Travis Konecny's contract extension has been the talking point of the offseason so far, and whether fans like it or not, it's likely that the Flyers will extend their star player.
Travis Konecny's contract extension has been the talking point of the offseason so far, and whether fans like it or not, it's likely that the Flyers will extend their star player.
In 2024, Travis Konecny is as fundamental to the Philadelphia Flyers as the orange and black on the team jerseys. He's the guy for this team—he's many people's favorite player, from lifelong Flyers fans to supporters of rival teams that begrudgingly say, "Well, if I had to choose a favorite Flayers player..."
Like it or not, Konecny has been the Flyers' best player for some time now. From a playing perspective, he's been the team's top scorer in three different seasons (including this most recent one), has been the Flyers' sole All-Star representative twice, and has contributed a scrappy, energetic, and skillful style of play that has largely elevated the Flyers' offense.
Off the ice, Konecny has set the standard for the now-famous Flyers camaraderie and laidback, friendly, overall hilarious locker room. The engine keeps running even when he's not playing—his voice can always be heard laughing, joking, and chirping with teammates, and he never passes up the opportunity to bounce around the room and interject in other players' interviews—whether it's to provide comic relief or offer words of encouragement during a hard line of questioning.
It should also be said, though, that Konecny does know how to be serious when the occasion calls for it. It takes more than just an outgoing personality to be a legitimate leader in the locker room, and all you have to do is take one look at the "A" on his jersey to know that Konecny isn't just some court jester whose only job is to be the life of the party. To be in a leadership group with experienced and highly-respected players like fellow alternate captain Scott Laughton and team captain Sean Couturier shows that Konecny genuinely possesses the qualities of a person that other players can look up to, and shows that he has established himself as an indispensable part of the team that the Flyers are looking to build.
The fact of the matter stands that Konecny will most likely extend his contract. It's too early to even begin speculating on how long and how many millions of dollars that contract would be for, but you're terribly naive if you think that the Flyers would be willing to let go of him. When John Tortorella praises your levels of commitment and flat-out says he loves to coach you, that speaks volumes.
"I love coaching him, because that's the give-and-take, that's the challenge for me—how much do you let him be him, and then when he starts getting a little too far away, with just his intensity, that's what I've got to coach," Tortorella said back in April. "In the time I've been here, he's been a terrific player. We've had many conversations about letting him be him, but also, I've still got to coach him in certain situations when he forgets that he's getting really far away. It's great to have a player that you have to bring down off of that. It's very hard to get a guy to get to that level [in the first place]."
Sure, he went through a goal drought this season. He was also playing through a pretty nasty injury (as many of the Flyers turned out to be doing), and even then, players go through goal droughts. The natural world order did not turn on its head because Travis Konecny struggled to score in a stretch of games (although judging by some social media reactions, you would be led to believe that it did).
The fact of the matter is this—Konecny has been a Flyer for the better part of eight years now (he quite literally said "I love Philly" when asked about his contract in exit interviews), and has earned this extension by proving his skills on the ice and his importance to the organization off the ice. He's not a nostalgia player that fans are holding on to because of the good memories—he is an actively great player and important figure on the team. You may not like the front office's pretty much inevitable decision to extend him, and you are well within your rights to author all the clickbait-y articles and angry, grammatically incorrect Twitter rants about how he's being overpaid or that his contract is too long—I can promise you that Danny Briere doesn't care.
The Flyers are extending Konecny's contract, and it's the right decision to make. And if there's one player who could not care less about other people's opinions of him and will not let it affect any area of his life, it's Travis Konecny.
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