets injured, the Flyers don\'t need to then call-up Kolosov as a replacement. Having a veteran in Petersen to be that third-string netminder is valuable.

And, while the Flyers can certainly fill that role with a depth goaltender that has NHL experience -- like an Eric Comrie or a Calvin Pickard (lol) -- that hypothetical veteran netminder would have a much lower cap hit and is therefore a strong threat to be claimed off of waivers when sent down. While Petersen\'s $5-million AAV is overall a negative thing, it the supreme benefit of never, ever being claimed off of waivers by another team. He can just go up and down as he pleases, and the Flyers should know that they have a security that a whole lot of teams do not.

It would help the team\'s financial situation and increase flexibility, but it feels like an opportunity where they can have a leg up on teams purely because of how terrible the contract is, oddly enough.

Ryan Johansen

Does Ryan Johansen exist? We are not sure where he is or what he is doing, but he is on the Flyers\' cap for one more year at a $4-million AAV and is going to hit unrestricted free agency next summer. So, does it make sense to even buy out a player who hasn\'t even played on your team? Danny Briere has already said that he doesn\'t think Johansen can even play hockey again , so he is most likely going to spend the entire year with Ryan Ellis on Injured Reserve, but that also means over $10 million being committed to players whose careers might be done, and we know that the Flyers might be hesitant to dip into the LTIR pool of money, and don\'t want to be forced to.

If they were to buyout Johansen, it would be a two-year penalty with both years costing the Flyers $1.33 million worth of cap dollars. The best thing, is that the Nashville Predators will also be dinged with the same penalty because that was the team that originally signed his deal and is currently retaining half of his contract. Briere most likely doesn\'t want to piss off another team by doing this out of the blue, so it would probably be a discussion both he has with Predators GM Barry Trotz.

The only reason they would even attempt to buy out Johansen would be to avoid using LTIR and to have some more clarity and simplify their cap situation. This is an odd one.

Nic Deslauriers

Okay, we don\'t really see this happening, but it would certainly create a roster spot they could use for a developing player. Deslauriers\'s role on this team is to punch faces and be a not-good fourth-line winger who might bring more off the ice than on. His four-year deal was signed by Chuck Fletcher so it\'s not like this organization has strong ties to the player and sees him as a veteran leader they desperately want to be on the team.

If they were to buyout Deslauriers, who has two years left of his contract that has a $1.75-million AAV, it would be a penalty that lasts four years and carries a cap penalty of $750,000 for the first two years and then $500,000 for the last two. That is less than a league-minimum contract and it would mean another spot to have a rookie on the team or maybe, again, sign a young forward who just needs to find the right opportunity under the right coach to really blossom into a solid NHL player.

Deslauriers isn\'t really bringing a whole lot to this team, so as the Flyers transition into their new identity, is a buyout really the route to go?

Ryan Ellis

This would probably be dangerous. Again, just like a buyout of Ryan Johansen, buying out the three years remaining on Ryan Ellis\'s contract would just bring more financial simplicity to the Flyers\' cap situation and not have them dive into the LTIR system.

A buyout of this deal would carry for six years and would be $1,583,333 for 2024-25, $2,583,333 for 2025-26, $3,583,333 for 2026-27, and then $1,833,333 from the 2027-28 season to the 2029-30 season.

Woof. That is a lot of dollars and a long commitment to not have a player on your roster who already isn\'t on your roster.

Do we really think the Flyers want to start this important era with such a hold on their cap? It would create roughly $3 million more cap space for the 2026-27 season, which would be when Matvei Michkov is 100 percent on this team and the team wants to start being more competitive -- but in turn, would put almost $2 million of cap on the Flyers\' books when they actually want to be good, and for no real reason.

This is farfetched, but not impossible.

Really, the most realistic buyout is Atkinson and beyond that, it\'s either players who bring something beyond a heavy cap hit, or players who don\'t really matter that much in the grand scheme of things to go through the process of buying out their contract. Could we see some of these actually be done? Sure. But it is also a risk to stretch out your problems for short-term gain.

Talking Points