The Philadelphia Flyers have 12 games remaining in the season and, barring a miracle run to close things out, will likely start their summer in a few weeks. It will be a disappointing end to a season that started so strongly, but there's plenty of work for general manager Danny Briere and the rest of the Flyers' front office to do during the offseason.
Quite a few contracts are expiring at the end of this season that management will have to make decisions on, including two players shaping up to be core players on the next great Flyers team: Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale. Both will be owed a raise and a decent amount of term, but the Zegras contract will likely be the more lucrative of the two. And Briere has been proven right to not extend Zegras in the middle of the season, once again displaying a commitment to patience that pays off in the long run.
For the first half of the season (literally the first 41 games), Zegras looked like a star returning to the form he'd had in his early years with the Anaheim Ducks: he scored 17 goals and tallied 24 assists, his 41 points making him a true point-per-game player. He capped off that scorching start to his Flyers tenure with a statement game against the Ducks in early January, and signing a contract right then seemed appropriate lest Zegras continue his steep upward trajectory and cost millions more.
Things haven't gone quite as well for Zegras after that Ducks game. In the 29 games since, Zegras has only five goals and 15 points. Part of that is a move back to center and the demands of readjusting to his old position, but his scoring slump, while still mostly playing wing, was a major part of the Flyers' lackluster January. He had only six points in 13 games.
Zegras's current contract carries a $5.75-million AAV, and he's almost certainly due a raise by season's end. Slump aside, he remains the Flyers' second most effective offensive engine behind Travis Konecny with 22 goals and 56 points. How much of a raise remains to be seen, but by waiting for the summer, Briere avoided overpaying when Zegras was at the height of his powers in the middle of the season.