The Flyers are keeping depth center Rodrigo Abols around for another season, PuckPedia reports. It’s a one-year, one-way deal with an $800K cap hit.
It’s a significant raise in real cash for Abols, who signed a two-way deal with Philadelphia last summer. The 29-year-old Latvian was a seventh-round pick by the Canucks in 2016 but had spent most of his professional career overseas, a one-year run in the Panthers’ farm system in 2019-20 notwithstanding.
After establishing himself as a quality middle-six center with good defensive instincts in the Swedish Hockey League with Orebro HK and Rogle BK, Abols decided to try North American hockey again in the 2024 offseason. He didn’t make the Flyers’ roster out of camp but got some extended looks in the latter half of the campaign, marking his NHL debut.
The 6’4″, 205-lb center played 22 games for the Flyers, almost exclusively in a fourth-line role. He averaged just 9:11 per game but did manage a pair of goals and three assists. Most of his positive impact was felt in the faceoff circle, where he won 66 of his 113 draws (58.4%). He didn’t have sterling defensive impacts, but things weren’t as bad as his -10 rating in limited action suggested, either. Philadelphia controlled 49% of shot attempts and 46.1% of expected goals with Abolts on the ice at 5-on-5.
Given Abols’ track record of quickly returning to Europe when things didn’t work out stateside, some believed it was likely he’d do so again this summer upon reaching unrestricted free agency. Philly would almost certainly need to give him a one-way commitment to retain him – evidently, that’s what they’ve decided to do. Whether the deal indicates they’ve pencilled him into a fringe roster spot remains to be seen.
If not, Abols was a good producer for AHL Lehigh Valley. He posted a 15-17–32 scoring line in 47 games for the minor-league club.