Why The Flyers Aren’t A Match In A Potential Taylor Hall Trade

The Philadelphia Flyers and New Jersey Devils aren’t a fit in a potential deal for the 28-year-old.

It seems the dubbed “offseason winners” aren’t doing a whole lot of winning lately. A few days before firing Head Coach John Hynes after the team suffered back-to-back blowout losses to the Buffalo Sabres and New York Rangers, it was reported by The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun that the New Jersey Devils have “started listening from teams on Taylor Hall“, who’s set to become an unrestricted free agent following the 2019-20 season. He also prefaced that it doesn’t mean the Devils will move him, just that they’re in listening mode. When one hears a star player might be available, their ears understandably perk up, but I’m here to tell you that the Philadelphia Flyers aren’t a match in a potential trade for the former Edmonton Oiler.

First off, the Flyers have very little cap space. Like, verrrrrry little. According to Cap Friendly, Philadelphia has a whopping 276,944 dollars of available room, and that’s even with utilizing the Long Term Injured Reserve on Nolan Patrick. If Patrick were to come back, they’d have a projected amount of 57,336. That’s not a whole lot of moolah there, gang! So, if General Manager Chuck Fletcher wanted to strike a deal with Ray Shero for the talented Hall, he’d either have to get New Jersey to take more salary back or find a way to match Hall’s six million dollar hit.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “The Flyers have James van Riemsdyk and Jakub Voracek! You could move one of them in a package for Hall!” And while that may be true, as the Devils have seven-million dollars in space so could theoretically take on one of JvR or Jake in a trade involving Hall, they aren’t going to. If Shero decides he’s going to move on from one of his team’s best players, he’s not going to want to take a large step back in his current rebuild and will ask for younger, NHL or near-NHL ready players to build around talents such as Nico Hischier, Jack Hughes, Will Butcher, and others. Voracek and van Riemsdyk aren’t young, so we can take them out of the equation.

Hypothetically, if Fletcher is one of those aforementioned teams inquiring about Hall, I’d assume Shero asked for Travis Konecny-plus in a potential package. Konecny would have to be involved anyway to make the salaries work unless you put a Shayne Gostisbehere with a Scott Laughton, which likely wouldn’t be enough. That “plus” could possibly be one of Morgan Frost or Joel Farabee, another lower-level prospect, and a few draft picks to sweeten the pot. That may seem like an awful lot, but keep in mind that New Jersey isn’t going to move Hall to an in-division rival for cheap, and the potential return would probably be higher than what a Western Conference team would have to surrender, which would still be a pretty penny.

Even if the Flyers were able to pull it off and bring Hall to the City of Brotherly Love, there’s no guarantee he’d even sign an extension. Hall’s agent, Darren Faris, is widely known as a guy who’s a hardcore negotiator, as we saw with Mitch Marner this past offseason. He likes his clients to get as much money as possible, and the only way Hall could do that is by testing the free-agent market this summer to create a bidding war amongst NHL teams. Though the return would be slightly less if there isn’t a long-term agreement with Hall, would you want to give up several assets for a couple of months of his services?

Now, once again playing a dream-scenario here, say everything breaks Fletcher’s way and acquires Hall while getting him to sign a contract over the offseason, where would that leave guys like Oskar Lindblom, Carter Hart, and Travis Sanheim in the future? Unless he’d move Jake or JvR for dirt cheap in order to keep those three guys around or let them get taken in the expansion draft (lol), the Flyers would still likely lose one of Lindbom, Hart, or Sanheim, as they have enough high-priced players on the roster as it currently stands. Sure, they do have Cam York (Ham Pork, Yam Cork) in the system who could eventually replace a guy like Sanheim, but he’s not a sure-fire bet to be as good as Sanheim, let alone be a serviceable NHL defenseman.

With all of that being said, yes, it’d be nice to add a player as skilled as Hall to the Flyers franchise, but I think the risks far outweigh the rewards here, and there’d be a lot of hoops to jump through to make it happen, thus making Philly a bad fit in a deal for the former first overall pick.