Ivan Provorov’s decline made the Flyers’ decision to trade him inevitable

Fresh from a morning weight-room workout in January 2021, two days before the first game in a pandemic-delayed season, Ivan Provorov confessed over the phone that he was familiar with the Flyers’ undistinguished history of developing elite defensemen.

The franchise still has never had a Norris Trophy winner, and Provorov could list the names of those Flyers who, over the previous 35 years, had come closest to being named the NHL’s best blueliner: Chris Pronger, Kimmo Timonen, Éric Desjardins, Mark Howe. Each of them acquired from another team. None of them homegrown. It was a trend, Provorov said, he was committed to change.

“It’s definitely a goal of mine,” he said that day. “I try to be the best. I try to do that every year. I know it’s hard to do as soon as you come into the league, doing it in the first few years, because there are so many great defensemen in the league. Now it’s time to be up there and try to be one of the best defensemen in the league. That’s what my goal is, and hopefully I’ll be able to win it someday.”

If he does, it will be with the Columbus Blue Jackets — the team to which the Flyers traded him Tuesday — or another club. In a three-team deal, for a package of players and draft picks, Provorov’s tenure ended in a manner few could have foreseen two-plus years ago. That’s how far and fast his decline here was. That’s how little he wanted to be here and the Flyers wanted to keep him here.

He is 26, presumably in his prime. But under their new leadership team, principally general manager Danny Brière, the Flyers are at last undergoing the kind of full-scale rebuild that they should have completed, let alone started, years ago. And waiting for Provorov to fulfill the promise that he flashed through his first four seasons here doesn’t fit on their timeline anymore.

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That promise was real, and the Flyers were happy to tout it. They had selected him with the No. 7 overall pick in the 2015 draft, and the scouting reports on him were that he was something close to a machine: able to skate long shifts without tiring, able to clean up messes in his defensive zone, able to carry the puck and lead a counterattack. In some ways, the reports were right. He didn’t miss a regular-season game and averaged more than 24 minutes of ice time through his first five years with the team. He scored 17 goals in his second season. He was already good, and there was room for growth.

That growth never happened, not here. Once his defensive partner, Matt Niskanen, retired after the 2019-20 season, Provorov was never the same, which suggests he was never going to be the dominant No. 1 defenseman that he believed he was destined to be. He seemed unsure of himself on the ice, as if he didn’t know where to go, which man to mark, what play to make — as if he could trust neither himself nor his teammates to do their jobs.

Frustration over his ragged performance grew, and he became a full-fledged lighting rod in January, when he sat out pregame warmups in protest of the organization’s Pride Night. He revealed himself to be a lousy teammate for not lending support to Scott Laughton, James van Riemsdyk, and other Flyers for whom the event and issue had special meaning, and with his misguided boycott, he made himself a symbol of the franchise’s overall dysfunction. Presuming that every jock in a professional locker room shares the same sociopolitical opinions, no matter how enlightened and worthy the cause, is a fool’s errand, and the Flyers brought that night’s embarrassment upon themselves for failing to prepare for the possibility that Provorov (whose views weren’t exactly a secret) and any other players would refuse to participate.

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In the aftermath of that fiasco, with different decision-makers soon to be in place, Provorov would have had to prove himself the second coming of Bobby Orr over the rest of the season to remain here. It was only a matter of time before Brière sent him somewhere else for the sake of assets that could help the Flyers in the future, and the return that Brière received is impressive. Among that haul: a 2023 first-round pick, two second-round picks (one is conditional in terms of what year it transfers over), and a highly regarded prospect, Helge Grans.

Grans is a 21-year-old defenseman, a smooth skater with a strong shot. The Flyers had one of them once, and Ivan Provorov had his goals. Maybe it’ll all be different this time around, for him and them.