Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Holmgren: Flyers could take another shot at Dan Hamhuis

While we didn’t anywhere near the flurry of activity we were anticipating -- which is usually how it goes -- there was one constant throughout this weekend’s draft.

After the Flyers stated they would like to try and keep negotiating with Dan Hamhuis through next week, they ended up trading away his rights to Pittsburgh when it became apparent a deal wouldn’t be reached.

Talking to the media today, GM Paul Holmgren said that while they did trade away Hamhuis’ rights the story may not be over with the defenseman and the Flyers.

“I’m a little bit disappointed on the Hamhuis deal,” Holmgren stated when asked his thoughts on the weekend. “But that may come around again on July 1. He might be a free agent on July 1, like he was schedule to be.”

“We took a shot at him and when it didn’t look like it would work out we moved his rights.”

The holdup with Hamhuis and the Flyers had nothing to do with a monetary offer (in fact none was ever actually on the table) and Holmgren stated the decision to move Hamhuis had nothing to do with the Flyers’ cap situation.

Instead, the holdup was over the intangibles that the Flyers could offer Hamhuis, namely the fact that Hamhuis wanted to be regarded as a top 3 defenseman on the team and wanted to be guaranteed Matt Carle-like minutes.

The Flyers couldn’t make that promise and Hamhuis’ rights were traded. There’s no guarantee that Pittsburgh will sign Hamhuis either, so there’s a good chance he becomes a UFA on July 1 anyways.

Will the Flyers have another shot? Doubtful, as they couldn’t work out a contract with Hamhuis when they were the only ones negotiating -- now they’d be competing with the rest of the NHL.