Flyers finally trade Kevin Hayes to St. Louis Blues

After what felt like weeks but was in reality only a couple of days of reports and speculation and rumors, the Philadelphia Flyers have finally actually traded center Kevin Hayes to the St. Louis Blues.

The Flyers are sending Hayes to the Blues with 50 percent of his salary retained in exchange for a 2024 sixth-round pick.

The salary retention means that the Flyers will be on the hook for approximately $3.57 million of Hayes’s salary for the remaining three years of his contract. On the other, more optimistic look, the Flyers will be getting an extra $3.57 million in cap space and a roster spot for a young player to develop into and provide a little bit of future hope.

With this move, the Flyers now have a total of $10.3 million in cap space – $16.62 million if you want to count Ryan Ellis going to LTIR – and just five restricted free agents to sign. This number is, of course, before the projected moves that we will see in the coming days or weeks of other roster players getting sent out for picks and prospects or cap dumps.

This is a much smaller deal than what was initially reported just this past weekend. It was first reported that Hayes to St. Louis was a reality and that defenseman Travis Sanheim was involved in the trade, to make it a larger tear-down trade that would have one of the Blues’ late first-round picks headed to Philadelphia. Unfortunately, St. Louis blueliner Torey Krug was part of that deal but vetoed the move with his no-trade clause and Flyers GM Danny Briere had to settle for this much weaker and less exciting version of the deal.

Hayes was a solid bet to make an addition to a Flyers team that wanted to just keep on pushing for more and more success before the 2019-20 season. Unfortunately, that concept never really panned out and after the Chuck Fletcher-led management attempted a couple too many times to make minor win-now changes to a team that was already depleting and leaking all over.

Now, after scoring 18 goals and 54 points, and having some disagreements and conflict with head coach John Tortorella, Hayes has been shown the door in a trade to simply just let him play somewhere else as the Flyers continue to do their own thing.

This will certainly not be the last trade Briere makes in the coming days. Sanheim – already rumored to have been involved in a move out of here – has his no-trade clause kick in on Saturday, and players like Scott Laughton and Travis Konecny have their names sprinkled throughout trade rumors as well. More things will happen and this is just the second roster player to be on their way out after Ivan Provorov.

Ah, the summer continues.