Flyers Lock Up Gostisbehere For 6 Years

The Philadelphia Flyers made a big move to keep one of their young defensive keys, signing Shayne Gostisbehere to a 6-year extension. The deal is worth $27 million, which carries an annual cap hit of $4.5 million. But the best part for Flyers fans is that the team bought three UFA years for a decent price. Even though Gostisbehere didn’t have the greatest of seasons, he was still pretty solid. Much was expected from him and he fell a bit short. But he still had 39 points and seven goals, which isn’t bad for a defenseman. Particularly a second-year defenseman, who have been known to have the dreaded sophomore slumps.

The Flyers are following other teams in locking up promising defenders. Dallas did the same with Klingberg and New Jersey did likewise with Larsson before trading him. Most of those types of moves have worked out for both the team and the player. But not always.

Still, it’s a smart move by Philadelphia, who has a solid group of young defenenders led by Ivan Provorov and others. His deal is comparable with others, such as Morgan Reilly and Oscar Klefbom. Not everybody is going to like it, but the Flyers have the cap space and it shows commitment to their players. so it’s basically a win-win situation for the team and the player.

It’s probably more important for the Flyers to take care of the defense now. They know they’ll get a decent center in the draft by taking whoever New Jersey doesn’t. There’s no debate who the first two players taken are going to be. But after that it’s a bit of a guessing game. Philadelphia may have gotten the better of the draft lottery than New Jersey. Whoever they take won’t have the added pressure of being No. 1 overall in the draft.