The NHL trade deadline is Friday at 3 p.m. ET, and the Flyers are coming up on it with a couple of their names circling the rumor mill, but uncertainty when it comes to what they actually might do.
They could make another move or two, or none at all and just keep running with what they have into the summer.
But there's still a bit of a wait to find out either way. Here's a rundown of where things stand with the Flyers until then…
Where they're at
As an organization, the team is in the midst of a long-term rebuild that, see it or not, general manager Danny Brière, president of hockey operations Keith Jones, and head coach John Tortorella have repeatedly stressed their commitment to.
The Flyers are walking a fine line between the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings and being a few tough but not insurmountable points away from a Wild Card spot while on a hot streak coming back from the 4 Nations break and with 21 games still left to play.
What's for sure this week is that the Flyers won't let the current standings and perceived short reach to a playoff spot trick them into scrambling after reinforcements now.
Those aren't coming.
If the Flyers do anything before Friday's deadline, it will all be done with the future very much in mind.
What they've done so far
The Flyers traded center Morgan Frost and left winger Joel Farabee to the Calgary Flames at the end of January.
In return, they got wingers Andrei Kuzmenko (a 29-year-old pending unrestricted free agent) and Jakob Pelletier (a 23-year-old who will be under team control for a couple of more years), a second-round draft pick this summer, and a seventh-round draft pick in 2028.
Farabee and Frost were both former first-round picks who came up through the end of the Claude Giroux era and grew into respected and well-liked players within the locker room for this current and building iteration of the Flyers.
But on the ice, under Tortorella's coaching, and with a step back in their play for what felt like every step forward, the two hit a ceiling in Philadelphia that Brière and the front office seemed ready to move on from.
So they found a taker and did.
Kuzmenko was a player that Brière said the Flyers were going to look at in free agency this summer, so the last couple of months of this season are essentially a trial run. Pelletier is a younger skater who they have to see what they have in, while the draft capital over the next few years is a cupboard that got even further stocked.
The real key of the trade, however, was getting Farabee's $5 million cap hit off the books in full.
The Flyers aren't retaining any of it for Calgary on the remaining three years of Farabee's contract, which frees up a bit of money for them to spend later on.
But they do need more of it (more on that further down).
What can they still do?
The Flyers have two main avenues where many think they can sell.
The first is with Rasmus Ristolainen, a big and significantly improved right-handed defenseman who is suddenly on a much more reasonable contract than he was just a year or two ago – a $5.1 million cap hit through the 2026-27 season.
The second is Scott Laughton, the veteran depth center who is also on a manageable term – a $3 million cap hit through 2025-26 – and has been the subject of trade rumors for the past several years already.
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Playoff hopefuls and Stanley Cup contenders, especially at this point in the season, always covet right-handed defensemen with physicality to their game, along with 2,000-foot centers who can grind out the tough minutes night after night and deeper and deeper into a run.
The Flyers, as things appear to stand heading toward the deadline, have both on offer with Brière listening.
That said, rumor mill and general consensus seem to indicate that Brière has his price points for both, in the lane of a high draft pick or heralded prospect, and isn't budging.
So, any interested team either has to crack and pay the high price tag for either player, or the Flyers could just stand pat and continue on with what they have, then see what might open up in, say, the summer or the next deadline – at least with how the situation seems right now.
Really, there's nothing for the Flyers to lose right now, just what they could stand to gain for their rebuild if a GM grows impatient enough to make the phone call that Brière is looking for.
"It's really a danger," Tortorella told the media after practice in Voorhees last week. "The trading deadline is a dangerous situation. I think free agency is a time of the year that you could screw up your team for years because of the money that's being spent at that time. You're basically almost bidding against yourself half the time.
"Trading deadline's scary, too. But we have to get better, and when you try to get better, there are gonna be some casualties. I'll put it to you that way."
Still, the Flyers can very much afford to wait before they act.
What are they looking for?
In short: more draft picks, younger roster players or prospects who will get to the NHL sooner rather than later, and cap space.
The latter might be the most urgent of all three right now, and might be the key hangup in a deal involving Laughton and especially Ristolainen.
The Flyers don't want to retain any more salary.
If they reach a theoretical deal for Laughton or Ristolainen, or anyone else, they're going to want all that money completely off the books.
The salary cap for this season is $88 million, and as of Monday afternoon, the Flyers are at a projected $86,156,761 with $1,843,239 worth of space, per PuckPedia.
For next season, the NHL announced that the cap will bump up to $95.5 million, $104 million in 2026-27, and then $113.5 million in 2027-28.
Laughton and Ristolainen combined – again, only because they're the highly rumored trade chips right now – would free up $8.1 million for next season, which could enable the Flyers to start shifting into the next phase of their rebuild, where they would start seriously pursuing talent from the outside.
They have parts of their next young core between Owen Tippett, Tyson Foerster, Cam York, Jamie Drysdale, and rising star Matvei Michkov; the capable veterans to see the process through in Travis Sanheim, Travis Konecny, and Sean Couturier; a few prospects on the way in Oliver Bonk, Denver Barkey, Jett Luchanko, and Russian goalie Yegor Zavragin; and 13 picks in this summer's draft alone, with more beyond, to keep funneling the development pipeline with.
The one big thing the Flyers are going to need soon, and should be looking for, is access to the money they're going to need to hold the vision all together, and then eventually, add those finishing touches to it.
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