Quick Hits: August 22, 2021
1) The Flyers avoided arbitration with defenseman Travis Sanheim. Yesterday, the team announced that the 25-year-old has signed a two-year contract that carries a $4,675,000 AAV. This is likely a compromise deal. The cap hit itself falls below the top end of what the Flyers might have had pay if the case had gone to arbitration. On the flip side, the two-year term walks Sanheim directly to unrestricted free agency in 2023. With the Sanheim contract being wrapped up, the Flyers have all in-house players under contract for the 2021-22 season.
2) The Sanheim contract puts the Flyers $643,523 over the cap ceiling if power forward Wade Allison ($925,000 AAV) makes the opening-night roster and the team carries 14 forwards and seven defensemen into the season.
Capfriendly lists the Flyers as having $281,477 of open cap space below the ceiling. However, this is based on carrying 13 forwards. They do not list Allison but do figure Morgan Frost ($863,333) and Tanner Laczynski ($925,000) in their list of 13 forwards.
Let's say that Frost starts the season in the AHL with Lehigh Valley and Allison is on the NHL opening night roster with the Flyers carrying 13 forwards. That is also doable, but would reduce the Flyers' available season-opening cap space by $61,667. If so, the Flyers would open the season with $219,810 of space.
Laczynski, who is listed by Capfriendly among their 13 projected NHL-roster forwards, makes the same $925,000 on his current contract that Allison makes. Thus, the team could theoretically swap out Laczynski and swap in Allison and the implications would be the same as in any of the scenarios listed above.
Any way you slice it, the Flyers are very limited cap-wise in what they can do in terms of in-season roster moves even if they do go into the season with 13 forwards and seven defensemen.
3) What would be some options for creating additional cap space? Three potential strategies:
* Trading or waiving Nicolas Aube-Kubel ($1,075,000 AAV). Whether claimed or unclaimed in waivers, the Flyers would get 100 percent relief on his cap hit. The CBA allows a maximum of $1,125,000 to be buried in the American Hockey League in 2021-22.
* Trading for a player who will spend the 2021-22 season on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) and obtaining an allowance to exceed the salary cap by up to a maximum of the player's cap hit.
For example, let's say the Flyers traded with the Anaheim Ducks for the contract of Ryan Kesler. They know that Kesler, who hasn't played since 2018-19, will spend the full season on LTIR. His contract, signed in 2015, expires at the end of the 2021-22 season. It carries a $6.875 million cap hit. Theoretically, if the Flyers acquired Kesler and stashed him on LTIR for the season under the scenario where they'd otherwise have $281,447 of cap space, the Flyers would have that space plus an allowance to exceed the salary cap up to $6,593,553.
4) When I was a hockey and Flyers-obsessed child of the 1970s and adolescent of the 1980s, I never would thought possible something that I got to experience last night. As part of the activities at the Flyers Fantasy Camp weekend, Brad Marsh hosted a catered barbecue at his house in South Jersey. A periodic drizzle early in the evening turned into a steady rain, so we had to move things inside. There, we watched the Broad Street Bullies documentary that ran on HBO about 10 years ago.
It was almost surreal watching the program while seated in the same room as five members of those teams (Bill Barber, Bob Kelly, Dave Schultz, Orest Kindrachuk and Joe Watson) plus Lou Nolan. Also present to watch were the likes of Mark Howe, Dave Poulin, Marsh (of course), John LeClair, Danny Briere, Keith Jones and Ian Laperriere. The most fun part was listening to the running commentary of some of the 70s Flyers who were there last night.
Let's put it this way: The surviving Bullies think less of the arrogant condescension of some of the non-Philadelphia sportswriters who were talking heads on the documentary than the interviewees on the documentary thought of the Flyers' teams of the 1970s.
It was a little emotional seeing a few of the people on the documentary who've since passed away, especially Jay Greenberg but also the likes of Ed Snider, Jack Chevalier and the archival interview clips with Fred Shero and Keith Allen.