The Flyers have a Monday deadline looming, and the decision on their restricted free agents is simple in theory and a little more complicated in practice. By 5:00 p.m., Philadelphia has to extend qualifying offers to any RFA it wants to keep in the fold. Miss that window, and the player is free to walk into unrestricted free agency and sign anywhere.
This summer, the Flyers have 10 restricted free agents on the board, and the group doesn’t break evenly. Some names are obvious keeps.
Others are more about organizational fit than upside. A few sit right on the fence.
The easiest calls are Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale and Nikita Grebenkin. Those three are the clearest cases for qualifying offers, and it would be a stunning mistake if Philadelphia somehow let the paperwork slip.
Zegras and Drysdale are both expected to be working toward longer-term extensions before training camp. Grebenkin is the kind of player who looks headed for a bridge deal, something in the neighborhood of a two-year, $4.5-million contract to keep him around and see whether he grows beyond being a fourth-line piece.
Then comes the trickier tier: Christian Kyrou, Karsen Dorwart and Hunter McDonald. None of those three has done enough at the NHL level to make the decision automatic, but each has shown enough in Lehigh Valley to keep the conversation alive.
The Flyers may like what they see and simply want to preserve the depth. Or they could decide one of them needs to be cut loose to clear space for a more important prospect.
That roster math matters. If Oliver Bonk is with the Flyers, Spencer Gill would be the only worthwhile defense prospect playing with the Phantoms, and he may need some protection early in his pro career. In that setup, Kyrou and McDonald become useful names to keep around, especially with Helge Grans and Ty Murchison there to help stabilize the blue line.
Dorwart is a little different. With Jett Luchanko and Jack Berglund potentially joining the Phantoms next year, along with center prospect Cole Knuble, the Flyers could be looking at a crowded group of young forwards all needing ice time.
Dorwart’s 24 points in 70 AHL games last season make him the sort of depth center teams are usually glad to have. Berglund could also be loaned back to Sweden to play in the SHL, which would change that picture, but the general point remains: there may still be a place for a useful bottom-six center to help round out the AHL roster.
The biggest swing decision may be Philip Tomasino. Philadelphia acquired him, and he once carried real intrigue as an NHL center, but he is the likeliest candidate to be left without a qualifying offer.
His QO would be $1.75 million, matching the salary of the contract that just expired. If he accepted and then wound up in the AHL, the Flyers would be left with about $525,000 in dead cap, since the maximum salary a team can bury in the minors next season is $1.225 million.
Tomasino did put up 26 points in 38 games for the Phantoms last season, so there’s value there. And there is still a path where the Flyers don’t qualify him but bring him back on a different deal that can be fully buried in the minors. With so many young players moving through the system, useful AHL veterans still matter.
Brett Harrison, Tucker Robertson and Artem Guryev are in a different bucket altogether. All three arrived midseason last year, so there isn’t much established history to lean on, and none of them made a real splash with the Phantoms. Philadelphia could keep one or more around simply to give Lehigh Valley some continuity during a big roster turnover, but if the Flyers decide to move on, it would not be a major surprise.
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Flyers May Have A Chance At The Young Defenseman They Need
Carolinas blue line has become crowded enough that one of its younger defensemen may be pushed into the trade conversation, and that opens a lane for a Flyers team still searching for more long-term help on the back end. Alexander Nikishin is the kind of player that draws attention for obvious reasons: he is young, he plays with size and bite, and he already looks like someone who can matter in a top-four role rather than just fill a depth spot.
The Hurricanes recent addition of John Carlson only adds to the pressure to sort out the defense corps and create some cap flexibility, which is why this situation bears watching from Philadelphias side. If the Flyers decide to chase it, the price would not be small, and the front office would have to decide how much future value it is willing to move in order to land a defender with this kind of upside. [Read more 🡒]
Flyers Quietly Made A Roster Call Fans Will Want To See
With the qualifying-offer deadline landing at 5 p.m. Eastern, the Flyers made a quiet but meaningful roster call by extending offers to four players while moving on from six others. The group that appears to have been kept in the fold includes Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale, Nikita Grebenkin and Hunter McDonald, a mix that gives the front office some protection on the depth chart while keeping the door open on several other young pieces in the organization.
The players who were not tendered offers are Karsen Dorwart, Christian Kyrou, Tucker Robertson, Brett Harrison, Artem Guryev and Phil Tomasino, which makes them unrestricted free agents. The most interesting name in that bunch may be Kyrou, whose situation could raise a few eyebrows given where he has sat in the Flyers pipeline, but the broader takeaway is clear: Philadelphia chose flexibility over retention on a handful of fringe roster bets, and now the next layer of the offseason starts to come into view. [Read more 🡒]