Today the Philadelphia Flyers announced that forward Scott Laughton has been activated from injured reserve, and that they have also loaned Andy Andreoff to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, and placed Nolan Patrick on long-term injured reserve.
Injury update: We have activated forward Scott Laughton from Injured Reserve and have placed center Nolan Patrick on Long-Term Injury status.
— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) November 22, 2019
It’s a move that we’ve been anticipating over the last day or so ever since the team had announced that he was medically cleared, but how exactly they were going to free up the cap space needed to do so wasn’t exactly clear. Now, we have our answer.
Activating Laughton meant that the Flyers had to clear just under $1.4 million in cap space that had been previously covered by the LTIR cap relief they received. Loaning Andreoff to the Phantoms reduced that figure to just under $650,000, which is covered by Patrick’s new LTIR designation.
All of this leaves the Flyers with $229,167 in cap space, and, as they are over the cap ceiling of $81.5 million, they will continue to be unable to bank their daily cap space for later use.
Laughton’s return is a big boost to Philadelphia’s offense. Some of the big name players may be struggling to produce, but the bottom-six, namely the fourth line, has been a mess almost ever since he went down. Laughton should be able to provide stability to the team’s forward depth moving forward.
For Andreoff, he returns to the Phantoms where his absence has been felt. In ten games with the Phantoms he scored three goals, assisted on four, and per my tracking had been a play-driving machine at 5-on-5. His re-call was well deserved and he didn’t look out of place — certainly not moreso than others.
And finally, this doesn’t change much regarding the status of Patrick. He has already missed the ten game/24 day window and can be activated as soon as he’s ready to return. The only reason they hadn’t done this sooner is because teams don’t like to use LTIR unless it’s absolutely necessary — the timing of this has nothing to do with a setback.
NHL Salary Cap data courtesy of CapFriendly.
