In mere minutes, it felt like the entire focus of the Philadelphia Flyers shifted. From staying afloat and this awkward wishy-washy tactic of keeping current players around with some preference to young players, all the way to trading away anyone that will not be with this team when they are winning more games than they are losing.
Of course it began with GM Daniel Briere moving out Ivan Provorov for a substantial future-focused haul. The reports of that move started to trickle in, but as soon as people started paying attention to the Flyers, more reports and rumors and inklings were grabbed on to. The Flyers were suddenly about to trade their top defenseman and their starting goaltender.
Carter Hart has one year left on his contract, is still just 24 years old somehow, and is an above-average goaltender that should hopefully have at least a decade more of performance in front of him. But, the Flyers seemingly want to cash-in on this player right now, and do not want to commit to him long-term. They are probably going to trade him this summer, and sometime soon.
But why are they doing this right now? Like we already mentioned, Hart should have several years of performance in his future and the Flyers should be in need of a good goaltender at some point during his career. No team can go without someone reliable in between the pipes for the majority of a decade. We already know what it is like to have an endless carousel of goaltenders when the team is trying to be actually good.
It might be painful for a little bit longer and it is one more position where the Flyers will need to eventually fill with a solid performer, but considering the grand picture of what this team is and where they are heading, there a a few reasons why trading Hart this summer makes perfect sense.
Contract situation
It’s an easy reason and it’s the one everyone automatically and eventually gravitates to whenever a trade is made in the NHL that looks a little weird. Oh, this team traded one of its best players for just a pile of things or maybe sometimes nothing at all? Of course, it’s the salary cap and/or the player’s contract.
As mentioned, Hart is heading into the final year of his three-year deal that carries a $3.97-million cap hit. He will also be a restricted free agent next summer, with unrestricted free agency looming during the 2025 offseason. Essentially, he’s under team control for just two more seasons after this and then he can hit the open market.
If the player decided his time was done in Philadelphia, even if the team didn’t trade him now, he could sign a one-year deal (or head to arbitration) next year and then go sign with someone else for the 2025-26 season. By then, the Flyers will most likely still be bad, so would there even be a point to him being here?
In a totally different scenario, Hart wants to stay and commit long-term to the Flyers. Now you suddenly have to think about a contract that is six to eight years long and a cap hit that will likely be north of $7 million or even double of what his is right now.
Both options feel extremely messy for a team that is going to be wallowing at the bottom of the league’s standings while this is going on. So, they could simply just avoid this headache and strike the iron while its hot, because now just feels right and teams will come crawling.
Wide array of bidders
The one area of focus on Hart seems to be his age. He was heralded as the Next Great Canadian Goaltender for years and all throughout his junior career with the Everett Silvertips. He symbolized the progression of how teams could view their goaltending prospects when he made his NHL debut at 20 years old – when typically team would keep their netminders in the minors to develop well into their 20’s before that.
Hart is still at an age where teams can bank on his future. Hell, the college free agents that we freak out about and think about as prospects, are typically the same age or slightly younger than Hart is right now. Ronnie Attard is just seven months younger than Hart and he is considered a Flyers prospect. Seven months! That’s nothing. This sentiment of just how truly young the Philadelphia goaltender is in the grand scheme of NHL development only benefits the Flyers if they’re trading him.
Normally it is a wrong thing to trade young players, because you buy into the fact that they still have room to grow and all that. But Hart’s age suddenly means that a much wider array of teams should be interested in the player.
If the Flyers were looking to move a goaltender that was approaching 30 years old or even just over that hump, there is less of a runway for his career so only teams looking to win right this second would be interested. Now, with Hart having a lot of years ahead of him, teams from all over the league should be interested.
Unless teams are still actively tanking or have a goaltender better than Hart already on their roster, they could easily buy into acquiring the Flyers goalie.
A team that is on the rise and just needs a goaltender as some sort of final piece, like the New Jersey Devils or Seattle Kraken? Yeah, that makes sense. A team that has not made the playoffs in a while but wants to acquire Hart to just have their goaltender for when they are good again, like the Montreal Canadiens? Yup. And those team that just simply need goaltending so damn badly, like the Edmonton Oilers? Of course.
By throwing Hart’s name out there this summer, Briere and the Flyers’ front office are capitalizing on a bevy of teams in need of goaltending, no matter their position or how far along they are on their contention path.
It feels a little too smart for the Flyers.
Goaltenders are weird
To not take away from Hart’s ability to regularly stop pucks, the position of goaltending is a volatile and hostile thing. We are just two seasons removed from the dude himself putting up a .877 save percentage and looking like complete trash. More than any other position in this sport, there is a wider variance season-by-season on how well an individual will perform.
Hart might be out of this entire league if he throws up a bad couple of seasons in a row for a team that adds more pressure than being on a bad Flyers team. On the other hand, with a more reliable blue line, Hart might win a Vezina. You never know.
Trading away Hart isn’t throwing up the white flag for the Flyers and just not willing to have anyone important in between the pipes. Sam Ersson might be decent and might not. They might draft someone later this month that is suddenly making their NHL debut three years from now and everything is solved. The Flyers might also just trade for a younger goaltender or sign an unrestricted free agent that with the right coaching turns into someone that can backstop a very good team.
We are seeing a Stanley Cup Final that is between an overpaid veteran goaltender that was cast aside as completely washed (Sergei Bobrovsky, if it wasn’t obvious enough) and, in Adin Hill, a player who was wallowing in Arizona and has played at least a game in both the NHL and AHL since 2017-18 and has appeared in just 101 regular season games. This position is so damn weird and unless your team has Igor Shesterkin, Ilya Sorokin, Andrei Vasilevskiy, or the other toppy-top-top goaltenders, it might not even matter who you have back there. Just someone adequate enough.
So, the Flyers might not need a premium netminder right now and the timing might just be perfect for them to walk away and get an absolutely insane return that would help this team when they actually want to be good again.
