The Philadelphia Flyers will still need to send goaltender Carter Hart a qualifying offer to keep his NHL rights, according to a report late Saturday night.
According to The Athletic’s Chris Johnston, the NHL and NHLPA are not making any rule changes for the teams that currently hold the NHL rights of the group of players that were charged for sexual assault for the incident that allegedly occurred during a Hockey Canada event for the World Juniors team in 2018.
Hart, the Flyers goaltender and one of those charged with sexual assault, becomes a restricted free agent on July 1. For a team to keep the NHL rights of a restricted free agent, they must send them a qualifying offer on June 30, the day before free agency opens, that keeps them with the team. Otherwise, if a player does not receive a qualifying offer, they become an unrestricted free agent and are able to sign with any team in the NHL. That is how the system normally works.
As Johnston mentions in his second tweet, the NHL and NHLPA held discussions about a distinct allowance for teams to keep the NHL rights of players without having to send them a qualifying offer. When restricted free agents are sent a qualifying offer, they can accept that offer and it becomes a one-year contract. In Hart’s case, it is a one-year, $4.479-million contract.
That means that if the Flyers want to keep Hart’s rights, and not have him potentially re-join the league after going through a trial (still to be seen how the NHL handles that), they would have to send a qualifying offer on Sunday and pay him almost $4.5 million to just sit at home waiting for trial as he continues to be charged with sexual assault.
When it comes to that money counting against the Flyers’ salary cap, when Hart was away from the team while being charged, his cap hit did not count. The NHL made an exception for that. One has to assume that if the Flyers do extend Hart a qualifying offer and he simply signs it to earn millions while not playing and awaiting criminal trial, he will continue to not count towards the team’s total cap hit.
As of Saturday afternoon, after the 2024 NHL Draft was completed, the Flyers did not know the NHL’s decision regarding this. General manager Danny Briere was available to the media after all seven rounds were completed and he said that there was no direction from the league on what to do with Hart and his contract and NHL rights status.
Now that it has been reported, the teams have less than 24 hours to make their decision with the league deciding not to make an exception to the CBA. We will have to wait and see what decision the Flyers make on Sunday.
