This heatwave?
It’s Trea Turner’s fault.
The sinkhole in West Philly?
Don’t know how, but I’m sure Trea brought earthquakes with him from California.
Ivan Fedotov’s inability to leave Russia?
I’ve heard Turner was actually Turnerov during his KGB days in the old country.
When I think back on the summer of 2023, the Phillies’ frustrating shortstop will personify everything bad that happened.
Turner is in the first year of an 11-year, $300 million contract. He hasn’t gotten on base, hasn’t hit for power, and has been lacking in the field. He got the night off Wednesday and his backup, Edmundo Sosa, hit a game-winning home run. It’s becoming hard to fathom how this guy earned this contract in the first place, but that sounds like a Good Phight problem.
The Flyers, on the other hand, are mine. So, instead of dreading a decade of ineptitude in red pinstripes, maybe it’s healthier to look back on some of the Flyers’ free agent missteps of yesteryear, and now that it feels like this team has direction, remember we can survive anything.
In dishonor of the Phillies shortstop, here are my seven worst deals of the cap era.
7/6. Ray Emery and Brian Boucher (2009)
This feels unfair considering Emery and Boucher helped the Flyers win the Eastern Conference in 2010, but it’s also unfair that I can’t hear Chelsea Dagger without gagging. Most readers probably have never forgotten the feeling when they realized Patrick Kane’s shot across the goal line snuck through Michael Leighton to end the series, but the 6-5 loss in Game 1 might have been as big a missed opportunity. Regardless, despite a loaded Flyers defense led by Chris Pronger and Kimmo Timonen, suspect goaltending doomed them at the worst time.
Emery and Boucher were fine throughout the year. Emery posted a .905 save percentage and battled through injuries to start 29 games. Boucher was a serviceable backup, finishing with an .899 save percentage in 33 games before his injury in the Bruins series made way for Leighton. With a tight cap situation, the mercurial Emery was signed as a reclamation project on a one-year, $1.5 million deal to start. For another $312.5k, Craig Anderson went to Colorado, finishing with 71 starts and a .917 save percentage. Some shrewder dealings in net might have been the difference in the Flyers’ only Cup appearance in the last 25 years.
5. Jody Shelley (2010)
The limited cap space that led to the Flyers inking Emery didn’t stop them from signing enforcer Jody Shelley to a three-year (!) deal with a $1.1 million average annual value the next summer, while the minimum salary was $500k. For younger fans: this is like the Nic Deslauriers deal, except if the Flyers had Stanley Cup aspirations and spent their last dollars on him. Oh, and if he was worse. Shelley scored two goals and had five points in 89 games over the life of the contract.
How bad was the cap situation? The team couldn’t even activate Michael Leighton from injured reserve during the season because it didn’t have the cap space.
4. Vincent Lecavalier (2013)
With Claude Giroux at the peak of his powers, the Flyers went after the big fish in free agency and landed Lecavalier for some secondary scoring. Sure, his possession number had started to decline, but he was stuck on a sinking Tampa team and had an opportunity to play down the lineup in Philadelphia.
Well, let’s just say it didn’t work out. Lecavalier signed a five-year deal worth $22.5 million. He was so bad he left $6 million on the table to retire after the third year. Lecavalier did finish with 17 goals and 44 points his first year in orange and black, but soon proved unplayable, earning a Corsi percentage that hovered around 45 percent over his three years here. We even deified Ron Hextall for moving him in January 2016, after he averaged less than 10 minutes a night in the seven games he played. What a time to be alive.
3/2. Derian Hatcher and Mike Rathje (2005)
After the lockout, the league had a clear mission to make the game faster and more exciting. The two-line pass was gone. The league started calling more penalties. Hell, they even changed the NHL’s logo to look sleeker. What did the Flyers do? Signed a pair of six-foot-five, lumbering defensemen to giant contracts. Hatcher, 33 at the time, signed a four-year, $14 million deal and Rathje, then 31, signed for five years and $17.5 million. While these do not seem exorbitant, that would equate to matching AAVs of just under $7.5 million in today’s cap.
It worked out as well as you’d expect.
Rathje made it 18 games into his second season of the deal before a back injury more or less ended his playing career, though he was an LTIR fixture until the expiration of the deal.
Hatcher played three seasons before a right knee injury spelled the end of his run.
Despite boasting one of the league’s most dominant lines after signing Peter Forsberg to play with Simon Gagne and Mike Knuble, the team was bounced in the first round of the playoffs after chasing around the high-flying Buffalo Sabres, who exemplified the changing dynamics of hockey, for six games.
The following season, the Flyers cratered and finished with the league’s worst record.
Metrics remain limited for their first two seasons in Philadelphia, and counting stats were never Hatcher nor Rathje’s calling card, but Hatcher did finish with a measly 44.8 percent Corsi in 2007-08. That said, the team started a new era of Flyers hockey, built around Danny Briere, and made it to the Eastern Conference Final. Huh, wonder whatever happened to that guy.
1. Ilya Bryzgalov (2011)
This is a no brainer and may be the worst contract in the history of the sport. Yet, somehow, the Flyers might have gotten lucky.
After a three-goalie circus helped lead to the demise of the 2010-11 Flyers, the team decided it was finally going to seek stability in net. Bryzgalov was the top goalie available and the Flyers landed him on a nine-year deal worth $51 million. Bryz was 31 at the time. Nine years. An AAV of $6.76 million on today’s cap. 31 years old.
And to make matters worse, the team traded centers Jeff Carter and Mike Richards to create salary cap space and turn the franchise over. Both deals ended up being huge wins, but they meant the Flyers lost a lot of experience while the team’s window to win was clearly immediate. The team was still relying on an aging Pronger and, again, just signed a 31-year-old goalie.
Hindsight is 20/20, but even at the time, I never understood how Bryzgalov, coming off a .921 save percentage in 68 games, was worth this massive investment while Tomas Vokoun, 34, received a one-year deal with $1.5 million after a season with a .922 save percentage. You can’t really have concerns about your goalie aging off a cliff if you invest nine years in a 31-year-old, but hey, it’s not like I’m still annoyed about this.
Regardless, Bryzgalov survived two seasons in Philadelphia, giving us 99 games, and .905 save percentage, and memes before the term meme existed, until a compliance buyout ended his run. The Flyers will continue to pay him $1,642,857 annually through the 2026-27 season. But at least they got him off the cap and out of the net.
Now if only the Phillies could find such a clean fix for their Turner problem…
