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Flyers Discussing Contract Extension With Cam York

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With Noah Cates and Tyson Foerster recently signing extensions with the Philadelphia Flyers, Kevin Kurz of The Athletic wonders if pending restricted free agent defender Cam York is next.

As Kevin Kurz reports, sources close to York have indicated that discussions between the player and the Flyers have been ongoing for some time, with both short- and long-term contract options being considered. While York is coming off a down year compared to his 2023-24 season, where he established career highs in goals (10) and assists (20), he’s still only 24 years old and will more than likely benefit from the organization’s recent coaching change.

York and Flyers had a tumultuous 2024-25 season, with former head coach John Tortorella making York a healthy scratch on two separate occasions. After sustaining a shoulder injury early in the season that York later admitted impacted his performance, Tortorella also did not play York on the power play despite the unit finishing 30th in the league. Things ultimately came to a head on March 25 when York and Tortorella reportedly had a heated exchange during a 7-2 loss to the Maple Leafs. Tortorella was soon after fired, and York was disciplined by dressing but not skating in the following contest against the Canadians.

Still, the former first-round pick possesses potential that other teams may covet on the open market. For the Flyers to determine if extending York aligns with their long-term vision, they must assess whether his style complements the system Rick Tocchet intends to implement.

  • Sources confirmed to Kurz that the Flyers will not be in the market for big-name free agents come July 1. While general manager Daniel Briere and the front office have nearly $19MM in cap space (per PuckPedia), they seem content to continue to resign their own younger players. Excluding non-roster players, the Philadelphia Flyers have two restricted free agents remaining—York and winger Jakob Pelletier—and no unrestricted free agents. It appears the Flyers are opting to retain a roster similar to last season’s, with Tocchet and his coaching staff aiming to maximize player performance and development.

Flyers Now Not Believed To Be Interested In Hague

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  • While the Flyers have been suggested as a possible team interested in Golden Knights defenseman Nicolas Hague, Kevin Kurz of The Athletic relays (Twitter link) word from a team source that this is not the case. Hague is a pending restricted free agent and with the expectation that he’ll be looking for a fair bit more than his $2.7MM qualifying offer, he has become a speculative trade candidate.  Philadelphia already has four left-shot blueliners signed for next season with Cameron York, another lefty, becoming a restricted free agent next month.

Eetu Mäkiniemi Signs One-Year Deal With Liiga’s TPS

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Finnish goaltender Eetu Mäkiniemi is headed home on a one-year deal with TPS of the first-tier Liiga, per a club announcement. The Flyers’ fifth-stringer this season was a pending Group VI unrestricted free agent.

Mäkiniemi, 26, once had legitimate NHL upside but has been derailed by injuries in the past few years. That continued in 2024-25. He reported to AHL Lehigh Valley after being cut from training camp and, after posting a 3.03 GAA, .899 SV%, and a 3-0-2 record in five games, sustained a sports hernia in mid-November and never returned after undergoing surgery.

A fourth-round pick by the Hurricanes in 2017, Mäkiniemi signed his entry-level deal with Carolina and came to North America for the 2021-22 campaign. He impressed in limited action with AHL Chicago, posting a .922 SV% and 2.06 GAA in 14 appearances along with an 11-2-1 record. Buried among a bevy of strong netminding prospects in the Canes’ system, though, he was deemed expendable and traded to the Sharks the following summer in the deal that sent Brent Burns from San Jose to Carolina.

Mäkiniemi made his NHL debut the following season, posting a 1-0-1 record with a .906 SV% and 2.13 GAA in one start and one relief appearance for the lowly Sharks in a pair of contests in December 2022. He never made it back to the top level, though. After being demoted to ECHL Wichita for a time the following year, he reached Group VI UFA status for the first time and opted instead to latch on with the Flyers on a two-way deal last summer in hopes of climbing up their depth chart. While he had a decent AHL start and strong training camp, his injury derailed any chance of that.

He’ll now return to Liiga to rediscover some consistency and hopefully stay healthy. The 6’2″, 183-lb netminder last played in the top flight with Ilves in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, recording a 2.43 GAA, .911 SV%, two shutouts, and a 15-14-11 record in 41 appearances. He’ll presumably be TPS’ starter ahead of 20-year-old World Juniors silver medalist Noa Vali, who struggled in his first full-time Liiga season in 2024-25 with a .887 SV% in 26 showings. A strong year for Mäkiniemi, particularly since he only signed a one-year deal, could land him another NHL contract in the summer of 2026.

Flyers Linked To Shabanov, Gill Traded In QMJHL

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Russian center Maxim Shabanov’s KHL contract expired at the end of May, making him an unrestricted free agent.  Several NHL teams have shown interest and it looks like his search for a new club could be nearing the finish line.  Sport-Express’ Igor Eronko reports that the Flyers are expected to sign the 24-year-old although Kevin Kurz of The Athletic relays (Twitter link) that nothing is done yet although the team is hopeful that they’ll land him.  Shabanov finished third this season in KHL scoring with 23 goals and 44 assists in 65 games and followed that up by finishing second in playoff points with 10 goals and 10 helpers in 21 contests.  Regardless of whether he signs with Philadelphia or another team, Shabanov will be capped at signing a one-year, entry-level contract.

  • Still with the Flyers, prospect Spencer Gill is on the move in the QMJHL as the league announced (Twitter link) that the defenseman has been traded from Rimouski to Blainville-Boisbriand. The 18-year-old was a second-round pick last June, going 59th overall after a solid showing with the Oceanic that saw him notch 46 points in 65 games.  Injuries limited Gill to just 51 games this season where he had six goals and 29 assists.  He has one more year of playing in major junior before he can begin playing in the pros for the 2026-27 campaign; he has already signed his entry-level contract.

Flyers Hire Yogi Svejkovský, Jay Varady As Assistant Coaches

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June 5: The Flyers made Svejkovský’s hiring official while also naming Jay Varady as an assistant coach, per a club announcement. Varady, 47, had spent the last three seasons with the Red Wings as an assistant coach and survived their in-season coaching change, but now finds himself on the move. He spent the four seasons prior in the Coyotes organization, including three years as the head coach for AHL Tucson and one year as an assistant on the NHL bench, during which he worked under Tocchet.

June 4: The Flyers are bringing over Canucks assistant coach Jaroslav “Yogi” Svejkovský to join ex-Vancouver bench boss Rick Tocchet in Philadelphia, Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK reports.

Svejkovský and Tocchet developed a “great relationship” during the duo’s three seasons together with the Canucks, Dhaliwal writes. While Vancouver didn’t grant permission for Svejkovský to interview elsewhere, it doesn’t appear they had much of a choice. Dhaliwal reports that Svejkovský had some form of an out clause in his contract to allow him to leave for Philly.

The former NHL right-winger had only spent one year behind the Canucks bench as an assistant with Tocchet. His prior two seasons with the NHL club saw him work as a skills coach, not working directly on Tocchet’s staff.

Svejkovský, 48, has been working in the Vancouver area since 2006, when he started as an assistant coach with the WHL’s Vancouver Giants. The Czech native transitioned into a skills coach role with the junior club in 2014 before leaving altogether four years later. He resurfaced as a skills coach with the Canucks’ AHL affiliate in Abbotsford in 2021-22 before getting the call to join the NHL staff the following season.

His responsibilities in Vancouver included supervising the power play, a significant issue for the Flyers for the last four years. Their 15.0% success rate this season was third-worst in the league, ahead of only the Islanders (12.6%) and Ducks (11.8%). The Canucks’ 22.5% conversion rate with the man advantage was still close to average at 15th in the league but a marked improvement over what Philadelphia’s been able to produce in the past few years.

Svejkovský will be the first assistant named to Tocchet’s staff. None of Philadelphia’s three assistants under John Tortorella last year are returning to the club.

Philadelphia Flyers Interested In Nicolas Hague

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In his recent recurring segment on Sportsnet 590 The Fan, Elliotte Friedman has listed one suitor for Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Nicolas Hague should he be made available. Friedman believes that the Philadelphia Flyers have already indicated their interest in Hague to the Golden Knights.

The Flyers’ interest in Hague appears peculiar at first glance. Hague is only a year away from unrestricted free agency and would become the sixth left-handed defenseman on Philadelphia’s active roster.

No report has indicated that Vegas is looking to move Hague, only that there had been some interest in him. One would reasonably assume that any motivation the Golden Knights have for moving Hague would be their tight salary cap situation as they enter the summer months with only $9.6MM in flexibility according to PuckPedia.

Assuming that is Vegas’s motivation, there’s little chance they’d be open to acquiring any left-handed defenseman off the Flyers roster unless it was Emil Andrae, who’s set to make $903K in the 2025-26 season. Still, Philadelphia’s reported interest becomes clearer when looking at Hague’s defensive metrics throughout his time with the Golden Knights.

He’s never been much of a point-producer, scoring 20 goals and 83 points across 364 regular season games in Vegas, but has racked up 489 blocked shots and 572 hits in that span. Additionally, Hague owns a solid 49.7% CorsiFor% throughout his career, and a 90.9% on-ice save percentage at even strength.

If the Flyers are unable to improve their goaltending situation this summer, acquiring a player of Hague’s stature would help alleviate some of those issues. There’s no questioning Philadelphia’s poor goaltending from the 2024-25 season, and they weren’t a stellar possession team either.

Acquiring Hague would give them a responsible defender who has excelled at even strength and on the penalty kill. Still, it’s hard to imagine the Flyers carrying six left-handed defensemen on their roster next year, regardless of Hague’s implied value to the club.

Flyers Sign Noah Cates To Four-Year Extension

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The Flyers have signed forward Noah Cates to a four-year, $16MM extension, according to a team announcement. The deal is worth $4MM against the cap and runs from the 2025-26 to 2028-29 campaigns. There’s no trade protection in the deal, reports Kevin Kurz of The Athletic. His year-by-year breakdown is as follows, per PuckPedia:

2025-26: $3.75MM base salary, $1.25MM signing bonus ($5MM total)
2026-27: $3MM base salary, $1MM signing bonus ($4MM total)
2027-28: $4MM base salary
2028-29: $3MM base salary

Cates, 26, was set to be an arbitration-eligible RFA this summer with a $2.625MM qualifying offer – equal to his previous cap hit. His new deal, which takes him through his age-30 season and will cover most of his prime, comes in well north of that at a roughly 50% increase.

It’s a worthy raise for Cates, though. Coming off his third full NHL season, he did well to re-establish himself as a middle-six shutdown forward after a difficult sophomore campaign. While a natural center, faceoffs have been an issue for Cates since the beginning, and while he’s improved since his rookie year, he’s still at a 44.6% win rate for a career-high, set this past season. That’s led to increased deployment on the wing, although he did spend a good portion of 2024-25 centering a unit with Bobby Brink and Tyson Foerster.

The 2017 fifth-round pick has averaged a 14-22–36 scoring line per 82 games in parts of four NHL seasons. He slightly outpaced those totals this year, finishing fifth on the team in goals (16), seventh in assists (21), and seventh in points (37) while logging 78 games played. His four absences were healthy scratches in a five-game window to begin the season. He also ended the year with eight points in his last eight games.

Cates finished 15th in Selke Trophy voting as a rookie in 2022-23 but had a brutal follow-up campaign, posting 18 points and a minus-eight rating in 59 showings last year. This season’s offensive rebound also included resurgent defensive and two-way impacts. The Flyers controlled 58.3% of expected goals with the Foerster-Cates-Brink line on the ice at 5-on-5, according to MoneyPuck. Philly also allowed just 2.26 goals against per 60 minutes with Cates on the ice at 5-on-5, the lowest mark of any Flyers skater with at least 250 minutes of ice time, per Natural Stat Trick.

While Cates plays more of a middle-six role at even strength, he averaged nearly 16 minutes per game this season due to fringe power play and routine penalty kill deployment. He averaged 1:33 per game shorthanded, the most among any Flyers forward who ended the season with the club.

That all makes his four-by-four extension come across as a rather reasonable one for a quality third-line contributor with some upward mobility in the lineup in his prime years. After getting extensions done with Cates and Foerster in the past few days, general manager Daniel Brière has a shade under $19MM in cap space to fill just four roster spots, according to PuckPedia. The team’s lone notable pending free agents, both restricted, are Jakob Pelletier and Cameron York.

Cates is the fifth Flyer signed through the 2028-29 season, joining Sean Couturier, Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim, and Owen Tippett. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent when his deal expires.

Image courtesy of Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images.

Flyers Sign Helge Grans To Two-Year Extension

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The Flyers announced they’ve re-signed defenseman Helge Grans to a two-year extension. The deal carries a cap hit of $787,500 and is a two-way contract in 2025-26 before becoming a one-way deal in 2026-27, the team said. Grans was a pending restricted free agent after completing his entry-level contract.

Philadelphia acquired Grans, 23, from the Kings in 2023’s three-team deal that sent Ivan Provorov to the Blue Jackets. Los Angeles had selected him early in the second round of the 2020 draft, 35th overall, due to what they thought was a projectable skillset as a fringe top-four piece with a well-rounded game.

It didn’t quite work out that way. Grans had a good first impression in North America in his first AHL season in 2021-22, posting 24 points and a plus-seven rating in 56 games with the Ontario Reign. Grans had just nine points in 59 games the following year, though, and then scored eight in 56 games in 2023-24 after moving to the Flyers’ affiliate in Lehigh Valley.

The 6’3″, 205-lb righty got off to a much better start in 2024-25. He finished the year with 23 points and a minus-two rating in 66 AHL games and climbed up the Philadelphia depth chart, earning his first NHL recall in November. It was the only one he got all year long, but he recorded an assist, five blocks, and four hits in six appearances while averaging 14:28 per game. His possession results weren’t particularly promising, though. He only controlled 44.4% of shot attempts at 5-on-5 despite starting over 60% of his shifts in the offensive zone.

Nonetheless, doling out a one-way structure in the second year of his extension indicates the Flyers anticipate Grans being more of an everyday NHL contributor in the near future. The righty could make the opening night roster next fall in lieu of Rasmus Ristolainen, who’ll likely miss the first few weeks of the campaign while recovering from triceps surgery. Philadelphia is light on other righties in their system outside of Jamie Drysdale and 2023 first-rounder Oliver Bonk, who could also get a look out of the gate with Ristolainen sidelined.

Grans will be a restricted free agent upon expiry. Unlike this summer if he remained unsigned, he’ll have arbitration rights in 2027.

Flyers Sign Tyson Foerster To Two-Year Extension

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2:16 p.m.: Foester’s two-year extension is official as reported, the club announced Thursday afternoon.

12:13 p.m.: The Flyers are closing in on a two-year extension with pending RFA winger Tyson Foerster, according to Anthony Di Marco of Daily Faceoff. It’s a $7.5MM contract worth $3.75MM per season, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports. Foerster will earn $3.5MM in base salary next season and $4MM in 2026-27 with no signing bonuses, per Kevin Kurz of The Athletic.

Philadelphia’s decision to bridge Foerster instead of giving him a long-term deal is an interesting one that bucks the league-wide trend. Foerster, 23, just finished a strong sophomore season after an impressive rookie campaign, particularly considering his defensive play. The right-shot winger posted 33 points, an even rating, and 102 hits for the Flyers in 77 games in his first year, placing him seventh in Calder Trophy voting for the league’s top rookie and even earning him some outside consideration for the Selke Trophy as the league’s top defensive forward. He got heavy deployment, averaging over 17 minutes per game, and controlled 54.1% of shot attempts at even strength – this after recording seven points through his first eight NHL games the year prior.

Things only improved for him in 2024-25. He was healthy scratched once early in the season by former head coach John Tortorella after a slow start, but quickly regained his top-nine role and didn’t miss a game the rest of the way. He scored 25 goals and 43 points in 81 appearances, the former of which ranked second on the team behind star rookie Matvei Michkov’s 26 tallies. While his possession numbers took a small hit, his on-ice shot suppression impacts were still third on the team at 24.19 SA/60 at 5-on-5, according to Natural Stat Trick.

Foerster had not accrued enough NHL experience to be eligible for salary arbitration if he didn’t have a new deal by July. His deal comes across as slightly shorter and a tad pricier per season than the three-year, $3.3MM AAV deal AFP Analytics projected him to receive. The 2020 23rd overall pick will be an RFA again with one year of team control left when his extension expires in 2027.

The Philadelphia forward group remains lacking outside of the high-end offensive upside that Michkov, Travis Konecny, and, to some degree, Owen Tippett offer. Strong two-way play from their secondary forwards has always been a hallmark of the club’s identity, though, and it’ll presumably stay that way with head coach Rick Tocchet now at the helm. Foerster fits that bill expertly with an above-average finishing touch as well, and he’s also one of their stockier forwards at 6’2″ and 214 lbs.

Bridging Foerster does leave some more financial flexibility for the Flyers now to be aggressive on the trade and free agency markets in an effort to end their five-year playoff drought. The club still has nearly $23MM in cap space after Foerster’s deal, per PuckPedia, but there are still notable RFAs to sign in Noah Cates, Jakob Pelletier, and Cameron York.

Image courtesy of Jeff Curry-Imagn Images.

Multiple Teams Showing Interest In Marco Rossi

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The Blackhawks, Kraken, Flyers, Penguins, and Sabres are among the teams that have shown interest in acquiring Wild pending restricted free agent center Marco Rossi, according to RG’s James Murphy. While general manager Bill Guerin has refuted trade speculation surrounding the 2020 ninth overall pick in the past, there hasn’t been much noise around progress in contract talks so far this offseason, especially after he had his minutes slashed in the playoffs by head coach John Hynes.

For a team considering parting ways with a young player, it’s never a good sign when virtually every club with a need at the position with the assets to make an appealing trade work steps up to the plate. Minnesota’s deployment of Rossi, particularly this season, has been puzzling. The Austrian pivot finished sixth in Calder Trophy voting in 2023-24 and took strides in 2024-25 to prove his floor as a second-line center, notching a 24-36–60 scoring line in all 82 games despite missing star wingman Kirill Kaprizov for most of the campaign. He averaged north of 18 minutes per game in the regular season but played just 11 minutes per night in the playoffs, although that didn’t stop him from still contributing a pair of goals and an assist in the Wild’s first-round elimination at the hands of the Golden Knights.

With Rossi posting those point totals on a bottom-10 offensive team, it’s easy to see why many clubs are optimistic about his ability to slot into their top-six immediately and, at worst, replicate his performance from last year. From Minnesota’s standpoint, assuming their internal projection of him is as pessimistic as his late-season role reduction indicates, it makes sense they wouldn’t want to commit to a long-term deal that will likely cost north of $7MM per season. For Rossi, it makes little sense for him to sign a bridge deal in Minnesota if he feels he won’t get the minutes there to maximize his earning potential a few years down the line.

If the Wild can’t work out a trade for Rossi, an offer sheet threat looms. A long-term deal for Rossi will likely end up at seven years at around $7.4MM per season, AFP Analytics projects. That would require a team to surrender their 2026 first, second, and third-round pick as compensation if the Wild decline to match. As such, they’ll likely set their price around there in trade talks, at least in terms of comparable value. Considering their increased salary cap flexibility this summer and intact core, it makes sense they’d rather pursue trade options to land a more NHL-ready asset in place of a return largely centered around draft picks.

Of the five teams mentioned by Murphy as having interest in Rossi, all but the Sabres have the picks to acquire Rossi in the $7.02MM to $9.36MM range for an offer sheet. Buffalo would need to reacquire their 2026 second-rounder to do so. They sent it to the Senators in this year’s Dylan Cozens/Joshua Norris swap.

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