‘Getting a player like [Owen] Tippett ... meant a lot to us’: Flyers GM Chuck Fletcher discusses Claude Giroux trade

Over the course of his 15-year tenure with the Flyers, longtime captain Claude Giroux reached both the 1,000-game and 900-point plateaus, accomplishments only achieved by franchise legend Bobby Clarke exclusively with the club.

So when general manager Chuck Fletcher looked back at Giroux’s legacy the morning after he was traded on Saturday, there’s no doubt in his mind that Giroux “held up his end of the bargain.”

Fletcher isn’t frustrated with the return he received from the Florida Panthers in the Giroux trade, which he called “fair” — young forward Owen Tippett, a first-round pick in 2024 and a third-rounder in 2023. Instead, his frustration is rooted in his own perception that the Flyers’ front office did its best to surround Giroux with the right talent but has no Stanley Cup, and just nine playoff appearances in Giroux’s 15 years of service, to show for it.

“I know everybody tried, we’ve tried,” Fletcher said. “I’m sure [former general managers] Ron Hextall, Paul Holmgren, everybody tried and we weren’t able to get there at this point in time. That’s the frustration and that’s why we are where we are right now.”

Now, Giroux will aim to win his first Stanley Cup as a member of the Panthers and the Flyers will move on without him. Fletcher aspires to maximize the lead-up to the Monday trade deadline, looking to flip pending unrestricted free agents for draft picks.

While the Flyers continue to dwell at the bottom of the league standings, Fletcher is getting set to “aggressively retool” for the future, as he stated back in January. The arrival of Tippett, a 23-year-old, NHL-ready winger, is a part of that future.

“We talk about our age distribution all the time internally and we’re trying to build a core of players under the age of 25 that can play together here for a long time,” Fletcher said. “Getting a player like Tippett instead of an additional pick, for example, meant a lot to us. Because A, he was a first-round pick and he’s developed now. He’s developed in the American League, he’s developed in junior, and time will tell what that means for the NHL, but he’s ready to play.”

Fletcher was highly complimentary of Tippett’s performance in the AHL, where he was a point-per-game player. He touted several attributes that the 6-foot-1, 207-pound Tippett possesses, including his “size, speed, skating, shot.”

While Tippett may be NHL-ready, he still has growing to do in certain areas of his game. Interim coach Mike Yeo said that the team will work with Tippett on developing his defensive game.

“My brief conversation with him, he feels really good about sort of where his offensive game is, but knows that there’s some defensive things that we can work on to improve his 200-foot game and there’s plenty of time for that,” Yeo said.

Additionally, Fletcher is pleased that he was able to send forwards Connor Bunnaman and German Rubtsov to Florida. This makes room for college-prospect signings of players such as Bobby Brink, Ronnie Attard, and Noah Cates, whom the Flyers may look to add in the near future.

“Whether it’s today or tomorrow, or the coming weeks, we have the ability maybe to be more involved and potential opportunities that may be there,” Fletcher said. “When you’re at 49 [players under contract], it just gets a little tough, and you may have to make choices. And frankly, we didn’t want to have to make choices.”

As the march toward the trade deadline continues, the Flyers held defenseman Justin Braun out of the lineup on Sunday.

Braun, 35, is set to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season and is drawing interest from teams making a playoff push. In 61 games this season primarily on the top pairing alongside Ivan Provorov, Braun has five goals and 11 assists.

“There’s been a lot of teams calling on Justin, and we’ll see what that means over the next day, whether we move them or not,” Fletcher said. “But he plays really hard and he’s a guy that blocks shots, takes hits. So I just thought it’d be prudent to at least resolve this over the next 24 hours and to just hold him out for today.”

According to Sportsnet, the Anaheim Ducks claimed forward Gerry Mayhew off waivers from the Flyers on Sunday. The Flyers had to make room for Tippett on the roster on Saturday and tried to sneak Mayhew through to the Phantoms without success. Mayhew had six goals in 25 games with the Flyers this season.