Division rival set to scoop up Panarin with unprecedented offer!

Teams lined up for the services of Artemi Panarin ahead of the deadline before the Columbus Blue Jackets decided to go all-in and become the biggest buyers to prove to their pending free agents they could make an impressive push into the postseason. 

However, the Jackets remain in a tight playoff race and Panarin is still thinking about playing elsewhere. That’s why Flyers insider John Boruk of NBC Sports believes Philadelphia should get into the sweepstakes and make the Jackets an unprecedented offer before anybody else. 

Boruk believes the Flyers may have put Panarin atop GM Chuck Fletcher’s free-agent wish list as the team’s new general manager revealed that he had lots of salary-cap space this summer even after re-signing some key players. Boruk feels the Flyers have been lacking a true scoring forward and makes the bold suggestion that Fletcher should offer up a second- or third-round draft pick to the Blue Jackets in June for Panarin’s exclusive negotiating rights. 

“With Panarin’s agent Dan Milstein informing the Blue Jackets they won’t discuss a new deal until after the season is over, it may be to Fletcher’s benefit to see where it goes and perhaps offer up a second-or-third-round draft pick for exclusive negotiating rights to Panarin, in much the same way Paul Holmgren did with Scott Hartnell and Kimmo Timonen in the summer of 2007,” writes Boruk. 

While he acknowledged it could cost around $10 million per season to sign him, Boruk believes the Flyers can pull it off. According to the information provided by Cap Friendly, the Flyers have over $46.8 million invested in 13 players for 2019-20, with Travis Konecny, Ivan Provorov, Travis Sanheim, Cam Talbot, Brian Elliott, and Michael Raffl as their noteworthy free agents. As Boruk points out, the Flyers would still have enough cap space to make a splash on the free-agent market. 

This could be interesting. 

However, while signing Panarin to score goals would be nice, the Flyers absolutely need someone to score opponents from scoring them. We doubt they could pull off getting Sergei Bobrovsky back and signing his teammate Panarin as well…