The Philadelphia Flyers are scouring the trade market looking for massive upgrades. That’s all we’ve been hearing about. General manager Danny Briere is calling every single person in every single NHL front office trying to work a deal that makes this team much better heading into next season.
There are areas of improvement that could be addressed this offseason, but the Flyers could certainly be a little bit more patient on and either wait for an ideal target to become available, or just let some prospects develop and see if they can fill that hole. There is no guarantee that the Flyers make the playoffs again next season, so Briere could get more aggressive in his pursuits to find the right players for this team and conduct a trade, or he could be perfectly fine with just waiting to see how Porter Martone for 84 games and a scorned Matvei Michkov looking to recover some value, could change this team overall.
Well, one of those holes that the Flyers theoretically need to fill is a top-four defenseman that can be the team’s top power-play quarterback. They have no one that can successfully run a power play from the point — or even just stand there and be a proper faciliatator. For some reason, these good blueliners can play well at 5-on-5 but as soon as their team has more players than their opposition, their brain turns into canned chicken from the 1950s.
We’ve heard John Carlson’s name linked to the Flyers but it certainly seems more than likely that he will not be signing in Philadelphia. So, where do they go from here? Bowen Byram has popped up his head and apparently, there is some interest within the Flyers front office. That could go poorly.
Flyers need to avoid Bowen Byram in trade talks
The Flyers have been linked to Byram this week, and while in theory it makes sense — he’s a 25-year-old, 6-foot-1, left-handed defenseman who is a former top prospect and is coming off a good season where he scored 42 points in 82 games for the Buffalo Sabres — there is just not a lot that gels with what the Flyers are going for.
First, it’s the height. While maybe Broad Street Hockey’s very own Ryan Gilbert can be the only guy to call someone that is 6-foot-1 “short”, Byram certainly doesn’t have the size that the Flyers want.
Because after all, this hypothetical transaction also has Rasmus Ristolainen leaving the team since there are just not enough spots to go around on this blue line. The Flyers have said that they were hesitant to trade Ristolainen at the deadline last season because if they did, their blue line would be very small and not as physical; so they didn’t want to lose that.
So why the heck would they then go out and trade Ristolainen for their asking price of a first-round pick, and then go out and acquire Byram? Suddenly, we’re talking about a top four of Travis Sanheim, Cam York, Jamie Drysdale, and Bowen Byram? That can certainly work but it might give Keith Jones a panic attack not seeing that brutish force on the back end for this team next season.
Now, if this hypothetical trade was the Flyers sending Cam York away (in addition to Ristolainen), and then they basically just swap York for Byram? That could very well be an upgrade. York isn’t close to being the offensive blueliner that Byram was able to show last season in Buffalo. But that also feels like a big trigger for Briere to pull — to disrupt the locker room that York is firmly at the center of.
Byram is simply not as good as he thinks he is
There are issues in Byram’s game that I think would be exploited under Rick Tocchet and he would be a fairly bad fit in Philadelphia. He’s fairly mobile but more as a shorter version of Travis Sanheim than someone like a Quinn Hughes that can be more deceptive in his skating and fake-out defenders to then positively affect the offense.
His entire archetype is someone that just doesn’t make all that much sense for the Flyers right now — if Briere has been cautious of having too much of a similar player on the back end, the Byram is most certainly not going to be an addition to this team this offseason.
Which is why it is also extremely confusing why the Flyers are even named as a team who are interested in Byram. And it becomes even more confusing when you just see Byram’s on-ice effect for the Sabres this past season.
Personally very sorry for the tiny numbers which you can almost certainly not read, but it was just a little shocking to see that in every single instance — 5-on-5 offense, 5-on-5 defense, penalty kill, and power play — the Sabres were a better team without Byram on the ice.
To make it very clear, according to HockeyViz, we’ll just go through the overall percentages below or above league average that the Sabres were with and without Byram on the ice. Lots of variables, but hopefully it makes sense. This is all using expected goals.
5v5 Offense: 6 points below w/ Byram, 3 points below w/o Byram
5v5 Defense: 5 points below w/ Byram, 7 points below w/o Byram (you want to be lower)
Power play: 17 points below w/ Byram, 6 points above w/o Byram
Penalty kill: 12 points above w/Byram, 1 point below w/o Byram
Every single category. The Sabres were a better team when Byram wasn’t playing. But, there’s also context needed, of course.
Because who else would’ve been on the ice for Buffalo when Byram was on the bench? A whole lot of that was Rasmus Dahlin — so it could be a little unfair to go straight for on-ice effects because when Byram isn’t on the ice, the Sabres have a Norris Trophy contender out there playing for them. And that can clearly be seen in the massive difference in the effect on the power play.
Let’s try to take that context out of the equation though, using Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus from Evolving-Hockey. It’s a way of trying to evaluate skater performance that differs from straight on-ice metrics but weighs a whole lot of different categories (such as having Dahlin as a teammate) to try and give a clear answer.
Unfortunately, Byram doesn’t look good in this either.
| RAPM | G +/- per 60 | xG +/- per 60 | Corsi +/- per 60 |
| Bowen Byram | 0.045 (76th) | -0.096 (120th) | 0.93 (72nd) |
In RAPM G+/- — which is essentially just how a player effects his team to score goals — Byram was at 0.045 per 60 minutes. For context, that ranked 76th among all 167 NHL defensemen who played at least 800 minutes last season. To get an even clearer idea, Cam York finished 79th and other players like Brady Skjei, Brandon Carlo, Jalen Chatfield, and Aaron Ekblad finished around them as well. That’s the level of defenseman we’re talking about here.
And even when it comes to effecting expected goals, Byram finished below par with a -0.096, ranking 120th among those 167 defensemen. And for Corsi (shot attempts), he finished at 72nd.
It all just spells out someone who is a top-four defenseman but not someone who can be the best player on your blue line when you actually want to win a whole lot of games.
Which also is why the Flyers need to avoid him, because he wants to be paid like he’s one of the best defensemen in the world.
The money doesn’t make sense
Byram has one year left on his contract before hitting unrestricted free agency next summer. His contract now, which comes with a $6.25-million AAV feels perfectly reasonable for someone under team control and even someone who played hardball with the Sabres when he initially signed this two-year contract to walk him right to free agency as soon as possible.
And now, it seems like he wants to get paid. Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos said that Byram sees his next contract being in the upper echelon of NHL defensemen.
“Byram is being shopped by the Sabres going into the draft as he’s made it clear to them he’s not prepared to make a long-term commitment at this point,” Kypreos wrote Monday. “With the recent signing of Darren Raddysh in Toronto, look for Byram to sit tight and wait on new contracts for Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar before setting his price point on an extension that could start as high $12 million AAV.”
That is frankly absurd. Even if his eventual contract comes down towards something in the $10 million range, that is giving someone, who we just laid out how he’s not some perfect defenseman than solve a lot of problems, the money of a true gamechanger.
Sure, in relation to Darren Raddysh’s eight-year, $8.5-million AAV contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Byram should get a little bit more considering his age and a little bit of a higher ceiling. But that feels like a contract someone gives as an unrestricted free agent. To then send good picks and prospects and players to Buffalo, and then sign him to that contract, seems absolutely insane.
Spending what it would take to acquire Byram and then signing him to a contract that he wants, feels like treating a papercut but severing your entire left leg off with a chainsaw.
All of this really leaves us to wonder if the connection between Byram and the Flyers is Briere making one single phone call over to Buffalo in the last couple of months to see what they want for him, and then scoffing and hanging up. Maybe all these NHL insiders heard of this phone call and will hold onto the fact that the Flyers inquired about Byram in the past, so they will put it down in their rumor blog that these two teams are talking.
It just makes absolutely zero sense. It doesn’t solve anything on the ice and he also wants to be paid more than anyone on the team. Just, no.
