Philadelphia Flyers’ Hathaway Extension Highlights Flawed Rebuild Approach – The Hockey Writers – Flyers Transactions

On July 1, the Philadelphia Flyers weren’t particularly busy in free agency. Aside from signing Matvei Michkov to his entry-level contract, they were mostly quiet. Their biggest move of the day, aside from signing their superstar, was an extension for 32-year-old Garnet Hathaway.

Hathaway, with one season left on his contract, was given a two-year extension by the Flyers worth $2.4 million per season. It’s actually a fairly fair contract on its face, but Philadelphia’s philosophy toward its veterans reveals exactly what’s wrong with their rebuilding approach: It’s flawed.

Rebuilders cannot extend everyone

It seems like a no-brainer sentiment that a rebuilder trying to build for the future shouldn’t give all of his depth players contract extensions. Maybe that’s fine in extremes, but generally speaking, you should want to get draft picks and young players ahead of older athletes. For whatever reason, the Flyers aren’t following that path.

Hathaway is a phenomenal player and everything you’d want from a bottom-six forward. He’s great on defense, he can battle, he’s been on the ice for far more scoring chances than he allowed last season, and he’s basically the perfect veteran leader. However, we have to remember that he was a free agent signing in 2023. The whole point of signing him was theoretically to trade him and gain assets for the effort. Instead, the Flyers got hung up and are keeping him through his age-35 campaign.

While there’s some value in a player like Hathaway for a rebuilder, at some point the trade value has to be too much to pass up. Fourth-line winger Beck Malenstyn of the Washington Capitals returned the 43rd overall pick in the 2024 NHL Draft in a trade. Not only is Hathaway better than him, but Malenstyn probably wasn’t even the best fourth-line player on his own team: Nic Dowd and Nicolas Aube-Kubel were both probably slightly better. It’s all speculation, but that kind of draft capital appears to be what the Flyers gave up.

This isn’t even the first time the Flyers have extended a non-essential player on the roster until they’re 35 in the past few months. On March 6, the Orange and Black signed 31-year-old defenseman Nick Seeler to a four-year extension, with his deal expiring in the 2024 midseason. Again, he’s a great player, but we’re dealing with the same situation here.

Two months before that Seeler contract was even signed, I said the following, arguing that the Flyers should trade him: “This is much less about losing a purely hypothetical non-first-round draft pick in a trade (which is likely what the trade would have been for Seeler) and more about how this could be a pattern for the front office going forward. Are they going to extend the expiring contracts of other veterans?” (From: “Flyers Need to Trade Nick Seeler”).

Here we see that rhetorical question from January become reality. No, extending Hathaway and Seeler isn’t the end of the world. For their leadership, you can see why Philadelphia would want them on the roster as they try to get some growth out of young players like Michkov, Tyson Foerster, Jamie Drysdale and others. But the problem is, those two aren’t even the only veterans they’re keeping.

Scott Laughton, who has been in the trade rumors for ages, is still on the team. HockeyViz’s model rates him as one of the worst players in the NHL, which is obviously bad. Despite that and the contracts of Hathaway and Seeler, it appears Laughton is here to stay.

It’s easy to get attached to players, especially if you like them as people. But at the end of the day, hockey is a business. When you’re in a rebuilding phase, you can’t hold on to everyone for dear life. Sometimes you have to learn to let go, and the Flyers didn’t learn that.

Flyers must quickly find fundamental building blocks

Patience is required for a rebuild, of course, we all know that. But in reality, the Flyers have been “rebuilding” in a sense for the past four seasons. In the franchise’s 57-year history, they are currently in the midst of their second-longest playoff drought with four consecutive campaigns, one more miss would tie their record of five. At some point, you really have to signal that you’re building something around Michkov, so you can be confident that reaching the postseason can soon be a given. Right now, the Orange and Black haven’t done that at all, and they don’t even appear to be legitimate contenders in the 19-year-old’s prime.

Related: Philadelphia Flyers’ ‘New Era of Orange’ Repeats Past Failures

The best center under the age of 25, other than Jett Luchanko, in the Flyers organization is probably Massimo Rizzo or Owen McLaughlin. They were ranked fourth and fifth on my recent prospect pyramid. The team needs help, especially on offense, but also on defense, now and in the future. It’s an issue that needs to be addressed.

So, of course, the Flyers should be trading away their veteran players and acquiring draft picks and prospects, right? Well, they’re not doing that at all. Players like Travis Konecny, Joel Farabee, Laughton, Morgan Frost, Rasmus Ristolainen, and others are still on the team. Trading just two or three of those players wouldn’t destroy the team, but it would also make the Orange and Black a contender for a huge lottery pick in 2025 on top of the assets they’d receive in a trade. It’s a stacked centerman class, plus those aforementioned players will likely all be past their prime by the time Mikkov comes along. Instead, the Flyers are content to bring everyone back.

Briere on TK: The deal is not done yet. But we love Travis and hope he stays here for a long time.

—Bill Meltzer (@billmeltzer) July 1, 2024

The Flyers apparently think it’s a much better idea to let these players’ value decline, remain mid-table as they were in 2023-24 both next season and in the long run, making drafting more difficult, and ultimately making no progress in building a team around Michkov. The wait has been long enough: it’s time to actually rebuild so that Michkov can consistently compete for championships in his prime. That all starts with trading veterans who likely won’t be as good in five years, but the Flyers aren’t off to the best start.

If the Flyers aren’t willing to trade a single player from their roster, having only traded one player from their roster since July 2023, are they truly in the rebuilding mode they’ve preached time and time again? Danny Briere is following in his footsteps, reminiscent of Ron Hextall’s tenure as GM of the Orange and Black. Something needs to change soon, or Michkov could suffer the same fate as Claude Giroux: a prime squandered by a lack of urgency on the top floor.