NISKANEN RETIRES, BRAUN RE-SIGNS
In news that came as a shock to many outside the Philadelphia Flyers team management inner circle and the players on the roster, veteran defenseman Matt Niskanen announced his retirement on Monday, roughly three months shy of his 34th birthday. Niskanen, who came to the Flyers last offseason in a trade for Radko Gudas, started 68 of 69 games for the team in 2019-20, skating on the top defensive pairing with Ivan Provorov and seeing regular duty atop the top penalty killing rotation and the right point of the second power play unit. He chipped in 33 points but, more important, he was a calming presence and a quiet leader whom everyone paid attention to when he felt the need to speak up.
Niskanen's retirement rips a significant hole in the Flyers' blueline; one that no one internally is an ideal candidate to fill immediately. The team could slide 23-year-old Philippe Myers up to the right side of the top pairing -- Myers himself will officially become an arbitration-ineligible restricted free agent come Friday, and will need to be re-signed this offseason -- but he and regular partner, 24-year-old Travis Sanheim, both still have some streakiness/consistency issues on their games. Besides, those two appear to do their best work when playing together. Sanheim did see regular duty playing along with Provorov in the second half of the 2018-19 season, however.
On Monday, Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher talked up the possibility of sticking with what's in-house and then re-evaluating during the season rather than pursuing a free agent or a trade this off-season. I suspect, though, that this is talk coming from a place of trying to project a sense of strength ("We're not in we-NEED-this-player-or-else mode") rather than weakness in trade talks or free agent negotiations.
Additionally, the Flyers announced on Monday the re-signing of veteran defenseman Justin Braun to a two-year contract extension for $1.8 million per season; a $2 million per season paycut from the previous deal he signed while a member of the San Jose Sharks. Braun should continue to be a regular penalty killer. Unless the lack of an outside acquisition causes a need for Braun to slide up to the second pair with Sanheim (they played together for much of the first half of 2019-20), Braun will otherwise continue to play the right side of the third pair.
Neither Niskanen nor Braun played to their 2019-20 regular season standards in the 2020 postseason. Nonetheless, both played huge roles in the team's success and battling through adversity in the playoffs at least enough to come within a win of the Eastern Conference Finals. Fletcher made it clear yesterday that Niskanen really struggled to adapt to the Bubble, and dreaded the preparation process this offseason of heading into the unknown of what's to come (or even WHEN it's to come) for the '20-21 season.
Where do the Flyers go from here? Do they move out one more salary in the range of $4 million plus and take an all-in shot at unrestricted free agent Alex Pietrangelo? That is the one player out there who would not only check off every box on what the Flyers need to replace Niskanen -- an experienced top-pairing right shot defenseman who plays in every game situation. In fact, it would be an upgrade, especially offensively.
Pietrangelo is THE most coveted defenseman on the market this offseason, and signing the 30-year-old -- assuming he could be convinced to come to Philadelphia -- would put the Flyers right up near a flat cap ceiling for years to come. He will be able to handpick his landing spot among the teams that have (or can create) sufficient cap space to pay him what he will command.
If not Pietrangelo, the Flyers might be away to swing a trade for another right-hander, Matt Dumba. That would require an attractive trade package to be assembled, unlike with Pietrangelo, but it would also be significantly less expensive on the Flyers' cap to the tune of about $4 million.
It has been said that the Arizona Coyotes would be willing to move Oliver Ekman-Larsson for the right price. The left-handed defenseman has had a couple years below his standards, would have to waive a no-trade clause to agree to come to the Flyers, and is a 29-year-old with seven seasons still to run on the contract extension he signed last year at an $8.25 million cap hit. However, he is eminently capable of a bounceback year, is an extremely talented hockey player and absorbs a lot of minutes. An Ekman-Larsson acquisition would dial up the pace atop the blueline. He and Provorov would have an adjustment period in reading off each other (but are both smart players and would do that), whereas Niskanen was more of a complementary partner who adapted himself directly to Provorov.
Torey Krug, age 29, is an unrestricted free agent this summer. The pint-sized defenseman, who made $5 million on his expiring Bruins contract, is a bankable 50-plus point a season player who has been more consistent year-in and year-out than his closest Flyers equivalent (Shayne Gostisbehere). However, Ghost's career-best season of 2017-18 saw him top Krug's career-best season plus Gostisbehere is both younger and less expensive than Krug. However, Krug has been the superior power play player, at least partially because of Gostisbehere's recent injury history. Krug is NOT a direct replacement for Niskanen, as he is a player who needs a high percentage of offensive zone starts and matchup management. He'd be a "Ghost" replacement if the Flyers reshuffle their pairing combos. Personally, I do not see this as the best fit or the best use of precious cap space.
Any defenseman whom the Flyers acquire to replace Niskanen, unless the player is an unrestricted free agent in the 2021 offseason, is going to create Expansion Draft headaches. The reason: If the Flyers take the option of protecting seven forwards and three defensemen, they can cover their bases with protected forwards but they will be at severe risk of losing one of Sanheim or Myers (whichever one is not proteced) to the Expansion Draft, unless they pay a ransom to the Seattle Kraken to get them to agree to pick another player.
Choice number two would be to take the "protect 8 skaters of any position" option. This would enable the Flyers to protect a fourth defenseman and keep both Sanheim and Myers away from Seattle without having to entice them to pick someone else. The downside, though, is pretty severe. Philly could then protect only four forwards.
Let's do the math here. Claude Giroux and Kevin Hayes are required to be protected due their no-movement clauses in their contracts. That leaves two slots. One will go to Sean Couturier. The other will go to Travis Konecny. The Flyers are out of protected forwards at that point.
Who'd be exposed? Oskar Lindblom, Nolan Patrick, Jakub Voracek and James van Riemsdyk. Philly would not have to worry about losing either Joel Farabee or Morgan Frost, because both are exempt from the Expansion Draft. Scott Laughton will be an unrestricted free agent next summer.
If Niskanen had not retired, the Flyers would not be potentially facing this problem. He'd have become an unrestricted free agent next summer and a non-factor in the Expansion Draft. That was part of Fletcher's figuring in acquiring him in the first place. Now, the acquisition of an outside player to put alongside Provorov (presuming there's term on the deal that runs beyond 2020-21) will create the aforementioned dilemma.
One potential work-around would be to try to convince Giroux -- who will be in the final year of his contract in 2021-22 -- to agree to waive his NMC for purposes of the Expansion Draft. Philly may still be able to sneak him through if Seattle is looking for younger talent to claim. The Flyers could then protect one extra forward (either Lindblom or Patrick) if they take the eight skater option.
While the Flyers would LIKE to add a goal-scoring winger this offseason, the feeling here is that they need to prioritize re-solidifying the top defense pair atop the offseason to-do list. Second is covering their bases as much as possible at third-line center. A goal-scoring winger ought to come after that. A top-pairing D man and three lines of scoring depth is more important to a team's success than a goal-scoring winger.
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CHUCK FLETCHER TRANSCRIPT
Opening Statement
Chuck Fletcher: First of all, I just want to start off by thanking Matt Niskanen for his contributions to our team this season. As an organization and team, we made great strides this year, not only in terms of our record, but in terms of how we played the game, in terms of our culture, our commitment to playing the right way, our commitment to the details necessary to play the game well. Obviously, our coaching staff deserves a lot of credit for that and our players deserve a lot of credit for that. I do want to single out Matt Niskanen, who in my opinion at least did as much as anybody to change the mindset of our team. He’s the consummate professional and teammate. He’s somebody that besides his on-ice contributions, contributed so much to our group from the way he prepared to playing the right way in drills, which was a great lesson for our young defensemen to watch day in and day out.
Of course, you couple those things, the intangibles that he brought, with his on-ice contributions. For us, he was a top pairing defenseman, played on the second power play, played on the first PK and was used in every situation. If we were up a goal late in a game, he was on the ice. He was often on the ice when we were down a goal, trying to tie it up. He certainly won’t be an easy player to replace.
Today should be about thanking Matt for what he did, for what he contributed to our group and I think we’re very grateful for the time that we had with him. After all, he’s put a lot of time into his career. This was his decision. At some point, maybe I’ll let Matt speak to it specifically. Certainly he earned the right to make this decision and decide on what terms he wanted to end his career. Today was the day he made that announcement.
When did Nisky tell you that he wanted to retire? What was your reaction at that time? Were you surprised?
He called me the day after our last game. He was on his way back to Minnesota, driving back home. He called me and told me that he was going to retire. It caught me off-guard, absolutely. I didn’t anticipate that. I know it’s been a difficult year with the pandemic, coming back to play in the bubble and there’s a lot of uncertainty about next year. It’s difficult I think for some players. We talked about it. There’s a lot of emotion. There’s always a lot of emotion at the end of a season. We lost a tough Game 7 the night before.
I just told him to get home and see your family, spend some time and let’s talk again in a few weeks. We’ve had a couple conversations since then. He’s resolute in his desire to retire. Again, I completely respect that. He’s earned that right. We’ll just move forward from here. We wish him nothing but the best.
How much of a priority will it be to find a Matt Niskanen replacement from outside the organization?
Good luck with that! Look, there’s different ways to attack this. Obviously, to his credit, he gave us early warning of his desire. We’ve been aware. Certainly I’ve been aware of this. I’ve kept it quiet for a while just to let things settle down and let Matt have his time and space. As I mentioned in my introductory statement, he’s a tough guy to replace. There’s not many players that have that full skillset, the right-shot defenseman, the high-end competitor, the ability to contribute offensively and shut down guys defensively, just the understated presence. He had a tremendous presence with his teammates. We have a very strong leadership corps to begin with, but bringing in Matt Niskanen, I think elevated everybody. Just the respect from his teammates, and the coaches and all of us towards Matt is high level.
We’ll do the best we can. We were able to re-sign Justin Braun today. We have some young defensemen that continue to grow and will continue to assume bigger roles as they develop. Whether we chose to go with the group we have, have players play different roles and grow into those roles or we look to fill from the outside, we’ll see what opportunities there are.
Obviously, I've been working the phones for weeks. I’ve spoken to every team in the league and some several times. I think I’m pretty aware of what’s available and we’ll have to make some decisions from here. I’m certainly comfortable with our group, our group of seven that we have right now, that’s returning from last year. We have some other players pushing. Hopefully we get Sam Morin back into a healthy status and back playing with the organization this year.
We have the ability [either] to start the season as we are and wait for opportunities or, obviously, we can search for opportunities now. It will depend on the player, the fit, the price and the opportunity.
When you are weighing the decision to look outside the organization for a defenseman replacement, if he has some term left on his deal, is that something that might weigh in on your decision just in terms of the expansion draft and thinking long-term if that’s the right move?
It has to be part of your decision-making. Right now, we’re set up well for the expansion draft. We can protect the players we need to protect. We have the necessary players to expose, so we’re in a good position. If you can improve your team, you always have to try to improve your team. Maybe that makes it a little bit more difficult for the expansion draft, but there’s a lot of time between now and then. Everything we’ve done the last year has been with Seattle in mind and what we need to do to make sure we’re prepared and protected. Right now, we’re in a good spot.
If we can improve our team now and that affects what we do for Seattle, then we’ll have to deal with that.
Do you believe that the top pair defenseman that you are looking for is already on the roster? How does this change the priorities going into the offseason as compared to where they were before you had an inkling of Matt Niskanen’s decision?
I think I’ve spoken about our need to make sure we’re protected from a depth standpoint on defense. I think that remains the same. I think we’ll continue to look at options to improve our team. Wyatt Kalynuk chose not to sign with us earlier this spring. Now with Matt’s departure, we’re down a couple defensemen that we thought might be part of our group for next season.
Certainly that’s an area we’ll have to look at. I don’t think it changes anything. We lost in the second round. Clearly, we’re not a perfect team. I think we’re a good team. I think we’re a team that has the ability to get better just from internal growth, but we’re going to look at any avenue to get better.
I do think you can maybe make an argument right now that our forward group going into next season, assuming a full health for Oskar and Nolan, is deeper and better than what it was in the bubble. You can probably argue that defensively we don’t have the same depth with the loss of Matt Niskanen. I think that’s logical.
Yet there’s still some players there, particularly young players like Sanheim and Myers that grew a lot this year and from my standpoint, will continue to grow. We have other players that can play in different situations. For example, Justin Braun is an elite penalty killer. One of the main reasons we brought him back. He’s a strong defender, but he certainly can take on an even bigger PK role.
We have a player like Shayne Gostisbehere that can take on more in terms of the power play. So we do have some options internally. We’ll just have to see. Again, if there’s some way to improve our team, we will, whether that’s now, two months from now as teams look to shed dollars if they get into cap trouble, or even into the season. This season, we didn’t have a lot of cap space into the year. If we go in the way we’re situated now, we would have by the deadline 12, 14 million [prorated] dollars of cap space.
There will be different pressure points at different times when maybe players will be available. We’ll just have to make sure we make a good decision at the right time.
Do you think Phil Myers is ready to be a top pairing guy or does he need more time?
The way AV uses our players, I’m just saying this generally, even with the four lines, he distributes even strength time pretty well. Obviously it’s not quite even. Provorov’s going to get a little more than some other players. We involve a lot of players in terms of our even strength time on ice and the difference maker is usually how much special teams you get. Players like Provorov, Niskanen, and Sanheim played both power play and penalty kill so that obviously inflates their time on ice. We want to have three solid pairs. We have different players that can play different roles if need be. I’m not too concerned about that.
Is it a mandate that you need to have another right-shot defenseman to make the coach happy or just for roster development?
We wanted to have right-shot D last year when we added Niskanen and Braun. If I’m not mistaken, our penalty kill was in the bottom four or five teams in the league for five years in a row. This year, we got up to eleven. I think we were as high as four or five at one point in time. We brought them in to keep the puck out of our net and to kill penalties was the big thing. N
Niskanen brought so much to the table, but Braun really helped stabilize our defensive play in certain situations where you needed a defensive defenseman. I guess to answer your question, we do have Mark Friedman, a young man that’s put his time in at Lehigh. From the time I’ve been in the organization, no player has improved more than Mark Friedman. He’s only played, I believe, 5 games in the league, but personally, I’m very confident he can play in the NHL as a regular next year. He’s a right-shot.
I think the focus might be more on fit. If there’s somebody that fits, whether it’s a left-shot or a right-shot, that makes our team better, I think that would be what we hope to do. As I’ve said, I am comfortable going into the season this way and we can always make adjustments if it doesn’t work out as well as we want or maybe it does.
I think this past year shows you, too. We didn’t expect Nolan to miss the whole season. Obviously, nobody can anticipate what happened with Oskar. Sometimes you think you are good, your roster is good and then things happen and you have to react. Having some flexibility going into the season may not be a bad thing either.
Do you think this allows Egor Zamula to maybe climb [to the NHL] a little quicker than you anticipated?
Well, defensemen take time to develop. Players like Provorov are pretty rare. You look at top kids like Sanheim and Myers and Robert Hà¤gg, kids that are high picks or top prospects, they often need a couple years in the American League.
Whether Egor needs a couple years, I don’t know. He will need some development time. I think we need to make sure we’re doing the right thing for him. He still needs to get stronger and put on some weight. I think his puck game, his poise and his hockey sense is probably NHL ready. Sometimes you do a disservice to these young players by rushing them. We’ll let his play dictate that. Typically, young defensemen take a little bit of time.
There’s been some speculation that Shayne Gostisbehere could get moved in the offseason. What does this news do about your willingness to move him?
If you move any defensemen, Shayne or anybody else, now we have to possibly replace another player. If something makes sense from a hockey perspective, we’ll look at it. Clearly, if you move a defenseman, you better have somebody to replace him. We’ll have to be mindful of our depth and making sure we have the right pieces for our coaches to use next season.
If it’s not to replace Niskanen per se, is it more to have a veteran that the young guys can take the lead from than continue to bring young defensemen up? Is it important to have that leader in addition to Justin Braun?
I think it’s a fair point. Certainly I think Niskanen and Braun complemented those young players really well last year. They grew a lot and I think learned a lot from those two players. As young players continue to get games and grow, they become not so young players. A player like Provorov, he might be a guy whether it’s next year or the year after, he might be the stabilizing guy. Might be the guy you put a young player with to help bring his game along.
At some point, it’s the circle of life a little bit in the NHL. All these young players grow and get that experience then it’s their opportunity to step forward and be those leaders.
As far as Niskanen’s retirement, was it for health reasons? Did he want to spend more time with his family? Why did he say he wanted to retire?
I’ll speak a little bit to it. I think I should let Matt speak to that at some point. Nothing to do with his health. He loved the team. He really enjoyed the season. I think being away from your family, a couple months in the bubble impacted a lot of players, not just ours but around the league. I think it’s tough when you have a young family and different circumstances. The game became a little different than what it was. I’m sure the uncertainty of next season and some of the changes that have been brought on by the pandemic certainly had an impact.
Matt just said to me that he wanted to go when it was time. He wanted to make that decision. I think he felt this was the time to do so. He loved the team. Really believes in the group. I think he was thankful for the opportunity to come to Philadelphia. As thankful we were that he came to Philadelphia. There’s no health issues or anything like that.
Do you anticipate an active trade market over the upcoming days before free agency starts?
Yeah, that’s a good question, Bill. We had some trades early. I thought there might be a few more. Certainly I expect some tomorrow. I do think there will be teams even after October 9th, after the start of free agency, teams that want to get involved, sign a player and then have to clean up the mess after they go over the cap after the start of free agency. I could still see trades happening into the fall here and even into the beginning of the season as teams try to become cap compliant and fill that last hole.
Don’t forget, you are allowed to go ten percent over the cap until end of training camp, until the season starts. You will see teams that are over the cap and having to work backwards. That may present opportunities even after the draft and the start of free agency. I expect some. There’s been an unbelievable amount of chatter. There’s not a lot of money in the system. It’s a little bit harder to find the right dance partner.