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Looking Ahead: Tough Decision Looming on Simmonds Next Summer |
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Next summer, Flyers alternate captain Wayne Simmonds is eligible for a contract extension as the final season of his current current approaches. He can become an unrestricted free agent on July 1, 2019. Born in 1988, Simmonds' 31st birthday will be on Aug. 26, 2019.
The decision on whether to extend Simmonds' contract or to consider trading him could shape up to be one of the most difficult decisions of general manager Ron Hextall's tenure. I don't envy him the choice.
On the one hand, there is no doubting the importance of Simmonds' contributions to the team. He's the defending Bobby Clarke Trophy winner and coming off his first All-Star Game selection. He's also been honored with the Yanick Dupre Memorial Award (2015-16) for the insights he's offered the local media. The Flyers Fan Club chose him as the Gene Hart Memorial Award (work ethic, heart and dedication) winner his first year with the team (2011-12). He'd be an annual shoo-in for the latter honor and a contender for the former if both awards weren't bestowed on a new recipient each year.
From a statistical standpoint, he has already scored 28-plus goals (30-plus in each of the last two seasons) five times as a Flyer. He has brought a physical brand of hockey, and plays both ends of special teams with a particular prowess as a netfront presence on the top power play unit. "Simmer" has emerged as an emotional leader in the dressing room and has an excellent work ethic. One of the pound-for-pound toughest players in the NHL, he willingly and routinely goes to battle on behalf of teammates.
Overall, Simmonds has an old-school throwback mentality in many ways, and he has become a huge favorite among the fanbase. Nothing has ever been handed to him, nor does he expect it to be. He has always earned his keep.
It also helps that Simmonds is also an eminently likable guy a off the ice. As intense of a competitor as he is on game nights, he is a different person once the heat of battle is over. Even by hockey standards, Simmonds is earnest, down-to-earth and believes in paying good deeds forward to other people. He is great about community involvement and caring for the less fortunate. As sporting role models go, Wayne Simmonds is about as good as it gets. There's nothing phony about him. Publicity is never his aim.
When the team loses, no one takes it harder than Simmonds. Those who cover the team regularly have learned by now that the worst time to interview him is when he's upset after a game. This is especially true during losing streaks, whether he individually played well or not. At those times, he glowers at questioners, speaks through clenched teeth and says as little as possible. On the flip side, once the emotions from the heat of battle finally calm down (usually by the next day), Simmonds is one of the team's most insightful players and the most willing to tackle tough questions.
For all the aforementioned reasons, there will be strong public sentiment next year for Hextall to hammer out a contract extension for Simmonds with agent Eustace King. His current contract has been of the NHL's biggest bargains. A six-year deal signed in August 2012, Simmonds earns $3.975 million against the salary cap.
This could create a negotiating problem, especially if Simmonds stays healthy has another 30-goal range season in 2017-18. How much should the Flyers retroactively reward Simmonds for performing to standards above the market value of his deal? What is the appropriate term for a power forward type who will be in his 30s when his next contract starts?
The Washington Capitals recently pre-empted 30-year-old T.J. Oshie's unrestricted free agency -- coming of the first 30-goal season and third 20-plus goal year of his career -- with an eight-year, $46 million ($5.75 million cap hit) contract. Although Oshie and Simmonds do not play comparable style games, the Simmonds camp could make a pretty convincing case that the collection of abilities he has demonstrated should put him north of Oshie's cap hit even if the term is shorter.
In terms of market value of players who play a more similar role to Simmonds, the player to watch is Montreal's Max Pacioretty. The 28-year-old player, who has scored 30 to 39 goals in each of the last four seasons, is on the same contract timetable as the Philadelphia player. He's eligible for a contract extension starting next summer and will otherwise become an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2019. As with Simmonds, Pacioretty's current cap hit ($4.5 million) has been a bargain for his club. Consequently, his next deal very easily could be one that winds up being an albatross contract by his mid-30s.
Looking internally from a cap planning standpoint, at the same time that Simmonds' becomes an unrestricted free agent, the Flyers will also need to re-sign restricted free agents Ivan Provorov, Travis Konecny and Travis Sanheim barring pre-emptive extensions. With more and more teams moving away from bridge deals to locking up young players long term, the second NHL contracts for these players (especially Provorov) will be large-scale jumps from their entry-level deals.
It does help the Flyers that some big-ticket cap hits will come off the books by the time a new Simmonds deal would kick in. Valterri Filppula ($5 million cap hit) is an unrestricted free agent next summer, as is Matt Read ($3.625). Jori Lehterä ($4.7 million) and Michael Raffl ($2.35 million) become UFAs in 2019.
Additionally, both Brian Elliott and Michal Neuvirth will come up as unrestricted free agents in the summer of 2019. As long as the Flyers' goaltending succession plan plays out as hoped by then -- i.e., developing at least one among Carter Hart, Felix Sandström, Anthony Stolarz, Alex Lyon or Kirill Ustimenko into a bonafide NHL starter candidate -- the Flyers will not have to be back in the market for another veteran starter or a new veteran 1A/1B tandem. However, this aspect of long-term cap planning cannot yet be predicted with certainty.
There is always a bit of danger in simply assuming that young players coming in will adequately replace a veteran in short order. The Flyers have the likes of 2016 draftee Wade Allison and 2017 selections Isaac Ratcliffe and Matthew Strome as potential candidates to someday become NHL power play netfront types. Will any emerge as an equal or superior NHL player to Simmonds? The answers may be a bit easier to forecast a few years down the line but not before the Simmonds' signing decision will have to be made.
If Hextall decides that it is better to trade Simmonds than to overpay on an extension or to risk losing him for nothing as a UFA in 2019, there is also timing to consider. The NHL trade market tends to bring back more favorable returns on good players when there is still some term remaining on his deal as opposed to a rental-player trade arrangement. In other words, if Simmonds is eventually traded, it might behoove Hextall to do it sooner than the 2019 trade deadline.
During the Paul Holmgren era as Flyers general manager, a long-term extension for Simmonds next summer would have been almost automatic. With Hextall, the outcome is a little harder to predict.
It's not that Hextall has been unwilling to issue big contracts to players he identifies as crucial to the club for the long term. The big Jakub Voracek six-year extension was pre-emptively negotiated by Hextall in the summer of 2015. However, Simmonds will be at a more "dangerous" age when his current deal expires and there are more considerations involved in his case than with Voracek's situation two summers ago.
I would liken Simmonds' impending situation to be a little closer to the one the Flyers had with Scott Hartnell in 2012. At age 30, Hartnell was coming off a career year. Additionally, teams and player agents alike were in a rush to get deals done before the Collective Bargaining Agreement expired. the NHL was headed for a lockout that resulted in the loss of half of the 2012-13 season (and there very well could be another lockout come 2020-21 if the ominous early signs continue down the same path between the NHL and the NHLPA).
Holmgren did not hesitate to sign Hartnell and a 24-year-old Simmonds to respective six-year extensions. As much heat as Holmgren took for the Hartnell contract's term, the cap hit increase on the $28.5 million contract was actually fairly modest relative to his previous contract (which was considered above his market value at the time the Flyers first acquired Hartnell from Nashville and signed him to an initial six-year deal). Meanwhile, the Simmonds deal signed that same summer has certainly proven to be a steal for the Flyers.
Simmonds' next contract, whether with the Flyers or another team, will differ from the Hartnell deal in terms of cap hit unless he trades off a home-town discount on cap hit in exchange for an Oshie-like term. The Flyers might actually be better off going higher on cap hit to get a shorter term but, even then, it will probably be at least a five-year contract that would take Simmonds to the summer of his 36th birthday.
If I had to make a prognostication right now, I would lean toward predicting that Hextall opts to re-sign Simmonds. He would do so with the realization that his next contract could become a problematic one in its latter seasons and the ongoing value of intangibles only goes so far against a likely significant drop in production as the player's mid-30s approach.
The Flyers have built an impressive farm system, which also means that ancillary expensive contracts -- in other words, the combined weight of six-figure deals for role players -- will increasingly be replaced with more cap-friendly ones. A benefit of doing this is that it means a team can periodically overpay to lock up a player in his late 20s or early 30s whose short-range value may significantly outpace his long-range productivity outlook. When all factors are weighed, Simmonds is a player the Flyers would likely want to keep around in his 30s.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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