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While the offseason is slowly ending and the Flyers rookie camp approaches, the team is working to create more cap space for themselves by trying to remove Ryan Johansen from the equation. There has been a lot of mystery surrounding the situation with Johansen since he came over in a package, along with a first round pick, from the Colorado Avalanche in exchange from Sean Walker. While the Flyers said that he would never play for the NHL Flyers organization, they were open to sending him down to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms for either the purpose of a buyout or the opportunity to use him as a depth role. However, Johansen refused and immediately stated that he suddenly had a hip injury which prevented him from playing hockey. Ironically, Johansen had played just two days before the trade and skated at morning skate the morning of the trade.
Going into this season it seemed that the situation was still up in the air and that the team would have to potentially carry him on the injured reserve list for the final year of his contract. With the team being an estimated $830K over the salary cap for this upcoming season they decided that they weren’t going to let Johansen sit out the remaining tenure of his contract, especially since it was clear that his injury status was questionable at best. So now the Flyers have decided to force the issue and claim that Johansen breached his NHL contract. That debate will now be ongoing, but if the Flyers presumably win that argument, they free up a potential $4 million dollar cap hit that they could use for the flexibility they need keep themselves cap compliant without long term injury reserve penalties. While it is not clear what will happen at this point, it is a position that the Flyers will most likely benefit from and if they were able to take it this far, they must have had permission from the NHL to proceed.
On this episode of Gettin’ Gritty Wit It, Yariv and Vasili go through all of the current news and notes that have lead to their current cap situation and what will take place with their goalie depth with the questions around Kolosov coming over to the NHL. As the season approaches we talk about what will be and how the Flyers can hit the ground running starting the rookie games against the New York Rangers where Matvei Michkov makes his debute.
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