The Philadelphia Flyers and Calgary Flames made a big trade Thursday night, the teams announced after initial reports.
Right winger Andrei Kuzmenko and left winger Jakob Pelletier are going to Philadelphia, while center Morgan Frost and left winger Joel Farabee are headed to Calgary. Philadelphia also received a 2025 second-round draft pick and a 2028 seventh-rounder, as initially reported by Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli, TSN’s Pierre LeBrun and TSN’s Darren Dreger.
TRADE ALERT: We’ve acquired forwards Andrei Kuzmenko, Jakob Pelletier, a 2025 2nd round pick and a 2028 7th round pick from Calgary in exchange for forwards Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost. https://t.co/l8graUmhlE
— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) January 31, 2025
The trade developed while the Flames hosted the Anaheim Ducks, and Pelletier was pulled from the game. The 23-year-old played 5:22 of ice time.
Kuzmenko, 29, was a last-minute scratch before the start of the contest.
Pelletier has four goals and 11 points in 23 games this season for the Flames, while Kuzmenko has four goals and 15 points in 37 games.
Both forwards are pending free agents. However, Pelletier is a pending RFA, while Kuzmenko will be a UFA, barring any contract extensions. Kuzmenko carries a $5.5-million cap hit, and Pelletier’s is $800,000.
This will be the first time Kuzmenko will play professional hockey for an American team. In 2022, he relocated from the KHL and joined the Vancouver Canucks.
He went on to score 39 goals and 74 points in 81 games. That was his best season of his NHL career thus far. Eventually, he was traded to the Flames almost exactly one year ago.
Before the Russian transitioned to the NHL in 2022-23, he played for KHL St. Petersburg for four seasons. During the 2021-22 campaign, when he had 20 goals and 53 points in 45 games, Kuzmenko was a teammate of Flyers rookie Matvei Michkov, as noted by Nation Network’s Jeff Marek. Michkov had two goals and five points in 13 games at the KHL level that season. Now, the two will be teammates at the NHL level.
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Frost exited during the Flyers game on Thursday against the New York Islanders. Coach John Tortorella said he left the game because he was banged up.
Farabee, 24, and Frost, 25, were the Flyers’ first-round picks in the 2018 and 2017 drafts, respectively.
Farabee has eight goals and 11 assists for 19 points in 50 games after a career-high 22-goal, 50-point campaign in 2023-24. His average ice time of 15:12 is the lowest in his career since his rookie season.
Frost, meanwhile, has 11 goals and 14 assists for 25 points in 49 games after two 40-point campaigns. He had been a repeated healthy scratch under Tortorella, while Farabee was last scratched earlier in January.
Frost earns $2.1 million against the cap but will be an RFA at the end of this season. As for Farabee, he is in the third year of a six-year contract that costs $5 million per season.
With these moves, Philadelphia saves about $800,000 in cap space, while Calgary gets younger and can remain competitive. The Flames’ 4-1 win Thursday night puts them back in the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference, while the Flyers’ 3-0 loss means they’re still four points back of the East’s second wild-card place.
The Hockey News’ Tim Hiebert projects Kuzmenko to be a linemate with Michkov, while Farabee and Frost are projected to be linemates in Calgary.
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