Shayne Gostisbehere Shipped to Arizona for Cap Relief
Inevitably, Shayne Gostisbehere would continue his NHL career somewhere other than Philadelphia, and today the Flyers moved him to the Arizona Coyotes.
Here’s the blurb from the team website:
The Philadelphia Flyers announced have traded defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere, a second round pick in 2022 and a seventh round pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, previously acquired from the Montreal Canadiens in the trade for Erik Gustafsson, to the Arizona Coyotes, according to President of Hockey Operations & General Manager Chuck Fletcher.
“This was a difficult decision but one we thought was necessary given the reality of the salary cap,” said Fletcher. “Shayne has been a quality player for this organization since the moment he arrived in Philadelphia and has been a part of many special moments in his seven seasons as a Flyer.”
Gostisbehere departs the Flyers after spending parts of seven seasons in the NHL, all with the Flyers, and posted 219 points (60g-159a) in 381 regular season games. He has also appeared in 17 Stanley Cup Playoff games, recording five points (2g-3a).
This is a salary dump, which Chuck Fletcher more or less admits in that quote. They got absolutely nothing for Ghost in return, other than clearing out the two remaining years on his contract at $4.5 million per, which was too much resource allocation for a guy that had fallen out of favor.
Again, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody. Ghost cleared waivers last season, which gave the Flyers the flexibility to move him back and forth between the roster/taxi squad/AHL. There were myriad reports that Chuck Fletcher was looking for a trade partner and nothing materialized.
Kind of crazy though to see how it ended with Ghost, right? 2016 Calder runner up. Barry Ashbee Trophy. He logged 65 points just four seasons ago and then fell off the face of Kyrie Irving’s flat Earth. The knee injury was a killer, and we haven’t seen the same Ghost in recent seasons even though he’s only 28 years old.
Let’s see what the Flyers decide to do with this badly-needed cap space. Tarasenko? Ristolainen? Reinhart?