According to Bill Meltzer, the Philadelphia Flyers have waived Joonas Lehtivuori and intend to release him from his contract. You can get some sort of CBA explanation on how this works here.
This isn’t really a shocking move. Lehtivuori hated everything about being a member of the Adirondack Phantoms last year, from being on a bad team to playing under new head coach Joe Paterson to just being in the middle of nowhere in Glens Falls. He made it clear that he wasn’t happy, and when he went over to Finland in the middle of last season, he raised doubts that he’d ever return to North America for hockey.
He has one year left on his contract with the Flyers. He’s likely never going to be a contributor at the NHL level after all of this drama that’s surrounded him, even though he actually was quite good while playing with the Phantoms two seasons ago, so the move by the team makes sense.
As we all know, the Flyers are tight against the 50 contract limit, meaning that if somebody like training camp invitees Michael Nylander and Blake Kessel or unsigned No. 8 overall pick Sean Couturier impresses in camp, they wouldn’t be able to make the team because there’s no room for another contract.
Getting rid of Lehtivouri’s contract changes all of that, and it makes camp, which starts on Saturday morning, much more interesting. Well, the potential is there at least.
