Ten Worst Trades in Flyers History
By Scott Cole
No. 1 — Flyers trade away Bob
This one still hurts. This one shows a level of impatience that is almost unfathomable, Instead of looking at the big picture, the Flyers played the short game and it bit them hard. This is one of those trades that, if things went different, we may have had Stanley’s Cup sitting in the Wells Fargo Center. But alas, that didn’t happen. The Flyers banked on the wrong Russian goalie.
Sergei Bobrovksy was a veteran of the Russian KHL. He was signed to an entry level deal in 2010 and impressed the team during training camp. He was named the starting goaltender and would be backed up by veteran Brian Boucher. Throughout the year, he was brilliant. He won 28 games and had a .915 save percentage with a GAA of 2.59. For a rookie netminder, these are fantastic stats.
However, he got mauled in the playoffs. The Flyers would fall in the playoffs in the second round to Boston a year after their magical run to the Stanley Cup. Coach Laviolette again tried to mix goalies up, as it had worked the year before. Bobrosky started three games, losing two of them, and posting a horrific .877 save percentage a with a GAA of 3.23 to match.
As every Flyers fan knows, they’ve been looking for a goalie since the days of Ron Hextall. Bob had a good rookie season, but he faltered in the playoffs. The same thing happened a decade earlier with Roman Cechmanek. He had some of the best statistical years EVER by a Flyers goal, but fell apart in the playoffs. Surely, we can’t turn the keys of the team over the Bobrovsky, right? We need a veteran who can perform.
It was in the midst of this that the Flyers apocalypsed their team and traded away Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, who fell on the bad sides of Laviolette and brought in a bunch of players. While the trades themselves turned out to be great for the Flyers, it was the reason they were traded that was the impetus for this being the worst trade ever. Now that they excised them of a lot of high salary, the Flyers could snag a player that they really wanted. Enter Ilya Bryzgalov.
Bryz was 30 years old and had started for four solid years in Phoenix, putting up outstanding numbers (130 wins, .917 SV%, 2.54 GAA) The Flyers signed him to a nine year, $51 million contract.
After a year of backing up Bryz, the Flyers shipped Bob to the Columbus Blue Jackets for three draft picks, including a second round pick that would become goalie prospect Anthony Stolarz. Bobrovksy was 23 when they traded him away.
Bryz would last two only years in Philadelphia, with one of those years coming after the Bobrovksy trade. While his numbers were decent, they were not worth being the highest paid goaltender in the league.
He seemed to love the media spotlight and would say some rather crazy things about bears, his dog, and the universe. When he blamed his teammates for his failures, the Flyers had enough. They bought out his contract. He would play in only 40 more games over the next two years for three different teams before returning to Russia.
Meanwhile, Bob won two Vezina Trophies as the best goaltender in the league. He signed a mega deal to play with Florida. While his teams have struggled in the playoffs, much of it can be placed on the other players who haven’t scored or played bad defense. Even if he has struggled in the playoffs, the numbers he put up over the last few seasons have been outstanding.
Also, since getting rid of Bob, the Flyers have had 18 different goalies start for them, including a record eight goalies in 2018-19. Hopefully Carter Hart holds up to expectation and the Flyers do not give up on him too soon. We saw what happened for in the Bobrovsky-Bryzgolov mess and don’t need that again.
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In summary, most of these trades made were made to fill a need and were rushed. Some were for a late season push down the stretch (Oates). Some got good players in return (Lindros and Brind’amour), but cost way too much when you look back on it. Some gave up on players too soon or came about as conflicts between player and coach/GM. We like to play armchair GMs and think we can do a better job. Nobody has a crystal ball or knows the future. You can never tell if a trade worked out until later on.
But man….if we could hop in a DeLorean and cancel these trades, we’d do it.