Wednesday was Ed Snider’s 83rd birthday. GM Ron Hextall gave him a pretty good gift: cap relief.
Hextall pulled off another trade, sending Vincent Lecavalier and Luke Schenn to the Los Angeles Kings acquiring 23-year-old forward Jordan Weal and a 2016 third-round draft pick.
That marked Hextall’s fifth trade involving a current Flyers player in just over 10 months, and each one was more impressive than the next. In that time, Hextall has taken the Flyers from being a cap strapped team to finally having some relief.
"The biggest thing it does for us is give us some flexibility cap-wise," Hextall said. "To do what we need to do. We were handcuffed there for a while. It gives us the flexibility to bring anybody up from the minor leagues we want."
In bidding farewell to Luke Schenn and Lecavalier, the Flyers close the book on two forgettable roster moves in recent memory.
The Flyers acquired Schenn for James van Riemsdyk. Schenn had some moments and played some solid hockey, but was too inconsistent to stand out and become a fan favorite.
Lecavalier signed with the Flyers prior to the 2013-14 season with the hopes that he could be among the top centerman as a second-line option for Claude Giroux. With Peter Laviolette at the helm, the sky was the limit. But Laviolette was fired three games into the season and Lecavalier was never really the same player after that. He had a nice debut season for the Flyers, but was in and out of the lineup for much of last season and this season.
"Vinny’s excited," Hextall said. "He sees it as a new opportunity, obviously going to a top team.
"Luke understood where we were as a franchise. And that we had numbers. He was a UFA and probably sensed something was coming. He was excited to go to L.A. and a top team."
In return, the Flyers picked up a young prospect that was just waiting for a chance to make an impact. Jordan Weal had cracked the Los Angeles lineup 10 times this season, but never with any consistency. Now with the Flyers, he'll get his chance.
"Jordan is at a point where he has been a top American League player and he’s trying to prove himself as an NHL player," Hextall said. "He’s gonna have to answer that question. He’s a very dedicated player. He’s got a high skill level. Not the biggest guy but he does work hard."
"This is an exciting opportunity for me to get a fresh start," Weal said. "I haven't really been able to get a couple games in a row and get some momentum going and really prove my stock.
"I'm an energy guy. I play good in all three ends. I think my work ethic really is one thing I can offer to the group. They've got a good squad. They've got a lot of young guys up front, skill guys. I think I could mix right in well with that and we could make some really good things happen."
Now to the trades that will define Hextall's era as Flyers GM.
The deals all started on Feb. 27, 2015. That was the day Hextall traded Kimmo Timonen to the Chicago Blackhawks for a 2015 second-round pick — traded to acquire the 24th overall pick in last year’s draft used to select Travis Konecny – and a 2016 fourth-round conditional pick that is now a second-round pick due to Chicago’s Stanley Cup win.
Three days later, Hextall orchestrated a deadline-day deal with the Tampa Bay Lightning, trading Braydon Coburn for Radko Gudas, a 2015 first-round pick — also used to acquire the Konecny pick — and a 2015 third-round pick — used to select goalie Matej Tomek.
On June 27, 2015, the Flyers traded Nick Grossmann and Chris Pronger to the Arizona Coyotes for Sam Gagner and a conditional pick, either Arizona’s 2016 fourth-round pick or 2017 third-round pick. Arizona currently does not have a 2016 fourth-round pick.
Two days later, Hextall sent Zac Rinaldo to the Boston Bruins for a 2017 third-round pick.
And finally, Hextall closed out his 10-month body of work with Wednesday trade of Lecavalier and Luke Schenn to the Los Angeles Kings for Weal and a 2016 third-round pick.
Hextall’s motive has always been about constructing a team that can contend for a championship, as he helped do in Los Angeles. That means moving the pieces around, building for the future and being patient with that future.
What Hextall also managed to do is trade away seven players that were accounting for tens of millions of dollars in cap space. The Flyers are still paying half of the salaries of Lecavalier, $2.25 million, and Schenn, $1.8 million, and $500,000 of Grossmann’s contract.
Some of that freed up cap space was already spent on this year’s roster, with the additions of Gagner, Gudas, Michal Neuvirth and Shayne Gostisbehere and raises in new deals for Michael Del Zotto and Nick Schultz.
In addition, Hextall hasn’t forgotten the emphasis on the future either. In addition to the Flyers host of defensive prospects, modest group of forwards and potential future goalie in juniors and the minors, Hextall has included draft picks in almost every deal he’s made.
To this point, the Flyers already have 10 draft picks in the 2016 NHL Draft, seven of their own, Chicago’s second-round pick, Los Angeles’ third-round pick and sixth-round pick.
Between Hextall’s care to the future and emphasis on erasing as much of the past as possible, the Flyers are clearly in good hands and working to build a team that can compete.
With Lecavalier’s contract no longer occupying the press box and Luke Schenn’s salary cut in half, there are only two real eyesores of contract left on the Flyers roster.
To start, the Flyers only have five players committed beyond the 2017-18 season: Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek, Wayne Simmonds, Matt Read and Sean Couturier. That essentially gives them this season and next to decide on many current players as to how they fit in the future mold, guys like Brayden Schenn, Michael Raffl, Gudas and Del Zotto.
The two — or three, depending on how you look at it — eyesores on the Flyers roster are R.J. Umberger and Andrew MacDonald. You could throw Gagner into the mix, but Gagner is in the final year of his contract. The Flyers made that trade to get the contracts of Pronger and Grossmann off their hands.
Umberger is making $4.6 million this season and has one year remaining on his contract for 2016-17. Hextall will be able to remove that contract as well once the season is over. The Flyers will likely buy out the remaining year of Umberger’s contract at season’s end.
MacDonald is in a completely different situation for two reasons. MacDonald signed a six-year contract extension worth $30 million after the 2014 season. There will still be four years remaining on the deal after this season. It would be too early to get MacDonald to agree to a buyout on that as well, not to mention a bitter pill for the Flyers to swallow.
MacDonald is currently buried in the AHL with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. Like Hextall said, the Flyers do now have some flexibility, meaning they could technically add MacDonald back to the defensive group at any time.
This is where the other distinguishing factor comes in. Lecavalier is 35. If and when Umberger is bought out, the 33-year-old will be in search of a new team. MacDonald is 29, and his contract will expire when he is 33. There is still a little appeal that comes from a player like MacDonald.
For the Flyers to do what they did with Lecavalier certainly required more than little magic from Hextall. Sending a 35-year-old forward in the twilight of his career isn’t an easy task. Moving MacDonald’s contract, if the Flyers do go that route, won’t be easy because of the price tag, but for now, at least MacDonald is playing consistently and doing well in the AHL.
What Ron Hextall has done is kept the Flyers modestly competitive in the last two seasons while putting the organization in a position to really improve and strike on an opportunity to win in the coming years. The more he does, the more you see the possible results in the not-so-distant future.
Wednesday was just another testament to that, as Hextall has proven throughout the past year. And the more he does, the closer the Flyers come to being done with the rebuild and retool and getting to the reward.
Kevin Durso is managing editor for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @Kevin_Durso.
