It looked as though winger Samu Tuomaala was falling out of favor with the Philadelphia Flyers organization when he was cut early in Flyers training back in September and then began his AHL season with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms as a regular healthy scratch.

He was.

Today, the Flyers announced that they had traded Tuomaala — their 2021 second round pick — to the Dallas Stars for Christian Kyrou, a 22-year old righthanded shooting defenseman taken in the second round back in 2022. On the surface, it’s a classic reclamation project-for-reclamation-project trade, with two teams swapping once-promising prospects in the process of being buried on their respective organizational depth charts.

There was a time when it looked like Tuomaala was emerging as a legitimate part of the Flyers’ future. He got off to a rough post-draft start in Europe, but he broke out in a big way in his Draft+3 season after he moved full-time to North America. He was the surprise of 2023 Flyers training camp, staying in the NHL roster mix until the end of camp, and then building off that momentum with a strong 43-point rookie season in the AHL with the Phantoms. At that point, Tuomaala looked the part of a top-10 prospect in the Flyers organization.

But Tuomaala proved unable to build off that momentum last season. He kept scoring — his 32 points in 46 games was actually a slightly higher scoring rate than his work in 2023-24 — but it was getting more and more difficult to see where Tuomaala fit long-term in the Flyers’ plans.

He was a good AHL scorer, but not a great one, and wasn’t likely to cut it as an NHL top-six wing — especially in an organization loaded at the position (Matvei Michkov, Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, Tyson Foerster, soon Porter Martone). And while the Flyers started to push Tuomaala developmentally in the direction of more of a third-line energy wing role, he simply wasn’t taking well to the shift. Add in injuries and repeated bouts of illness last season, and his organizational momentum stalled out. 2025 Flyers training camp loomed as make-or-break for Tuomaala in Philadelphia.

Unfortunately, he broke.

Tuomaala was clearly trying to meet the organization’s developmental demands, playing a noticeably physical style in the two rookie games up in Allentown in mid-September, and even dropping the gloves once in totally out-of-character fashion. But it didn’t work. By the end of Game 2 of the rookie series, his spot on the top line was given to 2022 seventh round pick Alexis Gendron, and Gendron remained ahead of Tuomaala throughout the rest of camp.

Gendron, like Tuomaala, possesses plus straight-line speed and a dangerous shot in a small-ish frame. They’re similar players on paper, aside from Tuomaala’s edge in terms of draft pedigree. But Gendron was adapting much quicker and more successfully to the bottom-six forward style that they wanted from Tuomaala. So while Tuomaala was cut from Flyers camp early on September 25, Gendron lasted all the way until September 30.

And once the AHL season began, the depth chart placement stuck. Tuomaala sat as a healthy scratch in five of the Phantoms’ first eight games, while new AHL additions Alex Bump and Denver Barkey dressed for all eight games, Gendron dressed for seven, and Devin Kaplan (another AHL newcomer) would have played in all eight if not for injury. Tuomaala’s spot in a scoring role for the Phantoms was, for all practical purposes, gone. The writing was on the wall.

What also likely expedited the deal was the Phantoms’ present need on defense. When at full strength, Lehigh Valley’s defense corps is solid, but it’s not nearly at full strength right now. The Flyers raided them for Adam Ginning and Emil Andrae. Oliver Bonk and Ethan Samson are both injured and not returning anytime soon. And veteran Daniel Gilbert left Wednesday’s game with what looked like a significant injury; per Phantoms correspondent Maddie Campbell, he was unable to put any weight on his left leg on his way off the ice after a second period collision, and did not return for the third period.

If Gilbert is out for any significant period of time, the Phantoms would be left with just six healthy defensemen: Helge Grans, Hunter McDonald, Ty Murchison, Artem Guryev (acquired in the Ryan Ellis trade), Ben Meehan and Carter Berger. And out of those six, the final three (Guryev, Meehan and Berger) are more AHL/ECHL swingmen than top prospects or American Hockey League stalwarts. Kyrou — the younger brother of St. Louis Blues star forward Jordan Kyrou — stabilizes the Lehigh Valley back end in the here and now.

As for Kyrou, he brings a similar story to that of Tuomaala. A 2022 second round pick, Kyrou is a skilled but small (5’11, 165 pounds) righthanded shooting defenseman who began his AHL career in promising fashion (23 points in 57 games as a rookie in 2023-24), but has since fallen out of favor in the Dallas organization.

Per David Castillo of Stars Stack:

It’s hard to fault Christian Kyrou on expectations when he was picked in the second round, but his proximity to the Lane Hutson draft pick (Kyrou was taken 50th overall while Hutson was nabbed by Montreal 12 picks later at No. 62) has always been the source of fan frustration. To his credit, Kyrou has occasionally given fans reason to hope for more. His puck control is sublime, but it’s counterbalanced by his size and absence of footspeed. As a result, he’s shown flashes of offense, with his big moment occurring in the 2024 Calder Cup playoffs where he had seven points through seven games.

But even before then, and certainly after, his lack of defensive awareness has resulted in a becoming a healthy scratch more than a healthy contributor. Kyrou always had a clear path as one of the very few right-shot defenders in the Dallas organization; one of the Stars’ few blindspots in terms of draft history and draft success. However, it didn’t take him long to lose his spot to defenders of different types, between the shutdown profile of Luke Krys, and the similar-in-style fourth-round pick Gavin White.

In other words, even with a clear path, he’s struggled, only getting minutes when Texas has been injured or needed juice on the second power play unit.

So like Tuomaala, Kyrou was a regular healthy scratch this season for the Texas Stars of the AHL, and it was getting harder and harder to see where he fit in Dallas’ long-term plans.

With the Flyers? The long-term fit is still questionable. Kyrou’s small stature doesn’t mesh with the front office’s stated desire to get bigger on the back end, especially with all of Cam York, Jamie Drysdale and even Andrae above him on the organizational depth chart to start. But the short-term fit is easier to understand. Given the injuries to the Phantoms’ blueline — and the call-up of Andrae — there’s a real opportunity for Kyrou right now to get big even strength minutes and potentially even heavy power play usage on a talented AHL roster.

Kyrou is still just 22 years old, so he still has time to develop into a useful NHLer. Now, he’ll have a chance to re-establish himself in a new organization, after stagnating at this last one.

Just as Samu Tuomaala will.