One of the few remaining things on Danny Briere’s to-do list for the Philadelphia Flyers this summer was checked off on Wednesday night. Trevor Zegras put pen to paper on a four-year contract extension that carries a $9.125-million AAV, making him the team’s highest-paid player. And with that new label, how can that change things for the Flyers financially in the present and the future?
Before Zegras inked his new deal, the Flyers had the most cap space in the entire NHL. A seemingly boundless amount of dollars to spend given that Leo Carlsson and his $18-million AAV was staying put in Anaheim and the Flyers didn’t make any significant splashes to acquire any big-name talents this offseason (not for the lack of trying).
But as it is with any contract to any key player, it can change the direction of the team financially. We hear all about bargains and overpayments and all the rest with some star players across the league, putting a price tag on their production — the massive downside of having a salary cap and needing to complain about your team spending money to keep a good player. With all of that comes looking deeper in just how a sizeable contract could affect a team’s future spending to keep or acquire other good players.
When it comes to the new deal for Trevor Zegras, it makes the present day cap structure a little bit more clear and tells us if they have any more room to do anything with the rest of their offseason.
The current outlook of the Flyers’ salary cap
Enough chit chat, let’s get into the numbers.
According to PuckPedia, the Flyers currently have approximately $20.4 million in current cap space. That is with 14 forwards, six defensemen, and the two goaltenders signed. One has to imagine that Jett Luchanko and Carl Grundstrom will not start the season with the Flyers — because Danny Briere said as much — so that will add another $1.942 million of cap space to that total. Now we’re up to $22.382 million, roughly.
There are two other things that Briere must do and one of them has to be done very soon. Jamie Drysdale is the Flyers’ other big restricted free agent and he has a salary arbitration hearing scheduled for Monday. Just like Zegras had his own scheduled for next Wednesday, the Flyers would probably like to avoid this from happening.
A deal should be done in the coming days, but what could that look like? We’ve seen numbers thrown around with a mid-length contract and something around a $6-million AAV. But, that was before the big-ticket contracts of Simon Nemec’s $7.25-million AAV and Pavel Mintyukov’s $7.2-million AAV — two blueliners who have not proven to be anywhere close to what Drysdale can do at both ends of the ice and overall impact a game. Rightfully so, Drysdale’s ask has probably gone up.
But, as we all see, the Flyers have ample cap space to get a deal done. If they want to commit long-term to the player, could see the Flyers and Drysdale agree on something above an $8-million AAV for six or more years? It’s certainly possible.
We’d rather overestimate and give Drysdale a large contract like that, then undershoot and look foolish. So, let’s assume it’s exactly $8 million. That would then leave the Flyers with approximately $14.38 million in cap space.
There’s then one restricted free agent remaining: Nikita Grebenkin.
With some injury troubles and not really establishing himself more than anything but a fourth-line player, could it just be a simple small contract? Grebenkin’s ask should not have been affected by the large contracts being handed out to good young players. With that, we can turn to Evolving-Hockey’s contract projections they did at the start of the summer. They have Grebenkin’s most likely deal to be a two-year contract with a $1.127-million AAV. Maybe we can increase that to $1.5 million, or maybe it just one year — but it should be around there and would be surprising if it was not.
If he signs a one-year, $1.5-million contract, that gives the Flyers now $12.88 million in cap space with a 22-man roster filled out. Whether it’s Grebenkin, Noel Acciari, or maybe one of the younger guys like Alex Bump or Denver Barkey sitting up in the press box, the Flyers have 13 forwards on this hypothetical roster.
On the blue line, with everyone now signed and David Jiricek making the roster, Simon Benoit will surely be the extra defenseman. Rick Tocchet does like to carry eight defensemen just to make practices go a little bit smoother and to have options, but there isn’t really a good fit. Maybe it’s recently signed 28-year-old Cam Dineen just taking up a roster spot, since every other defenseman is young enough to be considered a prospect and it would be more beneficial to get some playing time in Lehigh Valley.
Oliver Bonk could impress at camp, but with Jiricek already on the roster and no longer being exempt from waivers, it might force him to start the season in the AHL.
The Flyers could sign a veteran defenseman to a one-year contract, or have Dineen on the roster — either way it would be a league-minimum, $857,000 contract that would make the team’s available cap space to just under $12 million.
That is, of course, if the Flyers want to carry eight defenseman and a full 23-man roster.
For this season, unless they trade Rasmus Ristolainen, or get a top-six center, or move around some other contracts, that is likely where they will be: around $12 to 13 million in cap space, if Drysdale’s and Grebenkin’s contracts come in around where we estimated.
Just to say it again in a more clear way, the Flyers are most likely set to enter the season with a whole lot of cap space. But that only means that they could have future room to acquire big-ticket players or extend some important pieces to long-term deals.
What about any future big contracts?
The elephant in the room is that the Flyers are clearly still going to try to get better and not just keep this same group of players around for the foreseeable future. That will obviously mean the team will come closer and closer to that cap ceiling.
Barring one of those blockbuster moves, the Flyers will be perfectly fine all throughout this upcoming season. So now, let’s look to next summer.
The NHL’s salary cap is projected to increase to $113.5 million for the 2027-28 season. A big jump of $9.5 million that could mean a whole lot for the Flyers.
As it currently stands, the only players who the Flyers could be losing to unrestricted free agency next summer is Rasmus Ristolainen and Simon Benoit. Most likely, those players are going to go their merry way and $6.45 million of cap space will go with them.
Continuing with this fantasyland where Drysdale is locked into an $8-million AAV and Grebenkin is signed to something reasonable, if the Flyers really don’t make any more changes, and with that new cap ceiling, the Flyers would have approximately $25.4 million in cap space in this scenario. Tyson Foerster’s new contract with a $7.1-million AAV would kick in, so that takes away some of the available space.
As we all know, Matvei Michkov needs a new deal next summer. There is really no point in guessing on what that can come in at because if he starts the season very well, Philadelphia will probably aim to lock him up as soon as they feel comfortable with and that could be something even exceeding Zegras’s $9.125-million AAV, if they go the new maximum term of seven years and Michkov starts the year with something such as 35 points in his first 22 games (or something).
But the main takeaway from the Zegras deal and the overall cap outlook is that they do have the room to now sign Michkov to a big contract. They don’t have to nickel and dime him to get something that can work for them, they can commit to him for the long term.
And even if the Flyers have just around $15 million in cap space after retaining Michkov next summer, the only hole on the roster that they would need to fill is a spot in the top four on the blue line. But if David Jiricek pans out (or is just good enough to be a bottom-pairing, power-play specialist) and Oliver Bonk comes up and is able to at least replace Jamie Drysdale on the second pairing as he gets promoted to the top next to Travis Sanheim, then that will be taken care of by just adding Bonk’s entry-level deal to the roster.
The main takeaway, sort of
If anything, the major thing that we can come away with by thinking real hard about how this Zegras contract affects the Flyers’ future financial outlook is that they have options. If they continue this path with this current crop of players — Martone, Michkov, Zegras, Foerster, Tippett, Konecny, etc. leading them offensively as they get a whole lot of solid defensemen, then they can keep everyone around and still have some room to spend.
They can certainly sign their good prospects to long-term deals that will make everyone happy and just continue this more patient build to regular contention.
But, this also means they have room to make that giant splash if the right player comes along — as we have all been made aware of and been told by Flyers management the past couple years.
At the very least, like we’ve said, they can continue with Zegras as a mid-tier first-line center in a Sebastian Aho-esque way and keep on surrounding the core of this team with more and more young talent to see how far this current makeup can take them.
