We are just weeks away from the 2024 NHL Entry Draft and the Stanley Cup being lifted by either the Edmonton Oilers or the Florida Panthers. While the hockey on our screens has been enjoyable, what’s even more enjoyable is transactions and rumors about transactions. Most recently, Columbus Blue Jackets winger and former second-overall pick Patrik Laine is reportedly looking to find a new home.
Of course, when any skilled player becomes available like this, almost every fan base starts dreaming up trades that would make sense so that they can acquire said player and magically turn into the peak of what player they can potentially be. It’s a natural reaction (that we participate in as well) but when it comes specifically to the Philadelphia Flyers, there are multiple reasons why there just doesn’t appear to be a fit.
Price and contract
In this modern era, there is never a transaction that happens where you don’t have to think about the financial side of things and how it affects both participating teams. This is the nature of a hard salary cap. So when it comes to Laine, it feels like a balancing act.
The 26-year-old winger has two years remaining on a contract that carries an $8.7-million AAV. That is a substantial price for a player who is talented but who hasn’t played over 60 games in a season since 2019-20. Whether it is an ongoing injury issue or more recently going into the NHLPA’s Player Assistance Program for some off-ice help (which hopefully has actually helped him deal with any issues he has), Laine just hasn’t been around a whole lot.
That is probably why the Blue Jackets are most likely going to be retaining some part of his salary to make this work and even with that, considering just the high risk of getting a player like Laine on and off the ice, the acquisition cost isn’t going to be a first-round pick but maybe something like a mid-round pick and a decent prospect, or something like that. We are just guessing here, but the NHL is so risk-averse that there is certainly no way a team is paying a top asset to get Laine on their roster.
The Flyers aren’t completely avoiding any risk — they drafted Matvei Michkov, signed Sam Ersson to a contract extension a year early, and even brought over an unknown player in Ivan Fedotov, for a couple examples — but something like this just feels out of character. Especially when you consider what exactly Laine brings on the ice.
One-dimensional player
There is no hiding what kind of player Patrik Laine is. Ever since he was taken second overall in 2016, he has carried the reputation as a one-dimensional player who scores loads of goals and the general hope is that he scores enough to make up for his lack of defensive ability or work ethic in two of the three zones.
And he managed to start his career doing exactly that. Scoring 36 goals his rookie year, 44 his sophomore year, and avoiding a significant slump with 30 goals in the 2018-19 season; everything looked like things were going according to plan. But then the issues started to pile up and a move to the Blue Jackets just solidified everything that was a concern about his game. He became a player that never played a full season and he just tried to stay afloat on a bad team as a good player.
He found some relative success during the 2022-23 season, as he continued to score a goal roughly every two games and be a point-per-game player, and his defense didn’t take a massive hit compared to some other one-dimensional players, but it might have just been a blip on the radar.
The entire trajectory of Laine’s career so far is incredibly interesting.
According to HockeyViz’s sG metric that is an “all-in-one” stat that uses a player’s isolated impact on the ice, while Laine scored a billion goals early on, his best overall impact year was just a couple seasons ago. But, this is all purely betting on the talent to override the effort, or to buy into your own team being able to crack that nut and “fix” his game.
When it comes to the Flyers, it really feels like they don’t need any more players that are one-dimensional goalscorers. Of course, any team can use players that are good at scoring, but the fit might just not be completely there when it comes to Laine and what he can bring.
The Flyers have players like Bobby Brink who, while they might not be as naturally talented at scoring goals as Laine, comes a whole lot cheaper and is already in the organization with hours of development committed to. And while Brink never really got a full opportunity with the Flyers this season, if he was suddenly put into the role that Laine would theoretically be given in Philadelphia, would there be much difference?
This feels like an insane question to ask, because Brink has nowhere near the reputation that Laine has, but it is sort of funny when you look at the numbers. In Laine’s last full season in 2022-23, he scored 0.97 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. Essentially, for every hour of 5-on-5 hockey that Laine would play, he would score a goal. When it comes to Brink, during his rookie year last season, at 5-on-5, he scored 0.65 goals per 60 minutes.
It is a significant difference, but we’re looking at whether or not that gap in production is worth all the assets and dollars you might pour into acquiring and putting a Patrik Laine on the Flyers roster. Laine has only ever once scored below Brink’s 5-on-5 rate through a season and it was during his first miserable year in Columbus where he was probably battling multiple things.
It’s all about risk vs. reward and it is so tricky when it comes to Laine. The reward could be tremendous, but also when it comes specifically to the Flyers, it feels like a risk that they don’t really want to take at this time. They appear to be rather committed to the current crop of young players and not bringing outsiders in to try and push this roster to the peak of their current potential. Especially when you consider the context of the actual player and the past history.
Previous history with Tortorella
You can argue and debate whether or not the Flyers should or should not go after a player like Laine, but there is always the one argument-killer for anyone on the side of this team not making a move: John Tortorella and Laine do not mesh well together.
You remember that one down season for Laine’s production? The 2020-21 season where, comparably, a rookie Bobby Brink last year, actually scored almost double the rate of the flashy Finn? That was the one season — 45 total games for Laine — where John Tortorella was the head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets with the winger on that roster.
Whether it was just how the current Flyers head coach was during his tenure with the Blue Jackets, or how he has and will always be, there was just something that didn’t work about Laine and Tortorella together. The winger scored just 21 points in those 45 games — a stark decrease in his typical production — and then he bounced right back as soon as Tortorella was no longer his coach.
And it isn’t just an on-ice coincidence. During the summer following Tortorella and the Blue Jackets’ mutual parting of ways, Laine spoke with Finnish publication Aamulehti and expressed his frustration playing under the current Flyers coach.
Yeah, that doesn’t sound like Tortorella would ever get on board with a trade for Patrik Laine. Unless things have been smoothed over and both player and coach are excited about a reunion, you have to imagine Tortorella kiboshing any move as soon as he catches wind of GM Danny Briere thinking about it.
Options elsewhere
There is seemingly not a fit in Philadelphia — we will happily eat our words and never talk about this one specific blog ever again — but for other teams, it might just work out better. Other teams around the NHL might just try harder to acquire the player compared to the Flyers. If something falls in their lap and Laine is suddenly excited to be in Philadelphia and the Flyers can just send Columbus a third-round pick and someone like Olle Lycksell or Ronnie Attard? Sure, of course they would make that deal and try to fix anything wrong between the player and the coach, and anywhere else. But for other teams, that risk would be actually worth it.
Maybe it’s the Chicago Blackhawks not wanting to completely ruin Connor Bedard’s first couple of years in the NHL and actually give him some talent; or Carolina Hurricanes reuniting Sebastian Aho and Laine to make some magic work; or it’s the Boston Bruins and turning Laine into the best player he could be via some witchcraft — other teams should want Laine more than the Flyers ever will. And that is why the Flyers are most likely not going to be really trying all that hard to get him and he will not be in Philadelphia come training camp.
If we’re wrong, sure, whatever. If we’re right, we can say we told you so.
