The Flyers and Travis Sanheim are keeping it out of the hands of arbitration. According to Elliotte Friedman, the Flyers have re-signed Sanheim to a 2 year deal worth $4.675M. This contact puts the Flyers cap space at around $-644K, so this wasn’t the final domino in the Flyers offseason I thought it would be.

Final arb case of the year is settled. Travis Sanheim and PHI at 2 years, with a $4.675M AAV

— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) August 21, 2021

From the two years he’s been the general manager Chuck Fletcher has always gone into the season with breathing room on the cap, and has stressed that he likes it for small moves/paper transactions. It doesn’t take a mathematician to see that $-644K is far from breathing room, so I would expect some type of cap relief move in the future.

This is the second consecutive bridge contract the Flyers have given to Sanheim and this one in particular will propel him into the unrestricted free agent market after the two years is expired. Sanheim is clearly betting on himself, and it’s a fair play considering how the defensive market value has shifted upwards lately.

Even though he had a bit of a down year last season Travis Sanheim is an incredibly fun player to watch when he’s rolling, and with more stability coming on the Flyers backend one can only assume he wont be a -22 again. When he’s in full gear his skating and ability to jump up in the play are a treat to watch. It now seems like the defensive corps are set for the season unless the cap relief move comes from the defensive side.

Development camp gets underway in just a week from now and barring one more cap relief move, we are about to get this ship sailing. Catch the latest episode of The Liberty Yell we just released to hear our thoughts as we roll into what should be an exciting year.

Mandatory Credit: Matt Slocum / AP