Is Flyers GM Danny Briere Showing Patience or Panic?

Flyers General Manager Danny Briere has had an interesting couple of months leading the organization’s rebuilding effort. There have been trades, illegal trades, near trades that have fallen through, free-agent signings, and a draft. On the surface, many moves look to be smart and patient textbook rebuilding. But even in his short tenure Briere is makings some head-scratching moves that need to be examined, questioned, and critiqued.

Briere’s greatest success to date has been the draft.  Drafts are almost always forward-looking, where teams hope to have their draftees ready to play for the big club in two or three years.  Briere’s decision to draft Matvei Michkov, knowing that he was under a KHL contract for three years, seemed to be a smart and patient move, one seemingly designed to reap long-term benefits. Moreover, picks like Bonk, Barkey, and Ciernik all seem to have legitimate chances to make an NHL roster in two to four years. Time will tell how the picks pan out, but Briere’s maneuvering pushed the team closer to the complete retooling they need.

Trading away Provorov also seemed to be a smart play for the Flyers’ GM.  Rather than settling for a “deal”, he got “the deal”.  While trading Provorov may not have needed to happen, it was unlikely the Russian defenseman would have enjoyed spending three or more of his prime years on a team that was not good enough to compete for a cup. Given the pride night fiasco, it is unlikely Provorov would have been happy here in Philly. There is a question if Briere could have gotten more for Provorov if he had waited until this season’s trade deadline, but it is hard to imagine it would have been a great deal more. By making the deal when he did, and allowing the Flyers to draft Bonk, Briere sped up the rebuilding timeline by getting a good prospect in a deep draft, this year, rather than waiting until next summer.  In this case, being patient would not have vastly improved the Flyers’ position.

Where things get a little murkier is with the Krug-Sanheim trade. On the surface, it appears that Flyers management now thinks that the Sanheim extension was a mistake (it was), but it may be a blessing that the deal did not go through. Trading for Krug would have shortened the length of the contract term, with Krug’s contract wrapping in 2027 as compared to Sanheim who is signed through 2031, but Krug is a shell of the player he was. Maybe he would be easier to trade in a couple of seasons than Sanheim and his contract, but it seems just as likely that Krug will be out of the NHL by that time. As one of Sanheim’s most vocal detractors, the team is better off keeping him in his prime years and his awful contract if the alternative is a diminished Krug. Pursuing this deal indicates a souring on Sanheim, and targeting a declining Krug in exchange indicates there is little interest. The question becomes, why the rush?  There are plenty of players with lousy contracts that teams would be happy to dump.  Why the urgency to remove Sanheim?