After failing to land a roster spot through his professional tryout with the Calgary Flames, veteran NHL defenseman Andrew MacDonald will take his talents overseas. Chris Johnston of Sportsnet reports that MacDonald has signed with SC Bern of the Swiss NLA.
MacDonald, 33, played 586 regular season games in the NHL, split between the New York Islanders—who drafted him in the sixth round in 2006—and Philadelphia Flyers. Unfortunately he had quite an unceremonious exit from Philadelphia, benched for long stretches and bought out this summer.
Unable to find NHL work this year, it may be the end of that part of MacDonald’s hockey journey. Perhaps he’ll try again next year after showing what he can do at the professional level in Europe, but it’s hard to see him ever becoming an impact player again.
Talents?
MacDonald is a serviceable 3rd pair d-man. The problem is the Flyers paid him top 4 money and that was a contract he couldn’t live up to.
He is not even a third pairing d-man, he was horrendous in pretty much all aspects of playing defense. His only redeeming quality was blocking shots- since he lacked skill the only thing he could do was get in the way of shots. It can be a valuable skill set but in the lack of others it just makes him a taller traffic cone.