When the dust settled on Monday’s NHL trade deadline, Ron Hextall’s Philadelphia Flyers stood pat, committed to playing out the season without making a roster move. The decision was likely the result of the Flyers being within striking distance of a wild card spot, but one cannot help but wonder if Hextall’s conservative approach was governedby the disastrous and controversial trade he made one year ago today.

On March 2, 2015 the Philadelphia Flyers acquired defenseman Slava Voynov from the Los Angeles Kings, a move that shocked the entire hockey world.

While there was much confusion about the trade following Igor Eronko's initial tweet, the world wide web was soon taken by storm with the news of the surprising roster move.

At the time, Voynov was facing charges for domestic violence after beating his girlfriend in October 2014. He was under suspension at the time of the trade and would normally not be eligible to move at the trade deadline. Luckily for the Flyers, defenseman Chris Pronger was secretly serving in the Department of Player Safety and had a near-limitless ability to persuade the league to bend the rules for the Flyers.

Voynov landed in Philadelphia as part of the blockbuster trade between the Flyers and Kings that sent Jeff Carter to Los Angeles. While Flyers fans were admittedly hesitant about the acquisition of a player with a horrific criminal record, they were relieved to be rid of Carter, who often shot the puck high and didn’t play with a whole lot of grit.

Unfortunately, the Flyers had a bit of history with acquiring players with a criminal background. In 2002, the Flyers traded Kent Manderville to the Pittsburgh Penguins to acquire Billy Tibbetts, an enforcer whose repulsive criminal past left him banned from playing games in Canada. While such a situation is rare, it would be repeated in 2015 when Flyers defenseman Andrew MacDonald found himself banned from playing games within 50 miles of the Wells Fargo Center, forcing him to play most of this season in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

While the acquisitions of Tibbetts and Voynov were shameful for the City of Brotherly Love, it should be noted that the Flyers’ present roster features no players who have been convicted of any high-profile crimes, a fact that may surprise you when you consider that Scott Laughton’s bio picture on NHL.com is clearly a mugshot.

When Hextall acquired Voynov, a two-time Stanley Cup champion with Los Angeles, perhaps the intent was to instill a winning culture in a franchise that, according to a source of mine in Pittsburgh, had not won a Cup since 1975. The Flyers had eliminated the toxic culture that came with Braydon Coburn, a defenseman who didn’t utilize his size, sometimes turned the puck over, and whose wife helped run the Flyers Wives Fight For Lives Carnival before she left him. The Flyers clearly felt that Coburn was a player they needed to separate themselves from so that they could bring in a better influence in Voynov. Coburn ended the season with the Tampa Bay Lightning, who just barely made it to Game 6 of the 2015 Stanley Cup Final while the Flyers were extremely successful in obtaining the seventh overall pick in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft.

Voynov joined a stellar Flyers defense in the latter portion of the 2014-15 season, pairing up with PP specialist Mark Streit whose PP was still intact at this point. Big-money defenseman MacDonald was paired with Nick Schultz, a player so loyal that he took a 400% pay cut just for the opportunity to play two more years in Philadelphia even though he likely would have gotten $10 million on the open market.

Remarkably, according to NHL.com and every stats site ever, Voynov never managed to register a goal, assist, PIM, game played or shot with the Flyers. These numbers were good for franchise-low marks, shared with players like Travis Konecny, Merrick Madsen, Auston Matthews, Scott Rolen, Kyle Korver, Smarty Jones and Jon Bon Jovi.

Voynov’s near-invisible performance for the duration of the 2014-15 season led to Hextall trying to get rid of him in the offseason. Hextall struggled to find a trade partner in the NHL, as 28 teams refused to acquire a player with such disgusting off-ice issues. The Nashville Predators had no objections to bringing Voynov onto their roster, but had sworn never to trade with the Flyers after the whole Shea Weber offer sheet incident forced Nashville GM David Poile to get a summer job mowing lawns in order to pay Weber’s salary.

Hextall, ever the innovator when it comes to trading, got in contact with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Hockey organization in order to broker a deal with the Kontinental Hockey League in Eastern Europe. Determined not to let Voynov walk for nothing, Hextall found a trading partner in the Brandon Wheat Czars, who agreed to take Voynov’s contract in exchange for the rights to defenseman Ivan Provorov in 2016. The Voynov Era was over just like that, having come and gone almost as quickly as the time it takes to correct someone else’s false insider report on Twitter.

Few Flyers in recent memory have been as controversial as Voynov, although bad leader and law enforcement butt-pincher Claude Giroux certainly comes close. These days, it is rare to see an orange "Voynov" jersey in the stands, but it wasn’t long ago that as many as four people in the greater Philadelphia area were excited at the news of the Voynov trade. And while many of us have no memory of the trade happening, or like to pretend the news turned out to be totally false, Slava Voynov is permanently entrenched in Flyers history whether we like it or not.

No matter how much we love this franchise, it has had its dark moments over the years; the handling of Eric Lindros’s concussions, the acquisition of Billy Tibbetts, and the signing of Andrew MacDonald to a six-year, $30 million contract are all moments that the Flyers front office should be ashamed of, and the Voynov trade is undoubtedly among them. Nonetheless, it is important to remember these moments without clouding our perception with misinformation or intentionally misrepresenting facts. Thus, it is appropriate to take a moment, one year after the trade, to reflect on how this controversial move shaped the franchise as we know it.



