Coyotes Take On Cap Space, Flyers Take On Gagner

			2015		2016
To Philadelphia	POS	Age	G/W	P	Cap
Sam Gagner	F	25	15	41	$3.2 mil
Conditional Draft Pick
Retained $500k of Grossmann's salary
--------------
To Arizona	POS	Age	G/W	P	Cap
Niklas Grossmann	D	30	5	14	$3 mil
Chris Pronger	D	40	0	0	$4.9 mil

The head-scratcher of all head-scratchers, I guess... but in a salary cap world, this deal starts to make sense, slowly.

The Arizona Coyotes are not doing themselves any favours, as a franchise, with a huge rebuild, while their team is fighting for the location lives in Glendale, AZ, but this is the story, as it is right now.  They are poised to be a salary cap floor team in 2015 and they have been trying desperately to find a good starting point, by tearing away some of the loose ends.

On the other hand, the Philadelphia Flyers are in salary cap hell.  They were one of the teams, which took on some ugly contracts and handed some out and with the salary cap ceiling not moving up as fast as some teams may have hoped for, they go into this off-season and into the 2016 regular season with hands tied behind their backs.

Forward Sam Gagner has had quite the last year or so, ousted from his initial home in Edmonton, dealt twice in the same day to accommodate team's wishes, ended up in the desert for the 2015 season, but had fallen out of favour quickly and has now been sent off to Philadelphia to play out the last year of his current 3-year deal.

To Gagner's credit, for us poolies anyways, he was able to play in 81 games for Arizona and he put up 41 points in the process, which was good for 122nd among all forwards, situated nicely in the middle of the pool worthy forwards, but that just wasn't enough for the Coyotes to wish him back for another year.

If there was ever a good place for Gagner to go, it would be to Philadelphia, home of the black sheep.

In return, the Coyotes did receive a roster player, one to help man the undermanned blueline, they currently have, veteran defenseman Niklas Grossmann.  Grossmann, a cagey defender of the stay-at-home variety, doesn't do a great deal on offense, except pick up the occasional point, but a guy, who could help Oliver Ekman-Larsson, by covering his back on those offensive rushes.

The Flyers do have a glutton of blueline talent and they still do, after trading Grossmann, thanks to drafting one of the top junior defensemen available in Ivan Provorov.

The real interesting part of the return for the Coyotes, one that has caused much debate, is the inclusion of Chris Pronger's contract, which is still active and still carries some weight, even though he is unofficially retired and working for the NHL at the executive level.

Since Pronger's deal was so long and a 35+ contract (a huge factor), buying him out was not going to be an option for the Flyers, as it would still count against the cap in full, thanks to the 35+ status and they were not going to work with that at all.  During the regular season, the Flyers would put him on the Long Term Injured Reserve, which gives them the cap relief they need, while he didn't play and Bob was your proverbial uncle.  The kicker, however, was that the 35+ contract still wreaked havoc on the Flyers, thanks to the off-season tagging math, for governing how much a team can spend and how much they can carry through the off-season.  In the Summer, there is no LTIR, so Pronger's numbers counted, thus limiting how much the Flyers could do, in terms of free agency, this year being a huge burden, since the cap ceiling didn't move much.

This was a deal sweetener for the Flyers, who kept a bit of Grossmann's cap hit to move this deal along, as the Coyotes are working towards being a cap floor team, even in the off-season.  Having Pronger's deal on the books, for now, gives them nearly $5 million in tagging value, which goes a long way with the amount of math that has to be done to remain compliant, once the new salary cap numbers are in place.

The Flyers, on the other hand, are now free and clear of that big lump of money and they can operate a little more freely now, so the Flyers can be the bullies of the free agent market again.

It's a huge deal and has it's merits and it's pitfalls to the CBA, but now that it has all been okayed by the league, it will be interesting to see what happens.

All I know for sure, Gagner in a Flyers uniform doesn't sound like a terrible thing.