Former 7th overall pick on the trading block, expected to be moved by the trade deadline

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Liam
January 11, 2023 (1:20 PM)

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In the last edition of Eliotte Friedman's 32 Thoughts blog, he touched on the tenuous relationship happening between the Flyers and some of their top players. Most notably, Friedman revealed that the team may be moving in a new direction with defenceman Ivan Provorov, and a blockbuster trade offer they received in the past.

Providing was the seventh overall draft choice of the Flyers in 2015, and showed great offensive promise early in his career. Provorov scored 17 goals in his second season, 13 goals in his fourth, with a healthy amount of assists to boot. Over the last few seasons however, his production and his play has plateaued - and he's playing himself out of the future plans of the Flyers.

Provorov has three years remaining on a contract that pays him $6.75M annually, so at least for the near future, he can remain a Flyers. That doesn't mean he will, though, as Friedman writes:

I don't think there's anything imminent with Ivan Provorov, but I do think we are headed down the road. He's frustrated with them, they're frustrated with him, internally everyone knows who feels what. Another exec made a good point: if you're Philadelphia, you want to know by this summer anyway if he's going to re-sign, so the Flyers are just getting ahead of things and doing their work. Crossing Broad's Anthony SanFilippo had a wild one in his column the other day: that Winnipeg offered a Provorov-for-Patrik Laine deal before the winger was dealt to Columbus, but the Flyers passed because of their belief in the defender.

With the internal frustration surrounding the situation, and the Flyers looking like they'll remain a bottom-feeder for a years to come, it seems unlikely that Provorov will play out the remainder of his contract with the Flyers.

In typical Friedman fashion, he drops a crazy past-blockbuster offer towards the end of the piece, claiming the Winnipeg Jets offered Patrick Laine for Provorov before he was traded to Columbus. In retrospect, that deal probably helps Philadelphia as much as it did Columbus in the short term, being not at all. However, the Jets would look significantly different with Provorov instead of Pierre-Luc Dubois. The Jets could've been a defensive powerhouse, instead of the talented offensive group they've constructed.

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