Oh, what a difference a year can make. 19 games at the tail end of the 2013-14 NHL season got defenseman Andrew MacDonald a six-year, $30 million contract extension. 58 games in 2014-15 and this year's preseason have landed MacDonald on waivers. The Flyers and GM Ron Hextall announced on Monday morning that they were placing the 29-year-old MacDonald on waivers, only one year into his gargantuan and undeniably awful extension.
The only silver lining for Flyers fans from this debacle is that with the move, the Flyers were able to keep impressive former first-round pick Scott Laughton and more affordable young d-man Brandon Manning with the big club.
MacDonald's 2014-15 season was seemingly doomed from the outset. A knee injury limited him early on and when he returned, he simply seemed out of place on a Philadelphia team that wanted to move up the ice quickly and required strong skating out of it's blueliners. MacDonald, upon his return to the lineup, struggled with turnovers and had become a healthy scratch by the end of the season, despite his shot-blocking prowess.
The hope in and around the Flyers organization this offseason was that the coaching change from Craig Berube to Dave Hakstol would bring out whatever was missing last season from MacDonald's game, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
The Flyers and Hextall have now take one more step toward clearing bodies off their blueline, even if they have only given themselves a small modicum of cap relief, about $950,000. With four years and $23.75 million left on his contract, the Flyers will carry a $4.05 million dead cap penalty should MacDonald clear waivers and be sent down to the AHL.
