Flyers Acquire Erik Johnson From Buffalo Sabres
The Philadelphia Flyers have acquired Erik Johnson from the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for a 4th-round pick in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft. Elliotte Friedman first reported the deal, and Jeff Marek released the full trade package.
Hearing Erik Johnson to Philadelphia
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) March 8, 2024
Trade Deadline Buyers?
The Flyers never fit the mold as traditional sellers ahead of the 2024 NHL Trade Deadline. They still occupy the third and final division playoff spot in the Metropolitan Division standings. The organization has also openly spoken against the idea of tanking as a part of their rebuild.
Maintaining organizational culture has always been a major focus of the rebuild. The Flyers believe that their young players need to gain experience in big games if they hope to become key pieces of a Stanley Cup team down the road.
Danny Briere and the Flyers spent aggressively relative to expectations, giving up the 4th-rounder for Erik Johnson.
The low-cost acquisition helps that effort in the short term, but it sacrifices a small chip in the future. The likelihood of a 4th-round pick developing into a key NHL contributor isn’t very high. Rebuilding teams need all the mid-round picks they can get, however. The Flyers still have a solid stockpile of picks heading into the draft this summer, so the loss is relatively small.
Erik Johnson
Johnson signed a one-year, $3.25 million contract with the Sabres for the 2023-24 season. He finished his short stint in Buffalo with three points in 50 games for a team that’s struggled to meet expectations. The St. Louis Blues drafted him with the 1st-overall pick in 2006.
He has played 1025 regular-season and playoff games, and he lifted the Stanley Cup in 2022 with the Colorado Avalanche.
Defensemen Jamie Drysdale, Rasmus Ristolainen, and Nick Seeler are out of the lineup with injuries. Briere also dealt Sean Walker to the Avalanche on Wednesday. The depleted blue line now gets a veteran upgrade.
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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.
