It’s remained a pretty quiet opening day to Free Agency for the Flyers, as they’ve announced just their second major move of the day, and it’s another re-signing. The big news of the afternoon is that they’ve signed Garnet Hathaway to a two-year extension, which will earn him an average of $2.4 million a year.
Now if you’re thinking “wait a second, I thought the Flyers signed Hathaway to a two-year deal last summer,” you would be correct! As it stands, Hathaway will be under contract for one more year, before this extension even kicks in, and will be with the organization through the 2026-27 season (though, we should add, there’s no trade protection on this deal).
And opting to re-sign a fourth line player to an extension as soon as humanly possible is objectively kind of a strange move. Hathaway fits with the team and the room well now, but that could change pretty quickly. They’ve also already taken him off the table as an option of a player on an expiring contract to be moved at the trade deadline this spring (one of the few potential options they had in the first place).
But maybe, after the draft which saw the Flyers really build up their collection of picks for next year (six in total between the first and second rounds), the equation has changed. It’s possible that the emphasis on selling at the deadline in order to gain assets in the form of picks has lessened, and the Flyers felt more comfortable to lock up a player that they clearly really like and value earlier than one might have originally imagined.
Whatever the reason, the result is the same — the Flyers have another veteran depth option locked up, and the question remains open what the broader impact of this will be on the younger players on the cusp of pushing for an NHL job.
