Philly Sports: Some recent athletes you should dislike

Andrew MacDonald

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone or something not to like on the current version of the Flyers. Ok, Ghost has fallen on some hard times. But aside from that, the team is mostly a mix of veterans doing their jobs and exciting youngsters emerging to help the cause.

For years, one of the main things holding up this kind of progress was the Flyers’ salary cap situation, which was a mess thanks to contracts like the one that Andrew MacDonald had. I’m not going to blame the player, because I’d also sign on the dotted line for $5 million per season even if I knew I wasn’t worth close to that. But his deal was one of the last and greatest mistakes of the Paul Holmgren era that the Flyers had to live with for years.

To his credit, MacDonald played decently enough for stretches of his tenure, and he put up with the indignity of being buried in the minors for a time so that his full salary didn’t count against the Flyers’ cap number. But it was a sweet relief when the Flyers finally bought out his contract in 2019, telling him “we’re good” rather than bringing him back onto the team for one final year.

MacDonald’s buyout still counts against the Flyers’ salary cap number in 2020-21, but then it’ll finally be done, the last vestiges of a middling player who hurt the team for reasons that were mostly beyond his control.