u/upcan845

Final podcast of the season. Elliotte ran through every team individually.

Philadelphia

• Elliotte couldn’t confirm Friday’s reports about Giroux to Philadelphia. Edmonton and Toronto were in there (Toronto may have been the most money). Another team in the mix thinks Giroux wants to go to Philadelphia but is waiting to see if another team can change his mind

• The #1 reason the Flyers signed the offer sheet was because they wanted Carlsson. The Gauthier subplot is an added bonus

• Philly was like “We need a star. We need a difference maker”

• Montreal realized how far away they are this year after losing to Carolina. Well Philly got swept by Carolina a round earlier, so imagine how Philly felt

• They aren’t drafting high enough to get that player

• If Kaprizov hit the market this year, Philly was going to drop bags of cash on Kaprizov’s house. And Minnesota knew that

• This had been something brewing. The Flyers’ other contracts are manageable

• Briere had a lot of his business lined up and now he’ll know he’ll be a target

• Carolina has made sure they’re not vulnerable after the Kotkaniemi offer sheet and threatening offer sheets of Evan Bouchard and K’Andre Miller. Philly will have to do the same thing

• Elliotte thinks Philly want back on forth on if they’d really get that player. And Elliotte is a little surprised they didn’t go even higher with money, but they obviously knew what Anaheim was willing to do ($12.5ish). The Flyers beat that by a third

• He thinks deep down the Flyers expect the Ducks to match

• Briere is really good at misdirection

• If they don’t get Carlsson, what else do they consider?

• This is the way the Ed Snider created the Flyers

• Noel Acciari screams “Philadelphia Flyer”

Anaheim

• Pat Verbeek and the Ducks recognized a threat, but they didn’t recognize how big it was

• The Ducks were saying they’d match any offer sheet, but Elliotte doesn’t think they thought it would go to $18m

• The Ducks and Carlsson’s representatives met Friday morning. The Ducks’ offer was around $12.5m, the counter was in the $15m area

• The Flyers knew they had to blow the Ducks out was the water. And Verbeek did not see that coming

• Every team is looking at this and saying “We can’t allow this to happen to us”

• Elliotte thinks Anaheim has to match the offer sheet. They don’t have a choice

• Elliotte is sure Verbeek is looking around with what he could do with the 4 1st round picks, but he'd have to show how it makes sense to give up on Carlsson

• Carlsson is Verbeek’s guy, the linchpin to his rebuild

• Anaheim kept their roster a little bare bones to protect from this, yet they still walked into a bad spot

• Elliotte assumes it was Carolina considering an offer sheet for Mintyukov, but Anaheim had made the commitment to sign him

https://preview.redd.it/64eygxc6chbh1.png?width=1180&format=png&auto=webp&s=98c458c0ee1647f3c59837bc22b455b6bd0fd37c

https://xcancel.com/TheFourthPeriod/status/2073879511997829240#m

This is literally among the Flyers’ biggest transaction moments in franchise history, regardless of what happens. An offer sheet for a young star of Carlsson’s caliber is unprecedented.

Enjoy it. Recognize the historical significance. Hope for the best outcome (no match.) And assume Anaheim does match it until we find out otherwise.

Briere did the best he could trying on this. Still unlikely to work, but it’s worth a shot

Lowering the expectations after this season was the right thing for Briere to say today. This is a young team that got carried by an insane hot streak and a goalie's to-date outlier season into barely a playoff spot, and then the Flyers were lucky enough to play the only Eastern team worse than them.

But if we are going to spend another season with lowered expectations, we should spend that season a addressing why Briere couldn't take a step forward this summer.

> 1. Are we a destination for stars' trade requests? No

> 2. Will another low-expectation season make us a destination for trade requests? Probably not

> 3. Can we count on 2027 UFA being any better than 2026? No

> 4. Did we have enough assets this year to propose serious offers for the big fish? It seems very unlikely. (Robertson would have been traded for a top 10 pick, Tkachuk took a top 10 pick, Byram took a top 10 pick, McTavish took a top 20 pick, Werenski could have had Harley, etc.)

> 5. Is Briere accepting "low expectations" and selling off extra players to get more assets to help fix the #4 problem? It doesn't appear so

Running it back without addressing the flawed UFA plan, the flawed trade plan, and the lack of premium assets is asking to wind up in this same spot next year.

Maybe we'll get a 2027 1st round pick?

> I think that there's interest in him also. Ristolainen's a great call. I've heard that teams have talked to him, talked to Philly about him. I think Philly's got a bunch of different balls in the air. Like Ottawa had a lot of interest in Ristolainen. Another team I've wondered about for him too is Montreal.