Daniel Briere offers his perspective on Flames-Flyers trade

Last Thursday, the Calgary Flames and Philadelphia Flyers pulled the trigger on a pretty significant trade. The Flames received forwards Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee from the Flyers in exchange for forwards Andrei Kuzmenko and Jakob Pelletier, a 2025 second-round pick and a 2028 seventh-round pick.

On Thursday afternoon, a week after the big trade, Flyers general manager Daniel Briere chatted with Jeff Marek on The Sheet about how everything went down.

As always, we strongly advise you to check out the entire episode, but here are a few selected answers from their conversation.

Why Calgary? Why those players?

“Well it’s more than just, nowadays. As you know, with the salary cap it’s more than just the players. For any teams to be able to take on those contracts they needed to have room and have room in the future as well. So you know, that made the discussions really tough with any teams because not a lot of teams have extra cap space to take on those contracts. And you know, Farabee has terms left and Morgan is going to probably get a raise, so to be able to fit that in. We had a lotoOf different talks with different teams but everywhere it seems there’s different sets of problems.”

“Pelletier is a player that we we had talked about previously, even going back to last year, so they knew we liked him. And then Kuzmenko, there’s different reasons for that. Obviously we like the players having a chance to see him up front and getting to know him more on a personal level and see if there’s a future and see if we want to re-sign him and keep him aboard. But there’s also the fact that his salary kind of fit in because we had to take some salary back from Calgary so they could add the players. So there’s a lot of little things kind of turned together because of it.”

(Briere referred to Kuzmenko’s familiarity with Matvei Michkov as a bonus.)

The second-round pick makes sense, but why the seventh-round pick?

“You know what, and I know like, the late picks are a swing. That’s what we call them, they’re a swing. And sometimes it’s one extra player that your scouts really love. That player has something to offer but you know a lot of other side of his game are not quite there yet. So it’s Another swing down the road for us. I understand from the outside you’re like, ‘Well seventh round picks barely ever make it,’ but for your scouts they’re fun because, like I said, you take you take a swing on someone that someone likes somewhere. So who knows?”

(Briere also added maybe they could use it as a trade chip down the road.)

Several of the players involved ended up playing games the night of the trade. How did everything unfold?

(Marek segued into this question by relating a story that Brian Burke told on last Friday’s show regarding the players involved in the Dion Phaneuf trade all playing games in-between the trade being agreed to and being filed with the league.)

“We started talking and moving forward Thursday afternoon. And then right around game time is when we finally agreed to it. But I was like, ‘It’s too late, we don’t have any extras, I need the players to play.’ And he says, ‘well I’m in the same situation, I have one extra but I need at least one to play.’ So he pulled Kuzmenko. And then during our game, now you’re like “Okay, please guys don’t, no rough stuff. Just keep it on the outside. You know, don’t get hurt.” And then Morgan Frost ended up leaving the game in the second period. And it was the worst feeling. Because now you’re like, okay what happens now if he’s really hurt? Where do we go now? So luckily for everyone, Morgan was fine and there’s no issues. And then we’re watching the game and at that time I called Craig, and he says, ‘is Frost okay?’ I said, ‘yes, it’s all good, don’t worry. It’s just we’re taking our precautions. We’re not going to let him back out.’ So he goes, ‘well I’m pulling Pelletier.’ So he went out and pulled Pelletier after the first period. And then we’re watching our game and the game is going on, and we’re in the third period on our end because we’re two hours ahead of Calgary time. And Torts, John Tortorella, has Farabee on the ice late in the game blocking shots. We’re just cringing for every shift he’s taking. So it was pretty funny. It’s an awful feeling to be in. And you know I was also questioning what happens if someone gets hurt. I just don’t know. I don’t know where we would have gone after that.”

Frost and Farabee have played four games with the Flames so far. After their arrivals were delayed by immigration issues, Kuzmenko and Pelletier are expected to debut for the Flyers on Saturday against Pittsburgh.