Future Flyers Captain Travis Konecny Signs 8-Year Deal To Stay In Philly
The Flyers are ahead of schedule right now, and at a point where they need to start thinking about putting together the team they think is going to give them the best chance to win over the next 5-7 years. Last year was a rebuild where they were just trying to see what they could get out of certain guys, and whether or not they are players the Flyers can build around for the future. Realistically, they probably thought they'd have a couple seasons of rebuilding which would give them more time to evaluate guys before handing out any crazy contracts. But after being able to bring Matvei Michkov over to North America a couple of seasons early, it's time to start locking all the pieces in place.
That first piece is Travis Konecny signing an 8-year deal to spend the majority of his career in Philly.
Konecny is 27-years-old. He's a 2x All-Star, he's scored 30+ in back-to-back seasons, and at his best he can serve that same role as a Brad Marchad/Matthew Tkachuk as an incredibly skilled rat. Over the past few seasons he has consistently been one of the best players on the Flyers roster, as well as the most annoying to play against. He's the exact type of "love to have him on your team but would hate him anywhere else" type of player that is the heart and soul of Flyers hockey.
So for the team to lock him up for 8-years as a pretty sensible AAV? That's a massive win for Danny Briere and the gang. Don't get me wrong, it's not like they got a STEAL for Konecny. $70 million over 8 years is still a shit ton of money. But originally it sounded like Konecny's camp was looking for something in that $10 million AAV range. Whether or not they actually thought they'd get that AAV is another story. But at the very least, it was an ask to get him somewhere in the $9-9.5 range after negotiations.
Then Sam Reinhart opened up free agency by signing an 8-year, $8.625M AAV extension with the Florida Panthers and that was going to set the market for Konecny. Honestly that sucked for Konecny because in no way should a guy who just scored 57 last year be signing that kind of ticket, but the Panthers just won a Cup and no state income tax, so….
Tough break for Konecny that the market was set under $9 million, but that was great news for the Flyers. They could afford to give him more than Reinhart just as a sign of respect, but didn't have to go over $9m to lock him up long term. Now you have Konecny through the prime of his career, Michkov on his ELC, a chance to get Morgan Frost on a really solid bridge deal next summer if he's able to put together a good season with Michkov, and Farabee can either be a massive piece to this team or he can be great trade bait at the deadline. Either way, there's going to come a time when Travis Konecny is wearing the 'C' on his sweater in Philadelphia. It'll be with a fully developed Matvei Michkov leading the way to a Flyers appearance in the Cup Final. And it's going to be glorious.
Now all they have to do is keep Deslauriers in town for Michkov's whole career.