Flyers sign Rodrigo Abols to one-year, $775,000 contract

Well, Philadelphia Flyers general manager Daniel Briere isn’t remaining idle even with the Stanley Cup Final still ongoing.

On Saturday, the team announced that they had signed 28-year old Latvian forward Rodrigo Abols to a one-year, $775,000 contract, adding another new face to their organizational mix.

Abols (pronounced Ahh-bols) is an SHL veteran, with six years of experience in Sweden’s top professional league. But he does have past connections to the NHL. Abols was once both a Vancouver Canucks prospect — selected in the seventh round of the 2016 draft — and a member of the Florida Panthers organization, as well. After the Canucks chose not to sign Abols to an entry-level deal and let his rights lapse, the Panthers signed him to an ELC in 2019, and brought him over for the 2019-20 season to take a run at breaking into the NHL.

Abols spent the 2019-20 campaign in Florida’s minor league system, putting up 23 points in 39 games with the Springfield Thunderbirds, their AHL affiliate. But after the pandemic hit, Abols stayed in Europe, ultimately coming to a mutual termination of the second year of the ELC with Florida in early 2021. Following the termination, Abols established himself as a solid SHL scorer, racking up 20 goals in 2020-21 and then scoring 41 points in 51 games in 2022-23 as captain at Örebro HK. Last season, his production dipped a bit (14 goals, 26 points in 50 games) on his new club Rögle BK but remained solid, ranking him fifth on his club in points and second in goals.

Now, the Flyers are giving him his second chance to master North American hockey.

It’s not a major investment on the Flyers’ part. $775,000, after all, is the league minimum salary for 2024-25, and it’s a two-way deal, meaning that he’ll make less in terms of real money if he’s in the AHL, as opposed to the NHL. It implies that Abols has not been promised a full-time NHL job.

So why sign a 28-year SHL veteran in the first place?

It’s similar to their signing of Oscar Eklind back in April. Like Abols, Eklind was an SHL veteran in his 20s (Eklind turns 26 in July, so he is about two-and-a-half years younger than Abols). And like Eklind, Abols is enormous — he measures at 6’4 and 203 pounds per EliteProspects, comparing favorably to Eklind at 6’4 and 210.

Neither Eklind nor Abols will be guaranteed NHL roster spots — they’ll both have to earn them at training camp come September, and they’ll likely enter camp on the outside looking in. But they will be in the mix. And their presence is a cost-effective way for Briere and the Flyers to get some added size into their organizational mix at forward.

Here’s one theory: perhaps they’re hoping to luck into a viable netfront option on the power play.

As Alexander Appleyard noted back in April in his breakdown of Eklind’s style of play, Eklind thrives in the netfront area. The Flyers could be hoping that Abols might be an option there, as well.

The Flyers’ power play, of course, doesn’t merely have one single problem. There are many reasons why they ranked dead-last in the NHL for the second consecutive season, this time nearly three percentage points worse than the 31st-ranked club. But their lack of anything remotely resembling an effective netfront player is not-insignificant part of their issues.

Perhaps they are hoping that one of Eklind or Abols can exceed expectations at camp and fill that role on a bargain contract.

Is it a long shot? Sure. There’s a reason why it took Abols four seasons to get another shot with an NHL team. But it’s not like the Flyers have the cap space to go shopping for high-skilled playmakers or top-end PP defensemen to quarterback their units. So why not see if a quality netfront option can be unearthed out of Europe for cheap?

If that’s the thinking, it’s worth a shot as a low-risk dart throw, at the very least.