After the surprise Joseph Woll trade earlier this month, at least one former Philadelphia Flyers is going to be kept by the Toronto Maple Leafs.
On Monday, with the dawn of free agency fast approaching, the Maple Leafs began extending pending free agents, and issuing qualifying offers to restricted free agents.
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The Maple Leafs have already begun doing extensive work to reshape their defense, signing Darren Raddysh, trading Brandon Carlo, and extending Troy Stecher.
Their next step, for all intents and purposes, is going to be signing former Flyers prospect Emil Andrae, who was acquired in that Woll trade package.
Andrae, 24, is a restricted free agent whose qualifying offer is an extremely modest $874k; if and when he signs a new contract, it is highly likely his cap hit will far exceed that number.
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Andrae scored two goals, 11 assists, and 13 points in 61 games with the Flyers at the NHL level this season, playing limited minutes despite being arguably the Flyers’ best defenseman at breaking pucks out and starting plays with his passing.
As for former Flyers goalie Sam Ersson, who was traded alongside Andrae and a third-round pick for Woll, the Maple Leafs already traded him away to the Atlantic Division rival Ottawa Senators for a fifth-round pick.
While the deadline for qualifying offers is 5 p.m. on Monday, the Senators are expected to sign Ersson is all things go well.
The Flyers have not yet released their list of qualified free agents at the time of this writing.
