Trade confirmed: Philadelphia Flyers - St. Louis Blues

Trade Details
Philadelphia Flyers Acquire: 2024 6th round pick (STL - #177) Sum: $0$0$0 Change: -$3,571,429 Change: -$3,571,429 Change: -$3,250,000	St. Louis Blues Acquire: Kevin Hayes ($3,571,428 retained - 50%) · $3,571,429$3,571,429$3,250,000 Sum: $3,571,429$3,571,429$3,250,000 Change: +$3,571,429 Change: +$3,571,429 Change: +$3,250,000

Waiting days for this? Blues win

Once again, cap space is the most valuable asset in the NHL!

Seems a great deal for St Louis. Hayes was terrible value at 7 mil. But at 3.5 mil for 3 years, he is actually good value. I would think his value is likely in the low to mid 4s. I think most teams would be happy enough with him at 3 C, which 3.5 mil is a fair price for.

I get it it's a cap dump, but only a 6th? I figured the Flyers might be able to get a bit more than that for Hayes 50% retained.

Robbery.

that's an expensive 6th

Easy win for the Blues. Getting a Hayes at only 3.5 mil for a 6th is great. Philly lost all leverage after the Johansen trade

Sucks the Krug deal fell apart but doubt anyone was expecting a better return considering RyJo set the market a couple days before. A 6th is better than warehousing a buyout on the books for 6 years. In a vacuum it's heavily lopsided towards STL, but Hayes isn't a fit for the team or culture going forward. Rather have players that actually want to be in Philadelphia than those who whine and complain when they get called out.

briere being an elite gm didn't last a month

Wait…KH was an All-Star last year!! Absolute Blues W.

All good things come to an end

Kinda leads last year's rumor to be true (similar to RyJo) that KHayes was a true buyout candidate. I think this is more the Torts affect than anything. Gotta get him gone asap if you're a PHI fan.

Armstrong about to trade all his 1sts and go ALL IN!

They never had leverage. Hayes is north of 30 with lots of term and up and down play. They did not have an alternate option, since a buyout would cost them more than retaining half.

Cap space is a weapon when rebuilding. Nobody else was going to take Hayes. Sitting on him wasn't going to raise his value.

Free agency is bad this year, so teams seem to be turning to each other to take bad mid-term contracts instead of going into free agency and signing worse contracts. GMs of rebuilding teams seem to be using this as an opportunity to fix mistakes and create cap flexibility to work with for the rebuild. The half retained on contracts like Hayes and Johansen are sunk costs. That's what people fail to understand. There isn't magically going to be a way to spark up a market for these kind of players. It's just not going to happen. Philadelphia, Boston, and Nashville are all likely thrilled to clear the cap they did, even if it didn't return any real assets. That same opportunity may not be there next off season.

After all these absolute salary dumps, and cap being the most valuable thing: watch all the dumb signings in a couple days.

Get ready for
Bertuzzi who has cracked 50 points once, and can't stay healthy to get 6-8 million for term.
Compher who has cracked 35 points once, getting mid to high 5s and term
Barbashev who has cracked 50 points once and 30 points twice, to get mid to high 5s for term
Bunting to get north of 4, potentially north of 5 million who did admittedly get 63 points and 49 points in his only 2 full NHL seasons. But while I don't have with/without you stats, from my eye test/memory, he scored like a 25-30 point scorer when not with Matthews or Marner.... I'd rather have Hall for 2 years at 6, then Bunting for term at 5...

This is a very good move for Philadelphia. He just traded for over 10M in cap over the next 3 seasons, and he got a 6th round pick to do it. Hayes was "buyout proof" with a 12 team no trade clause.

Moves like this are ones that should be salivated over on a forum dedicated to following the salary cap. Hayes was a sunk cost. There was no market. Briere found a way to get out of half of his contract. Fantastic move.

Flipside is you only get 3 retention slots which alone have value while rebuilding. They now only have 2 retention slots for the next two years. So its not even easy to weaponize their cap space. They need someone to play 1 c, they don't have a great prospect to do it. If this is all they're getting back, I'd have just kept him for another year or two then traded him retained/bought him out as needed.

Solid deal for Blues they get a scoring middle 6er for essentially nothing so I give them an A

Flyers had no way of winning this trade, He had no value. Johansen deal only handicapped them more. Briere tried long and hard too get more but it just couldn't happen. I'll give them a D+. but this L isn't really an L. Could be worse.

On the Bright side Flyers gain a little cap space which can be re-used to take on cap dumps which will bring us back picks.,

Cates and Frost will do perfectly fine as 1 and 2C

Couturier is going to be back next season so he will be their 1C most likely

I wonder how much the Johansen deal set the market for a deal like this and how much it influenced this trade.

Glad we waited so long for this

The retention is nice for St. Louis atleast. Hayes on the Blues just feels right

What a deal for the Blues

I remember when Philly paid a 5th just for the UFA signing rights to Kevin Hayes.

Here, Philly is only getting a 6th for Hayes under contract while needing to take on 3.5 million in dead cap until 2026.

And Philly is also going to pay half of Hayes' salary to play for the Blues until 2026.



Wonderboy Danny Briere got fleeced hard here.

Blues win the trade.