This summer (and next) could define the Philadelphia Flyers and general manager Danny Briere as far as where the team goes. More years of meddling in the Metropolitan probably isn’t going to wash with a new arena looming (and a new arena name this coming year) and the future looking a bit brighter thanks to Matvei Michkov and others. But if his tenure so far is any indication, a few things are clear when it comes to Danny Briere. Whatever he does, as he’s said repeatedly, it has to make sense for the team both now and down the road. He may leave the rolls of the dice to trades and drafting (as some suggest was the case with Jett Luchanko last year), yet when it comes to crunching the numbers with players they own the rights to, Briere is going to be fair, not overly generous. Generosity will come with years of service.
Before he became the Flyers general manager officially on May 11, 2023, Danny Briere had a front row seat for about 13 months as a special assistant, seeing what then Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher did and didn’t do. The first deal Briere saw Fletcher complete as a special assistant to Fletcher was on March 10, 2022. On that day, the former general manager signed defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen to a five-year, $25.5 million deal. The contract perplexed a lot of people at the time, shaking their heads at the fact the rather underwhelming defender would be earning $5.1 million AAV. Somewhere in Briere’s little book of what to do and what not to do, this contract was probably filed under “don’t do that.” He didn’t have the veto power to nix the deal, but he learned from somebody else’s mistake.
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