The Philadelphia Flyers have officially reached the point where they can't afford to hold onto the rotting contract of Ryan Ellis any longer.
Ellis, 34, has two years remaining on his contract at a $6.25 million cap hit, but is permanently retired from playing in the NHL and has since returned to Nashville to rehab and preserve his quality of life.
Now, the Flyers could always place Ellis on LTIR instead of regular injured reserve and benefit from that cap relief, but they won't accrue any daily cap space for as long as Ellis is on LTIR.
The issue is that the Flyers want to avoid this, preferring to accrue cap space and keep their options open ahead of the trade deadline.
Current injuries to Tyson Foerster and Rasmus Ristolainen, and the call-up replacements for those players, leave the Flyers with about $570k in cap space, and the cap space the Flyers accrue depends on their daily cap hit.
Effectively, the lower the daily cap hit, the more money they gain, but their daily cap hit is quite high as it currently stands.
So, if the Flyers want the cap space, and they don't want to use the LTIR pool, the next logical step would be to move on from Ellis's contract altogether.
It may cost a prospect or a draft pick, sure, but it opens the opportunity to recoup a draft pick by helping facilitate a retained salary trade at the NHL trade deadline, for example.
Simply put, there is no reason for the Flyers to put themselves in the precarious position of potentially not being able to afford to call players up as injury replacements and construct the roster as they wish, as well as limiting themselves at the trade deadline months in advance.
Looking around the NHL, fellow rebuilders like the Anaheim Ducks, San Jose Sharks, and Chicago Blackhawks are barely above the NHL's salary cap floor.
Taking on Ellis's deal will help those teams ensure they don't have to make needless big-money commitments to veterans to add to the roster and stay above the floor at the same time.
As for a potential price, the Flyers could reference the Shea Weber trade from this past NHL trade deadline.
On March 7, the Blackhawks traded a 2026 fifth-round picks to the Utah Mammoth for Weber's contract, 24-year-old prospect Aku Raty, and the rights to 24-year-old prospect Victor Soderstrom, who was subsequently traded to Boston for Ryan Mast and a 2025 seventh-round pick.
The Flyers don't have fourth- or fifth-round picks in 2026, but they do have a 2027 third-round pick acquired in the Andrei Kuzmenko trade that could be used if no prospects are included, as Utah did with Chicago.
Prospects who could be dangled in this potential scenario might include the oft-injured Samu Tuomaala, Adam Ginning, and Aleksei Kolosov, particularly in the event he doesn't return to North America this season.
Kolosov and Tuomaala are both RFAs at the end of the season, and Kolosov's UFA season is 2029-30. The Belarusian goalie could be a smart bet for a team willing to take the risk of letting him go home and potentially return to the NHL at a later date.
But, this is all to say that the Flyers have options when it comes to moving on from Ellis and his big $6.25 million cap hit.
They'd be better served having that money available to spend in the 2026 and 2027 free agent classes rather than hold onto it any longer to preserve a measly draft asset or two.
Plus, as mentioned above, not being able to call up players in the event of injuries is not a place you want to be to start your season.
But, will the Flyers try to help themselves, or will they continue to play the long game and stick with the passive approach?
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