Making Sense of the Flyers’ Travis Konecny Extension – The Hockey Writers – Flyers Transactions

On July 25, 2024, 27-year-old Travis Konecny signed what is now the biggest contract in the history of the Philadelphia Flyers: eight years, $70 million ($8.75 million average annual value)—it comes with trade protection and will begin in 2025-26. On the surface, it is objectively one of the worst deals handed out by any team this offseason, if not the worst. But is it really?

Based on his numbers and what he is as a player, Konecny got too much money and way too much term from general manager (GM) Danny Briere—but that’s not the point of this piece. Let’s try and understand the Flyers’ perspective.

Konecny Was Overpaid, But That Might Be Okay

In order to have a good-faith argument, we must establish one thing: players like Konecny do not tend to age well. He is the exact replica that Carolina Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky said tends to fall off the fastest in an article from 2014. Konecny doesn’t have a high hockey IQ, he does basically all of his scoring at even strength, and is a goal-scorer—all things that were highlighted. While that piece is on the older side, the themes are still true and mostly depend on common sense, anyway. Someone who mainly uses his legs and athleticism to make a difference on the score sheet, that’s something that will inevitably fade for Konecny. And possibly sooner than later.

Konecny’s style is very similar to Cam Atkinson’s when he was in his prime, and we of course know how that situation ended. When the latter lost the athleticism that originally earned him his contract, he became a liability at both ends of the ice at even strength and was bought out. Both have been rush-dependent scorers for their entire careers but possessed a bit of in-zone upside when they had good teams around them. Still, when that athleticism faded for Atkinson, he was no longer a threat on the rush—he lost his entire game, and that’s what will almost definitely happen to Konecny at some point.

This assessment is closer to realistic than pessimistic, unfortunately. By the fifth or sixth year of his contract, Konecny probably won’t be the same player, and perhaps unusable altogether by the seventh or eighth year. Once you get to your mid-30s, the rush game isn’t the same anymore. Ask Sidney Crosby, who went from scoring a decent chunk of his goals on the rush in his 20s to being a dominant in-zone scorer in his 30s. Since he has generational hockey IQ, he was able to make that transition.

These things are all important to…