Afternoon, everybody! It’s is Monday and this sure is something: the Flyers have placed both Dale Weise and Taylor Leier on waivers. Because, uh, yeah, sure.
We’ll be honest—this wasn’t the move that many (any?) of us were expecting. The Flyers needed to clear one spot on the roster, since Mikhail Vorobyev has made the team, and it would have been easy to imagine that Jori Lehtera would be the one to go, what with That Cap Hit and That Drug Ring Investigation. But no dice. Instead it’s Weise and Leier, who maybe shouldn’t be too surprising of choices, either. In 2017-18, Weise put up eight points in 62 games, and Leier put up five in 39, and both found themselves dropped in the press box for extended stretches. So, it makes sense why these two found themselves placed on waivers, even if they weren’t at the top of the list of logical candidates.
But, why two? They only needed to clear one spot, and now they’ve opened up two. What gives? We might guess that they wanted to leave a spot open if they just really wanted to call someone up from the Phantoms. I guess. But more likely is they’re leaving a spot open for Corban Knight—who’s currently out with an upper body injury—so they won’t have to waive someone else when he’s ready to return. Who knows, maybe he’s pulling an Andrew MacDonald, and he’s much closer to returning than the original timeline would have led us to believe. We’re doing a lot of speculating on that last part, but leaving room for Knight, whenever he’s ready to return, makes the most sense. So we may be starting the season with 4C Jori Lehtera, but that arrangement may not hold. We’ll see.
We’ll also have to wait until tomorrow to see if Weise or Leier have been claimed, if they’ll be joining the Phantoms or someone else entirely. But we’ll have an update for you as soon as we know. Stay tuned, friends.
