Philadelphia Flyers: 5 Trade Destinations for Morgan Frost

#4. Edmonton Oilers

The Edmonton Oilers still, apparently, have $3.5 million in cap space, and they need to use it efficiently. As long as they have Connor McDavid (and Leon Draisaitl) they will always be in playoff contention, but their severe lack of depth has crippled their chances of reaching the finals, year in and year out.

To the Oilers’ credit, they were eliminated by the eventual Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights, but the Golden Knights don’t have two of the greatest scorers of the 21st century on their roster. However, they have a lot of players that can do a lot of different things, and the Oilers don’t. There is not one player in the Oilers’ current bottom-six that scored 30 or more points last year, and that’s an issue.

Mattias Janmark, Ryan McLeod, and Warren Foegele are all great players in their own respects, but they’re also all one-dimensional players. Generally speaking, they play similar styles of hockey. McLeod and Foegele particularly excel off of the cycle, and have a decent track record of making plays for each other. Janmark, on the other hand, is black hole in all facets of the offence.

To get the third line going, the Oilers can seek out a trade for Frost, who is a better finisher and more skilled off the rush, to add an extra dimension. Frost’s underlying numbers suffered greatly in a big role on a bad Flyers team, but the production was still there. Playing with two analytics demons like McLeod and Foegele should help him refine his game and find his niche on a contender.

#3. Minnesota Wild

Center depth has plagued the Minnesota Wild for a long time, and things didn’t improve any this offseason. A very large part of their problem in that regard is that the Wild only have $1.6 million in cap space, thanks to the whopping $14.7 million in dead cap they have for the next two years from the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts.

Joel Eriksson Ek led Wild centers in scoring with his 61 points, and none of the other centers surpassed 40 points. Ryan Hartman probably would have hit 40, as he scored 37 in 59 games, and he’ll be due for a new contract next summer. His cap hit is currently just $1.7 million, the lowest of any full-time center on their NHL roster.

The good news is that Frost should only cost between $3-4 million, and the bad news is that the Wild have very little to send back the other way to make it work. Marc-Andre Fleury will probably retire at the end of this season, which would free up $3.5 million, and 38 year old Alex Goligoski also has one year left at $2 million.

It goes without saying that the Wild are in an absolutely terrible position, and without star winger Kirill Kaprizov, they’d probably be just as bad as the Flyers were last season. It is extremely difficult to make the playoffs and compete any year in the NHL, but it is even worse when you’re handicapping yourself by nearly $15 million against the cap. The Wild can absolutely continue to compete if they wish, but it will take a lot of maneuvering for them to be any more than a quarter-finals team.

#2. Arizona Coyotes

The Arizona Coyotes are best known today for having an alienated fan base that has no arena to watch their team play in, and in order to fix that, they need to improve the on-ice product. The team already has a handful of really good players, like Lawson Crouse, J.J. Moser, and Karel Vejmelka. They have stars like Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz, and future stars like Logan Cooley and Matias Maccelli. Still, there’s just that little something still missing out in the desert.

As things stand, the Coyotes’ two top-six centers for 2023-24 appear to be Barrett Hayton and Logan Cooley. The former was the fifth overall pick in the 2018 NHL Draft, and finally had his first 40-point NHL campaign, which is both encouraging and frightening. The latter has never played in an NHL game. This means that a player like Frost would have been the Coyotes’ top-scoring center last year. If he ends up out west, he could do it again this year too.

More than anything, Arizona just needs depth. Hayton and Cooley will certainly have growing paints, but they need those reps as parts of the team’s future. Adding Frost will give them additional competition for minutes, which is also good. But most importantly, the two young forwards can also play on the wing, and that will be important for when Conor Geekie is ready to make the jump to the NHL. Maybe hometown hero Auston Matthews decides to come home as well.

Whatever the case may be, Frost would give the Yotes a much needed boost down the middle. At this point, he is a veteran compared to some of their other players, and the 24 year old won’t be commanding some extravagant eight-year contract either.

#1. New Jersey Devils

A trade between the Flyers and the New Jersey Devils sounds impossible, right? Think again. Last summer, the Devils traded Pavel Zacha, then an RFA, for Erik Haula. Zacha had a career-year with the Boston Bruins, and Haula was the stabilizing veteran force on a young, surging Devils team. The Devils went from zero to hero, and advanced farther in the playoffs than the Bruins, who were favored to contend from the get-go. That sounds pretty even, by the look of things.

With Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci now retired from the NHL, Zacha is now the Bruins’ number one center. If the Bs hadn’t made that trade, they would be rolling out Charlie Coyle as their top centreman this year. Of course, not every trade is going to go so well for both sides, but sometimes it’s just better to cut losses at the earliest opportunity.

The Devils’ lineup is virtually set for the upcoming season, but they still have some cap space to make some more moves if they would like. Haula split the year evenly as Jack Hughes’ left wing and faceoff taker, and as the third-line center. Haula is not particularly a facilitator of offense, though, and it’s also unclear what will happen to Michael McLeod in regards to the Hockey Canada sexual assault investigation. As a result, the Devils have already gone ahead and added players who can play center, like Curtis Lazar, Chris Tierney, and Tomas Nosek.

Offensively, Frost is better than all of those players, and could allow Haula to move up or down the Devils’ lineup to play wherever he is needed. Frost would more than likely see himself playing alongside the likes of Ondrej Palat, and potentially Alexander Holtz.

The Flyers can expect to receive some prospects or picks in return, but not necessarily a Simon Nemec kind of prospect. A trade between two archrivals is rare, but this is a case where teams at different ends of the seesaw can help each other out.