Keith Jones has been weathering storms since he took over the Philadelphia Flyers’ front office as President of Hockey Operations. Last summer, Kevin Hayes and John Tortorella’s cold war ended with the Flyers paying the 2023 All-Star upwards of $3.5 million AAV to play elsewhere until 2026. Eight months later, Jones and GM Danny Briere had to cut bait on Cutter Gauthier, the organization’s No.2 prospect and a likely future star, after the BC Eagle repeatedly spurned their attempts at reconciliation. Over the past two weeks, starting goaltender Carter Hart withdrew from the team before sexual assault proceedings against him and four 2018 Canadian World Junior teammates began in London, ON.
That level of turmoil would usually result in a Chicago-level dumpster fire. Jones, Briere, and coach Tortorella, however, have navigated the choppy waters with poise and purpose, and the Flyers, a basement dweller in even the most optimistic preseason predictions, occupy a playoff spot in February. They’ve reeled off consecutive wins since returning from the All-Star break, first shutting down the powerhouse Florida Panthers on the road before torching a usually stingy Winnipeg Jets outfit 4-1 at the Wells Fargo Center on Thursday. The double act of Jones and Briere, meanwhile, faces their biggest challenge yet: keeping spirits high as they prepare to trade key players away from a third-placed team.
To be fair to the former player and color commentator, he’s not exactly stabbing anyone in the back; the longer the team’s improbable success has lasted, the more he and Briere have reiterated this is not the year they push their chips in, not with the dark days of Chuck Fletcher so close in the rearview mirror. Even the notoriously stubborn Tortorella, who would give a two-word answer to any executive who tried to sell him on losing hockey, has acknowledged he cannot “fall in love” with his current group ahead of a likely selloff. Still, it wasn’t supposed to be this hard.
“Don’t expect us to go out and spend primary assets trying to make a run”
Briere on potential trade deadline moves.
— James Iacovone (@JimIkeHW) January 24, 2024The Flyers’ penalty kill and speed on the rush have made them a player in a surprisingly lackluster Metropolitan Division far ahead of schedule and checked off the item right beneath “rebuild” on upper management’s to-do list: establish an identity. Philadelphia did not have one during the procession of wet-blanket coaches that succeeded Peter Laviolette over the past decade. Under Tortorella, the old nastiness of “Flyer hockey” is back with interest. How will it sit with the locker room or the fan base if the team trades some players instrumental in this revival for future assets?
Nick Seeler has emerged from AHL obscurity to play an increasingly important role in Tortorella and assistant Brad Shaw’s 1-2-2 scheme over the past two seasons. He leads the league in blocks (147) and paces the club in rating (+17) over a career-high 16:56 minutes of average ice time. The gritty defenseman’s negligible cap hit (800k), heavy hands, and playoff-tailored style make him an attractive option for contenders, but what message would trading Seeler send? That his reward for putting his body on the line is a ticket out of Philadelphia? The 30-year-old Seeler is worth more to the Flyers’ rebuild on the trade block than on the ice, but his character makes it hard to divorce emotion from that equation.
The team faces a similar dilemma over the management of Scott Laughton. To be blunt, Laughton has fallen off a cliff statistically. His speed and opportunism netted him 18 goals in 2022-23, three of which came shorthanded. This season has been a different story; he’s too snakebitten (4.5 SH%) to justify a place in the top six and not creative enough to coax offensive production out of bruising linemates Garnet Hathaway and Nic Deslauriers. In a bull market for versatile centers like Laughton, his lack of a clear role would make trading him an easy decision under normal circumstances. Does that same logic apply to a 10-year man who has served as the team’s de facto captain (his ‘A’ is the only letter on the team) since Tortorella’s appointment? It’s a tough call.
Losing Laughton or Seeler would be a harsh reminder of the realities of rebuilding and the expendability of loyalty in hockey, but neither is irreplaceable. The Flyers travel with eight NHL defensemen, seven of whom dress. They only need to play Marc Staal and re-allocate some minutes to cover their losses if they trade Seeler and coveted rental Sean Walker before the deadline. Replacing Laughton, who has already ceded many of his tough-matchup minutes to youngsters Tyson Foerster and Noah Cates, would be easier still. Philly could lose both players without falling to pieces.
The question is whether Jones and Briere can restock the team’s assets off the ice without tanking its hard-earned pride on it. They will spend the coming weeks trying to assign values to the intangible. What premium would teams pay for Laughton’s presence in the locker room? How much more are Seeler’s minutes worth when his toughness discourages the sort of high hits that have become epidemic in the modern game? Should the development Joel Farabee (career-high 41P in) and Owen Tippett (18G in 48GP) enable even bigger moves? Such impossible math is the stock and trade of NHL player evaluators, and the Flyers’ new brain trust has less than a month left to come up with the answers.
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