2023 NHL Entry Draft: Running Blog
* Entering this evening's first round of the 2023 NHL Entry Draft, the Philadelphia Flyers hold the seventh and 22nd overall picks of the 32 selections leaguewide. The Draft starts at 7:00 p.m. EDT and will be televised on ESPN. Rounds 2 through 7 will be held on Thursday.
* Yesterday, the Flyers traded veteran center/left wing Kevin Hayes to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for a sixth-round pick in the 2024 Draft. The Flyers will retain the maximum 50 percent allowed on the final three years of Hayes' contract ($7.14 million cap hit), with both Philadelphia and St. Louis taking on $3.57 apiece.
As widely reported, the Flyers initially had a much larger deal with the Blues all but completed on Saturday. The deal reportedly would have brought a 2023 first round pick to the Flyers in exchange for Hayes (at 30 percent retention), Travis Sanheim and the Flyers' willingness to take 32-year-old veteran defenseman Torey Krug (four years of remaining term, $6.5 million AAV) as part of the deal.
St. Louis general manager Doug Armstrong neglected to proactively ask Krug, who has a full no-trade clause in his contract, whether he'd accept a trade to the Flyers. Subsequently, with the deal just about done, Krug refused to waive the no-trade. There were attempts to convince him to do so, but the player held firm.
With Plan A scuttled, Flyers general manager Danny Briere is said to have looked for a Plan B option that would see a three-team trade with the Flyers sending Krug along to a third club. This, too, did not come to fruition (whether due to Krug continuing to hold fast to the no-trade clause, as is his right, or due to terms not being reached with third-club possibilities).
By Tuesday, the trade became much smaller, the Flyers' retention on Hayes growing from 30 percent to 50 percent and the return excessively modest (the 2024 sixth-round pick).
Although Hayes played in the 2023 NHL All-Star Game and average a point-per-game offensively in October, November and January of last season, Flyers head coach John Tortorella was vocally -- and publicly -- displeased with Hayes' overall performance. Along with leading scorer Travis Konecny, Hayes was benched for the entire third period of a late October game against San Jose. Later, "Torts" scratched Hayes for a game against the New York Rangers (Hayes' former team and a high-profile match on national television). Tortorella made no bones about the fact that he felt Hayes was capable of significantly better 200-foot play than the coach saw the player produce.
A center for most of his NHL career, Hayes was moved to left wing for several months even as the Flyers acknowledged the club was thin at center. Hayes' production dropped off a cliff after the All-Star break along with the player's deployment in key situations. Hayes was regularly moved down into the bottom six of the Philadelphia lineup.
Tortorella and the new management tandem of Briere as general manager and Keith Jones as president of hockey operations made no bones about the fact that the next step in the club's rebuilding process would be to significantly subtract from the roster players whom they did not see as part of the long-term plan. Even casual observers knew that Hayes was at or near the top of the list Tortorella and management wanted to unload this offseason (along with the unhappy and since-traded Ivan Provorov and fellow defenseman Tony DeAngelo. Primarily for contractual reasons, but also due to Tortorella's overall dissatisfaction with his play, trading Sanheim before a no-trade clause in the eight-year contract signed last summer kicked in with the new deal starting on July 1, 2023, was also a top priority).
On Exit Day, Hayes said they was resigned to the fact that he'd be traded this offseason, although he preferred to stay put. After the trade to St, Louis went down yesterday, Hayes' agent, Bob Murray made a statement that strongly implied that the Hayes camp put the unraveling of the player's tenure in Philadelphia primarily on Tortorella's shoulders.
"It's been stressful for Kev," Murray said, as quoted by reporter Jeremy Rutherford. "He really liked Philadelphia, he liked the city, he liked his teammates ... everything was good until December-ish when things started to go the other way. ...He's very happy to get settled now and he's really happy with it being in St. Louis. They've got a real good team. They've got a good organization. They've got a good coach [former Flyers player and head coach Craig Berube]. It's a nice city for players."
Notably, in the two months leading up to Hayes' trade, new Flyers general manager Briere attempted to publicly talk up Hayes' trade value by pointing out the difficulty of finding -- or replacing -- big and skilled centers. Hayes, after all, was selected (over Konecny) to represent the Flyers at the 2023 All-Star Game and was a well-liked figure within the Flyers' dressing room itself. He'd overcome injuries and surgeries in 2020-21 and 2021-22 and showed character and dignity in dealing with the death of his brother, Jimmy, for which he was a finalist for the 2021-22 Masterton Trophy.
Management early offseason praise of Hayes' did not materially inflate the player's trade value in the current market. There was just too much term left and too much cap hit on the deal the player signed in the summer of 2019. That, more than the Hayes-Tortorella relationship or the flaws in the player's game (known to pro scouts ahead of Tortorella's hiring last offseason), was why the Flyers were dealing from a position of weakness. It's a also why the Flyers were willing to offer a 20-minute defenseman in Sanheim and also take on Krug's own odious contract to come up with a way to get value back in a deal involving Hayes.
There are a couple benefits to Philadelphia in the deal that finally made. No, a 6th round pick isn't a particularly valuable asset. But the Flyers did not trade one contract headache for another by taking on the seemingly declining Krug for four seasons. Instead, they recouped $3.57 million of cap space that can used to boost leverage in a future trade where Philly would accept an unwanted (and hopefully much shorter in remaining term) contract as a means of boosting the value of what comes back in a deal. Lastly, the Flyers avoided a situation where they had to give up Draft pick assets to be able to move Hayes.
2 The very widely reportedly held-up trade between the Flyers and Carolina that would send DeAngelo back the Hurricanes for a prospect (believed, but not publicly confirmed, to be Bobby Brink's former collegiate teammate Massimo Rizzo) will be address with the Flyers and Hurricanes at some point this week. Worst case scenario, timing wise, is that the deal is announced on July 9, when the one-year waiting period officially ends on Philadelphia being allowed under the CBA to trade DeAngelo back the Hurricanes with retention. The Flyers reportedly will retain the maximum 50% on DeAngelo's $5 million cap hit. He will become an unrestricted free agent on July 1, 2024.
Last summer, as a restricted free agent, the Hurricanes traded DeAngelo's rights to the Flyers for a 2022 fourth-round selection, 2023 third-rounder and 2024 second rounder. Unable to recoup either of the remaining picks in a trade reversal, the Flyers accepted a prospect instead. As far as the concept that the currently held up deal was "salary cap circumvention", it would be the most lopsided such end-around in memory. One would have to accept that the Flyers decided to trade three assets to rent DeAngelo for a year and then flip him back to Carolina with 50% retention for the purpose of acquiring an older prospect with no pro experience who is projected more as an AHL contributor than NHLer if signed.
The reality, of course, is that DeAngelo's one season in Philadelphia was a rollercoaster ride, and Tortorella and the player seemingly clashed. A behind-the-scenes issue late in the season capped it off with DeAngelo being a healthy scratch in each of the final five games (including one where the Flyers were short on defensemen, and opted to keep TDA scratched anyway). DeAngelo, a sometimes controversial and very emotion-driven-in-the-moment sort, said on Exit Day that he wanted to stay in Philadelphia and try again next season but management did not appear to share that sentiment.
3) For my 2023 mock Draft -- 1st round only -- for PhiladelphiaFlyers.com,
click here. In this mock, I had the first six picks going unfavorably from what many Flyers fans would ideally like to see, and the decision coming down to Dalibor Dvorsky, an alternative forward, or defenseman David Reinbacher (or other D). At 22 in this mock, there was also a decision to make between swinging for the fences, making a safe pick or going somewhere in the middle on a high-tools prospect who had some injury issues in the first half of this past season.
4) The Flyers announced their
full 2023-24 regular season schedule on Tuesday. Separately, I wrote a schedule breakdown article, both full-season and month-by-month. We looked at B2B/3-in-4/4-in-6 gauntlets, longest homestands vs longest road trips, overall home/road breakdowns and more. For the season-by-the numbers angle,
click here.
5) The Flyers are still working on picking up additional picks in tonight/tomorrow's Draft. It's likely that much of the buzz, even when everyone's assembled on the Draft floor, will be largely about potential trades as well as whom Philly selects at Nos. 7 and 22 if they stand pat.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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