Updated Trades and Landing Spots for Flyers Goalie Carter Hart
If your favorite team is in need of goaltending help this offseason, relying on free agency to fix the situation is a dicey prospect.
The sketchiness of this summer's free-agent goalie class is so tough that the trade market should be ripe for acquiring the potential No. 1 netminder to help your team get to the playoffs or win the Stanley Cup.
We've talked about some others who could be traded this offseason (like Connor Hellebuyck) but there's one young goalie who could be had that would perk up a lot of ears around the league.
Carter Hart of the Philadelphia Flyers is coming off a solid season with a rather poor team in front of him. His .907 save percentage may not stick out as all that impressive (.904 was league average in 2022-2023), but he was a darling in the fancy stats like goals saved above expected (15.8 at 5-on-5; 11th-best among goalies with 30 or more games via MoneyPuck).
Hart will be 25 years old when the 2023-2024 season starts, which means he's entering his prime years and going into the final year of his three-year, nearly $12 million extension and will be a restricted free agent when it ends.
That setup makes him attractive to acquire for a couple of key reasons, and the Flyers going into an actual rebuild makes having him aboard a bit more difficult for both the team and the player.
We're going to look at six teams that could make for a viable new home for Hart. All six have goaltending questions heading into the new season, ones he might be able to address with swiftness.
Edmonton Oilers
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How wild would new Flyers GM Danny Brière get if he traded Carter Hart?
Would trading him to Hart's hometown Edmonton Oilers for Jack Campbell and Edmonton's 2024 first-round pick (and more) be too wild to even suggest here on the internet? Well, probably, yeah, but let's talk it through.
If one season was all the proof the Oilers wanted regarding their investment into Campbell as their No. 1 goalie, they found out they invested unwisely.
The 31-year-old had a difficult go in his first season with the Oilers, and rookie Stuart Skinner overtook him for the starting job and led the team into and through the playoffs.
Would Philadelphia take on a contract like Campbell's that has four years remaining with a $5 million cap hit? On the face of it, absolutely not.
Attaching the Flyers' No. 1 pick in 2024 (since they traded their 2023 first to Nashville for Mattias Ekholm) makes that a lot more palatable. Is that something Edmonton would want to do? Probably not, but if it believes a tandem of Skinner and Hart can get the franchise a Stanley Cup, then yes, absolutely.
Yes, Skinner is the incumbent No. 1, but goalie performance can be temperamental year to year and rookie goalies don't always lock it down in Year 2.
Acquiring Hart to join Skinner provides the safeguards a Stanley Cup contender wants. Losing Campbell's cap hit helps out a fair bit as well to get the Oilers the kind of depth needed across the board to win it all.
Ottawa Senators
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Now that the sale of the Ottawa Senators is about to be completed, they can get back to the business of getting the team back to the playoffs. They can also get back to making up for a brutal mistake in judgment from a year ago.
Last summer, Ottawa traded prospect goalie Filip Gustavsson to Minnesota for veteran netminder Cam Talbot. In a vacuum, the logic was sound. Talbot had a solid season for the Wild until they acquired Marc-André Fleury around the deadline to give them reassurance in goal for the playoffs.
This move didn't sit well with Talbot, and the Wild didn't get too far in the playoffs with Fleury in charge.
The Senators traded for Talbot and gave up Gustavsson, 24 at the time, who went 10-13-3 with a .905 in 27 games over two seasons with the Sens. He was coming off a season in which he went 5-12-1 with .895 in his last year there, and the trade signaled they didn't believe in him and waiting for him to maybe become a quality No. 1 might take longer than they wanted. The Swede went on to have the second-best save percentage in the NHL this past season among goalies with 30 games or more.
Whoops.
Now, Talbot is an unrestricted free agent and didn't have a great season in Ottawa (17-14-2, .898) as he battled injuries, and the rest of the Sens' goaltending coffers are in rough shape with Anton Forsberg injuring the MCL in both knees during a game in February.
The team needs more quality in goal, and Hart is as good a choice as any to join and grow with this relatively youthful roster.
Making the right deal starts with 2024 draft picks because the Sens don't have a selection in each of the first three rounds this year, thanks to three different trades that got progressively more head-scratching.
Ottawa does have intriguing talent on the roster as well, and a "hockey trade" for Hart would be a lot more fun.
Carolina Hurricanes
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Carolina was one of the best teams in the NHL last season, thanks largely to a suffocating team defense.
It allowed the second fewest goals in the NHL, but its team save percentage was firmly in the middle of the league at .902. Is it greedy to want it to be better? Not if you're GM Don Waddell, but Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic said they might bring back Frederik Andersen and Antti Raanta (both are unrestricted free agents) and have top prospect Pyotr Kochetkov waiting in the wings in case of injury or poor form.
However, that's too normal, and we're here to keep it interesting. That's why the idea of Carolina making a deal with Philly for Hart to lock things down in goal and provide Kochetkov the ideal partner to split up the action is the way forward.
Andersen and Raanta were able to play off their hot-and-cold performances like a tag team in wrestling. One would hit a cold streak and the other would take the reins until they cooled off as well. It's a great plan if it works, and it did great for the Hurricanes. It doesn't sound too reliable, though.
That's why a tandem of Hart and Kochetkov would both get Carolina to move ahead while their Stanley Cup window is wide open, but it would also solve the issue of going into a season with two veterans with spotty injury histories and needing both to hold up to succeed.
Carolina has picks and prospects to make a deal happen, but fear of the unknown is powerful and a team *this close* to winning a Cup making a bold move at a vital position is what putting your job on the line is like.
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Buffalo Sabres
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The Buffalo Sabres have no choice but to do something about their goaltending this summer.
They were two points shy of making the playoffs for the first time since 2011 and despite the brilliance from the likes of Rasmus Dahlin, Tage Thompson, Jeff Skinner, Dylan Cozens and Owen Power, it was the lack of steady netminding that cost them.
The Sabres have their goalie of the future in Devon Levi ready to take the NHL by storm be it next season or shortly thereafter, but they'll need to get something figured out.
They've got Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Eric Comrie still under contract for next season, but it would be a seismic gamble on the part of GM Kevyn Adams to run a tandem of Levi with Luukkonen or Comrie into next season with the fanbase frothing at the mouth to get back to the playoffs.
This is where bringing Hart into the picture makes sense. Buffalo trading for him to pair with Levi would give them a young goalie further down the road in his career who can help show the 21-year-old the ropes and allow him time to better acclimate to the NHL.
Making a deal for Hart would likely involve sending Luukkonen the other way as well as a first-round pick or a prospect, both of which the Sabres have in spades. Adding Hart to the situation wouldn't stunt Levi's progress and, if all goes well, it times out perfect to have Hart pass the torch to Levi should it come to that.
If Levi doesn't progress the way the Sabres hoped, then they've got Hart to handle the workload.
Having assurances in goal is something Buffalo hasn't had since Ryan Miller was around and adding Hart would bring it pretty close to doing so.
San Jose Sharks
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Ah, the San Jose Sharks. They're in limbo between rebuilding and not wanting to but, boy, they need to address their goaltending.
San Jose had the NHL's worst team save percentage at .881, and the combination of James Reimer and Kaapo Kähkönen saw the former as their No. 1 and he had an .890 (the latter was .883). They need help in a big way and acquiring Hart makes a ton of sense.
Hart would give them a younger goalie to believe in after Kähkönen's disappointing first season and a year away from unrestricted free agency. Hart gives them assurances of having a steadier player who might do well to get out of the tight situation in Philadelphia and off to a more relaxed location in northern California.
Hart would also have the experience of playing in front of a team that's in transition but with established stars in place. The difference being that the road to the postseason in the East is far more difficult than it is in the West, and if Hart was to thrive while Erik Karlsson piles up points with Logan Couture and Tomas Hertl, they could catch a whiff of the playoff race.
That's a really optimistic view, of course, but we're about big ideas here and the Sharks making a bold move to add Hart would mean they'd be parting with some of the assets they'd have designs on improving the rest of the team and its pipeline.
Being able to pull in a goalie they can count on for the next few years while he hits his prime years would help soften a lot of the blows to come while rebuilding on the fly.
Winnipeg Jets
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We've taken a look at which teams would be fits for Connor Hellebuyck, but like peanut butter and chocolate, we're going to smash two great things together to come up with something fun.
The Jets trading Hellebuyck to Philadelphia for Hart would be the smartest move they could make if they know their Vezina-winning goalie won't sign an extension.
Winnipeg's top goalie prospects are some way from being able to help out at the NHL level, and with Hellebuyck seemingly on his way out the door, Hart would allow the Jets to keep the dream of staying a playoff team alive.
Hellebuyck is nearly impossible to replace given what he's been able to do there and the Jets are ill-prepared for his departure. Like Hellebuyck, Hart's contract is up after the 2023-2024 season, but unlike his, Hart will be a restricted free agent thus allowing Winnipeg to hold onto his rights.
Trading for Hart would allow Winnipeg to not need an emergency-relief program in place because he would be it.
Why would the Flyers want Hellebuyck? Why wouldn't they? Yes, they're trying to rebuild, but Hellebuyck gives them the chance to either steal a way back into the playoff picture with the possibility that rivals Washington and Pittsburgh continue to crash back to the pack.
With points up for grabs, Hellebuyck would give them a major advantage against a lot of teams in the East. Philly also isn't shy about letting money do the talking when it comes to signing or re-signing players, and that's appealing for a guy about to hit free agency.
It's a wacky idea, but that's what we like here, and something that spices up the Flyers never fails to entertain one way or the other.
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