Friday morning\u2019s episode of 32 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/a>, Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman narrowed in on the situation in Philadelphia. While there has been major speculation on what the Flyers are looking for in return for Ristolainen and what teams could be interested, Friedman mentioned something that no one has really brought up: The Flyers could struggle to find the right fit because there are just so many defensemen available.<\/p>\n\u201cPhilly, they\u2019re a seller. Ristolainen, another guy who, like Trocheck, did nothing at the Olympics to hurt his stature. Played very well \u2014 hit McDavid a couple of times. The thing that someone said to me though is, there\u2019s a lot of [defensemen] out there, a lot. And it\u2019s not that people don\u2019t like this player, who\u2019s also got a reputation as an excellent teammate, by the way. It\u2019s just that the challenge for the Flyers will be is, there\u2019s a lot of [defensemen] out there,\u201d Friedman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, if you don\u2019t like the price on him, unless you\u2019ve really got your heart set on him, there\u2019s other players you can move to. That\u2019s the challenge for Philly.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not great!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that Ristolainen\u2019s stock has not been higher in a very long time. His performance for Finland at the Olympics showed that he can bring it when the game is the toughest (and stay healthy while doing it). And while we were dreaming of maybe a team actually coughing up a first-round pick to acquire him, the reality that there are just a boatload of similar players on the market, might prevent that from happening.<\/p>\n
Whether it\u2019s Tyler Myers, Justin Faulk, Dougie Hamilton, Logan Stanley, Luke Schenn, Brandon Carlo, Connor Murphy, Mackenzie Weegar, Mario Ferraro, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Zach Whitecloud, or [takes deep breath] John Klingberg \u2014 there is just a lot of experienced blueliners that could be moved in the next week. A playoff team who wants to find some help on their back end can just go window shopping, strolling down the boulevard as the rugged defensemen plead to get out from their loser teams and experience some meaningful hockey.<\/p>\n
The one advantage that the Flyers do actually have over the other teams moving players like this, is that Ristolainen does not have any trade protection whatsoever. Outside of Schenn, Stanley, Whitecloud, and Ferraro, all the other blueliners named above have some level of no-trade clause and could prevent their team from moving them to certain destinations. Now, we don\u2019t doubt that it would be hard to convince the likes of Dougie Hamilton to leave the Devils and go to a more favorable destination, but it can still be a hurdle the teams have to leap over.<\/p>\n
But, it\u2019s just so much and there aren\u2019t that many spots available.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why it\u2019s not difficult to imagine the Flyers are going to have problems before the trade deadline. We know that they hold onto their own valuations for their players extremely tight \u2014 they weren\u2019t going to trade Scott Laughton until they got that first-round pick; they weren\u2019t going to move pending free agent Sean Walker unless they got that first-round pick (which they had to take on Ryan Johansen for). It\u2019s a stubbornness that has worked out for them very well.<\/p>\n
But, with so many similar players available, a team can just go ahead and pay the second-round pick for Whitecloud instead. Or, go get the younger Mario Ferraro and re-sign him to a cheaper deal, while also possibly paying less than a first-rounder for him. <\/p>\n
For right now, it seems like the Flyers either need to be more flexible with what they want in return for their player, or pray that a playoff team really narrows in on Ristolainen and thinks he\u2019s so much better than the other available defensemen.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll see how it all plays out in the next seven days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Philadelphia Flyers are approaching this trade deadline from a unique angle. While most other teams who are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-494103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}