Flyers Trade Sean Walker to Colorado Avalanche
The Philadelphia Flyers completed a trade sending Sean Walker and a 5th-round pick in 2026 to the Colorado Avalanche for a conditional 1st-round pick in 2025 (top 10 protected) and center Ryan Johansen.
The right-handed defenseman finished his brief stint in Philadelphia with six goals and 16 assists in 63 games. He also became a key weapon on the top-ranked penalty killing unit in the NHL.
The @NHLFlyers have traded Sean Walker and a 2026 5th-Round pick to the @Avalanche for a 2025 1st-Round pick and Ryan Johansen.
— NHL (@NHL) March 6, 2024
The #NHLTradeDeadline is on Friday at 3p ET! pic.twitter.com/dm9ZsPSyIc
Flyers Trade Sean Walker
Danny Briere acquired Sean Walker in what looked like a salary dump from the Los Angeles Kings as part of the three-team Ivan Provorov trade. The Flyers wouldn’t have expected him to burst out and become one of the hottest commodities on the trade market.
Walker flourished in a second-pair role under John Tortorella. His strength as a skater meshed well with the freedom Tortorella has granted for defensemen to aggressively join the offensive rush. Walker’s calculated risks helped the Flyers control play with him on the ice at 5-on-5.
The 29-year-old is on pace to set a career-high in scoring in 2023-24. He has significantly outperformed expectations, and the Flyers capitalized on the opportunity to sell high. Colorado has the depth on the blue line to potentially slot him into a third-pair role.
Return Package
The potential acquisition of a 1st-round pick for Walker became a hot topic throughout the hockey world in recent weeks. The Flyers reportedly had considered extending the resurgent blue liner, but their top trade chip has now moved on to a Stanley Cup contender.
Briere has pulled off a victory two days ahead of his first trade deadline in charge. The pick won’t come until 2025, but the rookie general manager reclaimed excellent value for Walker. The Calgary Flames recently sent Chris Tanev, a more accomplished right-handed defenseman, to the Dallas Stars for a return that didn’t include a 1st-round pick.
Johansen is in his 13th NHL season. He had 13 goals and 10 assists in 63 games with Colorado. His 13:39 average ice time is his lowest since his rookie season in 2011-12. The 31-year-old notched 63 points in 79 games for the Nashville Predators as recently as 2021-22.
The Avalanche acquired Johansen in July 2023 from the Predators in a salary dump. They will retain half of his $8 million annual cap hit through the 2024-25 season. The Flyers have reportedly placed him on waivers. Stay tuned for further trades before the 2024 NHL Trade Deadline on March 8.
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The All-Time Roster of Underrated Philadelphia Flyers
Mike Knuble
Peter Forsberg and Simon Gagne were the stars at the top of the lineup coming out of the 2004-05 lockout. However, there are three players on an NHL line.
Mike Knuble spent four seasons with the Flyers from 2005-06 through 2008-09, and he returned for a cup of coffee in 2013. He provided the perfect complement to a crafty playmaker like Forsberg and a finesse star like Gagne. He scored a career-high 34 goals in his first season in Philadelphia and followed it up with 24, 29, and 27 goals in the next three seasons, respectively.
Knuble knew his role as a garbage goal-scorer, and he played it damn well. He added 14 points in 24 playoff games with the Flyers, including an overtime game-winning goal against the Washington Capitals in 2008.
Kimmo Timonen
The NHL still associates the Broad Street Bullies mentality with the Flyers. Players like Chris Pronger feed into the identity of the fan base. The 6-foot-6 defenseman resonated with the fans perfectly as a fearless, powerful defenseman who became the workhorse on the Philadelphia blue line during the run to the 2010 Stanley Cup Final.
Kimmo Timonen didn’t have the same reputation. The Finnish puck mover was more of a classy guy off the ice who didn’t bring as much grit as Pronger, but he actually had a longer run as the top blueliner in Philadelphia.
The Flyers acquired Timonen as part of a series of trades with the Nashville Predators that pulled them out of the disaster of the 2006-07 season. He averaged over 20 minutes of ice time in each of his seven playoff series wins with the Flyers. Only Mark Howe and Eric Desjardins scored more points among defensemen in franchise history.
Dan McGillis
Hockey in the late 1990s and early 2000s required more physical defensemen while modern roster construction prioritizes puck movers on the blue line. The Flyers acquired 6-foot-3, 220-pounder Dan McGillis in 1998 during a window of Stanley Cup contention.
McGillis played 380 regular-season and playoff games in orange and black. He was the physical presence a contending team needed, but you won’t see his name in the franchise record books too often.
Stay-at-home defensemen are harder to glorify than offensive catalysts. McGillis recorded a career-high 49 points in 2000-01, and it’s no coincidence that it was the only one of his nine NHL seasons when he received Norris Trophy votes.
Steve Mason
Anyone who follows the Flyers knows the notorious reputation of the “Goalie Graveyard” in Philadelphia. The revolving door of goaltenders reached its peak with the Ilya Bryzgalov nightmare that ended in 2013, right around the time the Flyers really started to lose popularity in the Philadelphia sports landscape.
Coincidentally, the Flyers acquired Steve Mason in 2013. He spent four seasons as the top option between the pipes for forgettable Flyers teams that never won a playoff series.
Mason wasn’t some Vezina Trophy winner who would reverse the “Goalie Graveyard” narrative. He was never going to demand the attention of casual hockey fans in Philadelphia who were only interested in a contending team, but he was the type of solid goaltender for a good period of time that the Flyers haven’t usually had.
Daymond Langkow
It’s tough to identify any reason why Daymond Langkow is underrated. Like Joffrey Lupul and Sami Kapanen, he doesn’t seem to come up in conversations about the Flyers too often. The NHL journeyman notched at least 50 points in each of his two full regular seasons in Philadelphia.
He helped the Flyers advance to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final in 2000 with 10 points in 16 games during the playoff run.
The Daymond Langkow trade tree had remarkable ripple effects on the franchise. The return package acquired from the Phoenix Coyotes in 2001 indirectly led to the acquisitions of Jeff Carter, Jakub Voracek, Sean Couturier, Cam Atkinson, Jason Smith, Joffrey Lupul, and Chris Pronger.
