Despite their general lack of high-end talent across the board, the Philadelphia Flyers will be the team with the highest salary cap hit in the entire NHL in the 2024-25 season at an astounding $87.2 million, leaving them with only $500k in projected cap space. Further to that point, they’ll have the fifth-highest amount of dead cap, owing a whopping $5.483 million to retained salary trades and buyouts.

Cam Atkinson and Cal Petersen are taking up too large a portion of the Flyers’ cap space

This is, at least partly, the fruit of the unflattering work done by the regimes that preceded current Flyers general manager Danny Briere and president Keith Jones.

While Briere, Jones and Co. did make some Flyers trades with retained salary and bought out some dead weight, they did not sign underachieving veterans to albatross deals or acquire veterans who were already signed to albatross deals.

For example, Cam Atkinson, 34, has one year left on his contract with a $5.875 million cap hit. He’ll turn 35 before the start of the 2024-25 season and is coming off of a dreadful 28-point season, making him the Flyers’ likeliest buyout candidate for the summer.

That alone will help a sky-high Flyers salary cap come down to a usable number, as Atkinson’s cap hit would be only $2.358 million this year and $1.758 million next year.

There’s also Ryan Johansen, who dubiously lingers on the Flyers’ roster after having initially been designated for assignment to the AHL. If Johansen is still unfit to play hockey for the Flyers at the start of next season, his $4 million cap hit will likely get stashed away on LTIR. Ryan Ellis, of course, is a candidate for the same.

Finally, the Flyers have three players with lucrative extensions kicking in, starting on July 1. Those players are Owen Tippett, who signed an eight-year, $49.6 million contract extension on Jan. 26, Nick Seeler, who signed a four-year, $10.8 million contract extension on March 6, and Ivan Fedotov, who signed a two-year, $6.55 million contract extension on April 23. These three account for 13.9% of the Flyers’ salary cap next season.

Keep in mind that the Flyers also need to re-sign pending free agents like Bobby Brink and Egor Zamula. They also might need to make room to retain veteran defenseman Erik Johnson, who heaped praise upon the organization after the Flyers’ final game of the season.

The Flyers should be in a much better spot this time next year when Johansen and Cal Petersen come off their books and Tony DeAngelo’s $1.667 million buyout is complete. Kevin Hayes has two years remaining on his $3.571 million buyout.