Schenn & Flyers Avoid Arbitration

It's nothing new to avoid arbitration these days and the Philadelphia Flyers did so with one of their key forwards, Brayden Schenn, as the two sides agreed upon a new 4-year deal on Monday morning.

Schenn and the Flyers were supposed to go into their hearing today, but instead, they came up with a $20.5 million pact, which worked out to be a marketable $5.125 million cap hit per season.

The 24-year old forward saw some significant gains in the 2016 season, finishing with 26 goals and 59 points in 80 games, up from his 47 points in 82 games the season before.  That put him up in 45th spot among all forwards in scoring and there should still be some more room to move there.

The early projections for Schenn, now that he is all signed up and ready to go, are in and around the 65-point range, which could be a bit ambitious, but with some of that new offensive talent at the back, it certainly isn't out of the question.

The bigger questions now for the Flyers are all cap related, now that this deal is done, they are going to have to figure out who stays and who goes.  The 23-man roster that's coloured in below is coming in above the ceiling, just under $1 million.  The Flyers also have one more restricted free agent heading towards arbitration, defenseman Brandon Manning, which could be problematic.  It looks like their Summer is far from being over.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Claude Giroux	8.275	Mark Streit	5.250	Steve Mason	4.100
Jakub Voracek	8.250	Shayne Gostisbehere	0.925	Michal Neuvirth	1.625
Brayden Schenn	5.125
Sean Couturier	4.450
Wayne Simmonds	3.975
Michael Raffl	2.350
Dale Weise	2.350
Matt Read	3.625	Andrew MacDonald	5.000
Boyd Gordon	0.950	Michael Del Zotto	3.875
Scott Laughton	0.863	Radko Gudas	3.350
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare	0.713	Nick Schultz	2.250
Chris VandeVelde	0.713
Colin McDonald	0.633	Ivan Provorov	0.894
Chris Conner	0.575
Nick Cousins	0.937	Robert Hagg	0.925	Alex Lyon	0.925
Roman Lyubimov	0.925	Samuel Morin	0.894	Anthony Stolarz	0.753
Travis Konecny	0.894	Travis Sanheim	0.863
Pascal Laberge	0.843	Reece Willcox	0.680
Taylor Leier	0.780	Jesper Pettersson	0.645
Cole Bardreau	0.680	Mark Alt	0.625
Danick Martel	0.680	TJ Brennan	0.625
Tyrell Goulbourne	0.677	Philippe Myers	0.623
Radel Fazleev	0.675	Will O'Neill	0.613
Nicolas Aube-Kubel	0.673
Jordan Weal	0.650
Petr Straka	0.650
Andy Miele	0.600
Greg Carey	0.575

Pool worthy, non-pool roster players, assumed roster fill-ins,  injured/retired cap hits, in the system