On July 1, the Philadelphia Flyers weren’t very busy in free agency. Aside from signing Matvei Michkov to his entry-level contract, they were mostly quiet. Their biggest move of the day other than locking up their superstar prospect was an extension on 32-year-old Garnet Hathaway‘s contract.
Hathaway, with one season still left on his deal, was given a two-year extension by the Flyers worth $2.4 million each season. It’s actually a pretty fair contract at face value, but Philadelphia’s philosophy regarding their veterans shows exactly what is wrong with their rebuild approach—it is flawed.
Rebuilders Can’t Extend Everyone
It should seem like an obvious sentiment that a rebuilder, trying to build for the future, should not give contract extensions to every single one of their depth players. Maybe it’s okay in extreme moderation, but generally, you should want to get draft picks and young players for aging athletes. For whatever reason, the Flyers are not following this path.
Hathaway is a phenomenal player and everything you want out of a bottom-six forward. He is great defensively, he can fight, was on the ice for way more scoring chances than he allowed last season, and he is essentially the perfect veteran leader. However, we must remember that he was a free-agent signing back in 2023—the whole point of signing him, in theory, was to trade him and acquire assets for the trouble. Instead, the Flyers grew attached and are holding onto him through his age-35 campaign.
While there is some value in a player like Hathaway for a rebuilder, the trade value has to be too much to pass up at some point. Beck Malenstyn of the Washington Capitals, a fourth-line winger, returned the 43rd overall pick of the 2024 NHL Draft in a trade. Not only is Hathaway better than him, but Malenstyn was arguably not even the best fourth-line player on his own team—Nic Dowd and Nicolas Aube-Kubel were both probably a little bit better. It’s all just speculation, but that kind of draft capital seems to be what the Flyers gave up.
This isn’t even the first time that the Flyers extended a non-essential roster player until they are 35 in the last few months. On March 6, the Orange and Black gave 31-year-old defender Nick Seeler a four-year extension with his deal set to expire in the 2024 offseason. Again, he is a great player, but we’re dealing with the same situation here.
Two months before that Seeler contract was even signed, I said the following, arguing that the Flyers should look to trade him: “All this is much less about losing a purely hypothetical non-first-round draft pick in a trade [which would have likely been the trade return for Seeler] and more about how this could be a pattern from the front office moving forward. Will they extend other veterans’ expiring contracts?” (From: “Flyers Need to Trade Nick Seeler“).
Here, we are seeing that rhetorical question all the way back from January come to fruition. No, extending Hathaway and Seeler isn’t the end of the world. For their leadership, you can see why Philadelphia would like to have them on the roster as they try to get some growth out of young players like Michkov, Tyson Foerster, Jamie Drysdale, and others. But the issue is that those two aren’t even the only veterans they’re keeping around.
Scott Laughton, who has been in trade rumors for what seems like forever, is still on the team. HockeyViz’s model grades him as one of the worst players in the NHL, which is obviously very bad. Despite that and Hathaway and Seeler having contracts, Laughton seems like he is here to stay.
It’s easy to grow attached to players, especially when you like them as people. At the end of the day, though, hockey is a business. When you are in a rebuild, you can’t hang onto everyone for dear life. Sometimes, you have to learn to let go—the Flyers have not learned to do this.
Flyers Quickly Need to Find Foundational Building Blocks
Patience is obviously required for a rebuild—we all know this. But, in reality, the Flyers have been “rebuilding,” in a sense for the last four seasons. In the 57-year history of the franchise, they are currently in their second-longest playoff drought at four consecutive campaigns—one more miss would tie their record of five. At some point, you really have to indicate that you are building something around Michkov so you can be confident that making the postseason can soon be routine. Right now, the Orange and Black have not done that at all, and they don’t even project to be legitimate contenders in the 19-year-old’s prime.
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The best center under the age of 25 aside from Jett Luchanko in the Flyers’ organization is probably either Massimo Rizzo or Owen McLaughlin—they ranked in the fourth and fifth tiers of my recent prospect pyramid. The team needs help, especially on offense but also on defense both now and in the future, and it’s an issue that has yet to be addressed.
So, obviously, the Flyers should be trading their veteran roster players and accruing draft picks and prospects, right? Well, they aren’t doing that at all. Players like Travis Konecny, Joel Farabee, Laughton, Morgan Frost, Rasmus Ristolainen, and others are still on the team. Trading just two or three of those players wouldn’t destroy the team, but it would also make the Orange and Black a contender for a great lottery pick in 2025 on top of the assets they would get in a trade. It’s a stacked centerman class, plus those aforementioned players will likely all be outside of their prime years by the time Michkov enters his. Instead, the Flyers are content with bringing everyone back.
The Flyers apparently think it sounds like a much better idea to let the value of these players deplete, be in the middle of the standings like they were in 2023-24 both next season and in the long term so drafting is harder, and ultimately make no progress toward building a team around Michkov. The wait has already been long enough—it’s time to actually commit to a rebuild so Michkov can consistently compete for championships in his prime. This all starts with trading veterans who probably won’t be all that good in five or so years, but the Flyers are not off to the hottest start with that.
If the Flyers are unwilling to trade a single one of their players, seeing as they have dealt just one roster player since July of 2023, are they really even in the rebuild that they have preached time and time again? Reminiscent of Ron Hextall’s tenure as the general manager (GM) of the Orange and Black, Danny Briere is following in his footsteps. Something has to change soon, or Michkov could suffer the same fate as Claude Giroux—a prime wasted by a lack of urgency upstairs.
