Philadelphia Flyers Trade Deadline Decisions: Standing Pat

Not doing anything at the Trade Deadline could be Philadelphia Flyers General Manager Chuck Fletcher’s best move.

We’re 50 games into the 2019-20 Philadelphia Flyers season and two days away from the start of February, which means the 2020 Trade Deadline isn’t too far away. The league’s annual trading cut off point will take place on Monday, February 24nd, ending at 3 pm EST on that day. With that date rapidly approaching, you’re going to begin to see more trade content on the site, ranging from rumors and speculation to potential targets and decisions Fletcher should make. As you can tell by the headline, I’m kicking things off with the decision-making side of things and looking into why the Flyers may want to stand pat this year.

First things first, you may have heard this before, but the Flyers don’t have a whole lot of cap space to work with. According to Cap Friendly, Philadelphia has just 1,332,368 million dollars at its disposal, which is the third-lowest amount in the league. That also includes the relief they get with Nolan Patrick, Oskar Lindblom, and Samuel Morin all being on Long Term Injured Reserve, showing how little wiggle room Fletcher has heading into the deadline.

This will force the longtime NHL GM to get a bit creative with how he goes about making a deal, as he’ll have to include a current player on the roster like a Shayne Gostisbehere or, to a lesser degree, Robert Hagg to make the salaries work. He could also move a Mikhail Vorobyev, Connor Bunnaman, or Carsen Twarynski type as a chip in a smaller deal if a team needs some youth in their Bottom-6 and to, again, close everything out cap-wise.

But even then, you probably aren’t going to move the needle much with that level of talent. While I think Ghost still holds decent value around the league given the fact that he’s a mobile, puck-moving defenseman who can create offense (pure speculation here, btw), I’m not sure he’ll be able to fetch you a big fish like Tyler Toffoli or Chris Kreider. Even if a team did say yes, would you really want to block out a prospect for somebody who’d be in Philly for only a few months while also making the defense slightly worse? Fletcher said he doesn’t anticipate engaging in the rental market, too, severely hindering the number of potential candidates for the Flyers to acquire.

Fletcher’s best bet this time around could be to simply let the kids grow into their current NHL roles and to wait to see if Patrick will be able to come back from his migraine disorder this season. Do you agree? Sound off in the comments below.