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Flyers climbed out of cellar but are still sellers after trade deadline | Bob Ford

Wayne Simmonds will be missed by the Flyers, but how much is unknown.

Wayne Simmonds returns to the ice between periods on Saturday night at Lincoln Financial Field.
Wayne Simmonds returns to the ice between periods on Saturday night at Lincoln Financial Field.Read moreYONG KIM / Staff Photographer

The least surprising Philadelphia sports news of the year was unofficially confirmed at about 11 a.m. Monday when veteran right wing Wayne Simmonds didn’t take the ice for practice with the Flyers. It was a foregone conclusion that Simmonds would be moved before the afternoon trade deadline, and heaven forbid a lower-body injury or some other misfortune put a kink in that transaction.

The official confirmation arrived with the news that Simmonds had been traded just minutes prior to the 3 p.m. deadline to Nashville in exchange for a conditional fourth-round draft pick and a moderately talented 24-year-old right winger named Ryan Hartman.

This was a bloodless bit of business – getting something for a 30-year-old who will be an unrestricted free agent in the offseason – but Simmonds was more than just another guy for the Flyers. He was a leader, and the closest thing the team had to an enforcer in an era when those are increasingly rare, and those attributes counted for something.

“He makes everybody in the locker room a lot braver. He’s got everybody’s back,” interim coach Scott Gordon said. “He’s a guy who can do that and still make a contribution offensively. Even though there’s not as much physicality in the game because of the speed, he brings that every night. When it’s needed, if he’s got to address something, he’s the first guy to do it, and I’ve seen the impact that’s had on the other team.”

It was an understandable move for Nashville, even if Simmonds is just a rental, as the Predators tried to solidify their roster for a serious run at the Stanley Cup. Nashville is last in the league in power-play percentage, and that’s a unit where Simmonds has been useful since he arrived in Philadelphia eight seasons ago.

So, really, not much to see here, except whether trading Simmonds will affect the month-long resurgence of the Flyers on the ice. If the players shrug and carry on, that’s one thing. If they see that the organization decided to sell at the trade deadline, and read that as a vote of no-confidence by the front office, that’s quite another.

After practice, and before the trade was consummated, the other players said what was expected of them, which hockey players can do better than almost anyone. Great guy. We would miss him and wish him the best. But that’s how it goes.

“If it happens, it will [stink] for us as a hockey team,” defenseman Radko Gudas said. “He’s been a huge part of our success. But I don’t think there’s any bigger message from the management. It’s one guy’s career, and his contract and his time of life. It’s business for all of us at this point.”

Choosing a profession in which exchanging pain for success is a daily bargain can make for a pragmatic outlook, but the players are also a lot happier than they were a few weeks ago, and seeing a piece of that Jenga puzzle taken away could be unsettling.

The team collected just 38 points in its first 45 games this season, and stumbled along while the Flyers changed general managers, then head coaches, while using about a dozen goalies. Gordon got things settled, had the good fortune to have Carter Hart work out nicely, and the Flyers have gone 13-3-1 since mid-January.

In some ways, Simmonds wasn’t a big part of things recently. He scored only one goal in the last 16 games, and his 27 points in 62 games made this his least-productive offensive season in Philadelphia. But he still took somewhere around 20 shifts a night, chipped in on the power play, and, as Gordon pointed out, kept his kid brothers from getting pushed around. He was an important cog for this particular team, and while the front office merely followed the script on Monday, it wasn’t necessarily good for the current group.

“The players are still looking at the playoffs. Whether we add or subtract a player, that goal hasn’t changed,” Gordon said. “We’re fortunate to get out of the hole we were in … and be able to have the conversation that it’s an option for making the playoffs. I’m sure for the players, even though there’s disappointment, I don’t think that message changes.”

Well, we’ll see how that goes. Occasionally, the message intended isn’t the one that is received. The Flyers did what was expected at the trade deadline. Nothing more, nothing less. Now, we’ll see if the team calculates what that really means and can continue to do the unexpected.