Quick Hits: July 1, 2024

1) One week after the Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup and three days after the first round of the 2024 NHL Draft, free agency season is upon us. Flyers general manager Danny Briere has said that the team is not planning on being active in the free agent market this summer.

However, it would not be surprising if the Flyers at least took a look to see if there's a fit for some options on one-year deals and "prove it" contracts as they did last summer with (the since extended) Ryan Poehling.

A number of still reasonably young NHL players, such as former first-round pick defensemen Jake Bean (Columbus), Adam Boqvist (Columbus), Nils Lundqvist (Dallas) and Cal Foote (New Jersey) did not receive qualifying offers. Nor did center Sam Steel (Dallas), who dressed in 77 regular season games and 19 playoff games for the Stars this past season. The 2016 first-rounder is no an unrestricted free agent just as Poehling (a first-rounder back in 2017) was last summer. Winger Filip Zadina (San Jose), the 6th overall pick of the 2018 Draft, has also been turned loose as a UFA.

Among veteran players, I'm not sure if the Flyers would want to commit a multi-year contract at an open market price to a Chandler Stephenson type but I could see head coach John Tortorella taking to him if Philly were to reverse course from their stated offseason plan. Nate Schmidt, soon to be 33, is also an unrestricted free agent this summer after being bought out by the Winnipeg Jets. I would personally not be in favor of seeing Philly go in that direction because Schmidt's play has been declining and his once heavy-duty role diminishing.

In the bigger picture, the Flyers (from all indications) remain more interested in making a hockey trade or two this summer than in pursuing free agents. They tried to be active over the NHL Draft, both in terms of dramatic moves tied to picks and in terms of continuing hockey trade discussions. However, what ultimately went down was all Draft-pick related with several pick swaps involving modest moves up or down.

Longer term, the most interesting immediate development is that the Flyers currently hold six picks in the first two rounds of what promises to be a solid 2025 Draft class (touted at least presently as a deeper group of talent than the 2024 offerings). Philly holds their own, Colorado and Edmonton's picks in the 2025 first round. In round two, they have their own, Columbus', and Anaheim's picks. In total, they could have the Drafting or trading capital for as many as six selections within the top 40 or so picks depending on how Philly themselves, Anaheim and Columbus fare in 2024-25.

2) My full Flyers post-Draft wrapup, trend analysis and pick-by-pick profiles is available here.

3) 2024 Flyers Development Camp: The Flyers have released their full roster of attendees and schedule for this week's Devlopment Camp at the FTC in Voorhees. For details, click here.

I will have a Camp Preview article ready to roll on the Flyers' official site on Tuesday morning with a camp wrapup piece on Sunday. Jason Myrtetus and Brian Smith will have player and Flyers staff interviews on site and they will stream Friday's scrimmage (Team Briere vs. Team Jones) live.

4) On today's Flyers Daily, Jason and I lead off by discussing the Flyers' decision not to tender a qualifying offer to goaltender Carter Hart. Hart, of course, is among the five former Team Canada 2017-18 WJC roster players who is awaiting trial presently estimated for mid to late spring 2025) in relation to a sexual assault allegation. The Flyers, along with every team who held one of the accused players' rights, elected to cut ties. It was a topic that had to be discussed now that it's become official.

The Flyers extended qualifying offers to restricted free agent players Egor Zamula and Bobby Brink. As expected, they did not issue QOs to defensemen Mason Millman or Will Zmolek.

Millman, a fourth-round pick in 2019, seemed to be developing nicely in the Ontario Hockey League with the Saginaw Spirit until the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, he needed further development and, with OHL play canceled for the rest of 2019-20 and 2020-21, there wasn't a suitable league for his level of development. He dressed in 13 games in the AHL in 2020-21 but the 19-year-old was in over his head. He never really got on track thereafter in terms of progressing toward a possible NHL future.

Millman eventually had some success in the ECHL once play resumed at that level. But he was never more than a short-term AHL callup, with a combined 28 games for Lehigh Valley in 2021-22 through 203-24. It's not entirely accurate to say that Millman was among the dozens of NHL prospects who were "pandemic casualties" -- he still had post-pandemic opportunities to re-establish himself -- but it is fair to say that the pandemic stalled his progress and set him back pretty steeply after he'd seemed to be making encouraging progress.

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