During the off-season when it came time for the Philadelphia Flyers to shed some salary to be able to have some spending flexibility during the summer, there weren’t a lot of candidates to be sent out of town to make it happen. One guy who stood out amongst the pack thanks to having just one year remaining on his contract was Simon Gagne. Sure enough, it was Gagne who was traded to Tampa Bay for Matt Walker in a cost-cutting move. Gagne who was a lifetime Flyer up to that point is still much beloved in Philadelphia, and considering how cuddly Philly fans are, that says a lot about what they think of his time there.
Now it’s time for Gagne to make his first appearance in Philadelphia as a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning, and CSN Philly’s Tim Panaccio finds out that Gagne is expecting his homecoming to be a welcome one.“It’ll be special. It will mean a lot. I spent 11 years there and 11 years in one life is a lot. And it’s not just the 11 years. I started my career there. I was a rookie there. When I left home for the first time I went to Philly. ... Going back there is going to be weird. It’s going to be hard.
“I was laughing with the [Tampa and Montreal] media today about how it’s going to be tough to make sure I go to the left side and the locker room where we’re supposed to be and not the Flyers locker room.”
Among the vast array of new generation players – those who came to the Flyers two decades after their two Stanley Cups – Gagne was among the most congenial “gentlemen” to ever wear orange ‘n black.
He was pure class from the time he arrived with the Flyers until the time he left. He was also among a handful of Flyers who you never heard anyone say a bad thing about, including opposing players.
Whenever people think about the Philadelphia Flyers and their players, you’d be hard pressed to find the words “pure class” or “gentlemen” being applied to anyone throughout the team’s history. Gagne, however, is a different breed. He was always the pure offense on a team often littered with enforcers and power forwards who made their living laying the body all over the ice. With Flyers fans still having a place in their hearts (yes, they do have them) for Gagne, this may be one of the few Philly homecomings for an opponent that doesn’t end in a cascade of boos.
Time will tell if Philly letting Gagne go was the right move for them as a team. Financially it made complete sense as his $5 million salary was just too much for the Flyers to keep around when looking for salary cap space. You wonder if they’ll miss out on his offense. The Flyers brought in Nikolay Zherdev on the comparative cheap to try and fill the hole left by dealing Gagne and his performance this season will help determine whether or not he ends up being the focus of fans’ anger. Replacing Gagne in Philly isn’t a role anyone should be eager to fill and his reception tonight will be proof positive of that.