So yeah clearly the Flyers did not want to address this publicly around his pre-season no-show. And then he refused to meet with them in Sweden too.
They could have held his rights for years, but clearly this team couldn't afford that kind of bad publicity/drama. Plus he'd be a wasted asset (or at least a declining value asset) during the stand-off.
Corey Pronman: The main sub-context of this deal is that Gauthier had indicated he did not want to sign with the Flyers months ago. The world juniors was the tipping point where it became clear that a trade may need to happen after they could not meet with him. GM Daniel Briere and AGM Brent Flahr were present in Gothenburg.
The Ducks get the best player of the two currently, but given the circumstances, Drysdale is still a very good long-term piece for the Flyers who lacked a top young defenseman of his caliber. He would for example rate ahead of defenseman Cam York on the team long-term. He just needs to stay healthy
It’s also worth noting that the manager who drafted Drysdale for the Ducks, Bob Murray, now consults for the Flyers, and so would have provided valuable input.
I hope there wasn't already.
But it would be funny if Drysdale was able to step into the line-up and actually made them better. He's still super-young and played 81 games the season before last, no reason to think he's a lost cause physically (I mean, we thought that about Coots this season too right?)
Obviously Jones and Briere aren't on the hook here, but still not a great look for Brent Flohr that he somehow missed this about the kid from the start. Was he afraid of Torts?
Mr. Snider would be proud (not sure that's a good thing).
"You don't want to be a Flyer? You're not going to be a Flyer."
— Sportsnet ( @Sportsnet ) January 9, 2024
Flyers President of Hockey Ops, Keith Jones discusses the trade with the Ducks. pic.twitter.com/btUehFXsVO1
Speculative, of course.
That draft was in July 2022. Brière said that sometime between then and last May, when Gauthier was starring for Team USA. at the 2023 International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship — he had seven goals in 10 games in that tournament — Gauthier decided that he didn’t want to play for the Flyers anymore. Brière and president Keith Jones came on board as the organization’s new leadership team that same month, May 2023, but a source with knowledge of the situation said Monday night that Gauthier had soured on the Flyers before Brière and Jones were hired.
So what changed? During a podcast interview in April 2023, just a month before, Gauthier said that he had been in touch with and “pretty close to” Kevin Hayes. A Boston College alumnus, Hayes of course had spent much of the 2022-23 season in John Tortorella’s doghouse before the Flyers traded him to the St. Louis Blues last June. When asked if Hayes might have spoken to Gauthier about Tortorella or the organization in a manner that would have turned Gauthier off about the Flyers, the source didn’t rule it out.
“Not sure,” the source said.
Just when Philly phans were starting to be lovable again. Hayes got them too.
Obviously death threats are never acceptable but even the anger seems misplaced to me. Hardly the first player to do this. Some of them even wait and go back into the draft.
And there there was Lindros of course. Heck, Drysdale held out of training camp this year too (though that was for his next contract).
It sounds to me like the breaking point was that the Flyers didn't want to sign him (and pay/start his free agency clock) after just one year of college. It's just weird that wasn't clear at the time. But they probably got more from him now then they would have at the draft (in fact that's fairly certainly, since they were already shopping him then and wanted Montreal's pick).
That said, Gauthier is still declining to say what really happened (if you can read the story).
The funny thing is J.D. Drew was almost entirely the Phillies' fault. They shouldn't have drafted him, or they should have paid him. Even if Boras was also underhanded about it.
This doesn't seem to be the Flyers' fault but their spin on it, and the kid's refusal to talk to them or talk about it, makes it easy to turn the kid into a bad guy when he's just exercising his rights as a player. If he was a baseball player his rights would have simply ceased to belong to the Flyers simply by going to college (and he also could have gone back into the draft after one year instead of four).
I suppose they probably still boo Adam Fox in Calgary.
The most interesting thing about this season might be the emergence of Ersson.
“It wasn’t one specific reason why I asked for a trade,” said Gauthier. “It was multiple, re-occurring issues that I’d seen over the past year and a half, two years of being under the Flyers organization. It kind of hit me all at once, thinking ‘I can’t move forward with this’ and ‘I really need to step up for myself and see what’s best for my future’ and that’s what I did.”
O'Connor's tweet in response to this:
Honestly, if Gauthier said, "Look, from when I got drafted through May '23, the Flyers org looked like a total shitshow & once I made up my mind, I wasn't reversing course," I actually think a lot of fans would get it.
— Charlie O'Connor ( @charlieo_conn ) January 11, 2024
They remember what the org seemed like during that timespan.