Philadelphia Flyers offseason overhaul, part four: Trading Ryan Hartman

The Philadelphia Flyers and Dallas Stars swapped depth forwards on Monday, with Ryan Hartman sent out-of-town and Tyler Pitlick becoming the newest member of the Orange and Black.

Ryan Hartman, we hardly knew ye.

It was just February 25 when the Philadelphia Flyers acquired Hartman from the Nashville Predators in return for fan favorite Wayne Simmonds. And while it was sad to see Wayne go, it seemed that the Flyers had at least recouped a useful player in return.

But here we are, less than four months later, with the Flyers already moving on from Hartman in a trade that was almost certainly motivated by salary cap concerns. Hartman, a restricted free agent, is due for a raise from the $875,000 that he made this past season.

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And so it seems that GM Chuck Fletcher and the rest of the Flyers’ brain trust felt that the budget was too tight to allocate much more than $1 million for Hartman for this or any future seasons, instead opting to flip him to the Dallas Stars for Tyler Pitlick, a player with one year remaining on a $1 million contract.

You can understand the team’s preference to have Pitlick’s clearly defined salary on the books as we rapidly approach the start of free agency on July 1, rather than the question marks that surround Hartman’s earnings for this upcoming year.

Make no mistake, every dollar counts here; something magnified even further by the NHL only recently establishing the salary cap figure for the 2019-20 season, one that ended up lower than originally anticipated.

Fletcher and the Flyers didn’t necessarily enter the offseason with any intentions of trading Hartman, who is a very good fourth-line player who can slot in on third-line duty in a pinch. But the lower than expected salary cap obviously caused them to have to pivot, and the reasons are possibly twofold.

First, as seen by the team announcing a new contract earlier on Monday for Travis Sanheim, the Flyers need to make sure they come to terms with their own key restricted free agents. Hartman is a nice player, but deals for Sanheim, Ivan Provorov, and Travis Konecny all take priority. The Flyers must fit these players’ contracts under the cap. A player like Hartman is nowhere near as critical.

Secondly, and maybe this is wishful thinking by me, this could be an effort by the Flyers to clear as much space as possible for an upcoming free agent signing. The team is still in need of a third-line winger, and the probable difference between Hartman’s and Pitlick’s salaries could be key in the team getting the player they want.

Or maybe the Flyers are simply done with roster turnover, and they view any openings within their forward group as needing to be filled internally by someone like Morgan Frost or Nicolas Aube-Kubel. As unexciting as this seems, it would not surprise me.

What about Pitlick himself? He is, in a word, fine. Playing about 12 minutes per night on the fourth line and the penalty kill, he will not hurt the team. He may even chip in 10 or 12 goals on the season, which is certainly an improvement on some of the wretched fourth line play that the Flyers received last year.

The Flyers gave up the better player in this trade, but obviously they felt that the drop off was small enough to justify the cost savings and that those funds were more valuable to help ensure they could lock up players from their “core” group.

I can’t fault that logic. I just hope that the Flyers don’t stop here because they are afraid of being “capped out”. Free agency awaits, and they can’t afford to sit it out.