Maybe Its because i read it too fast but all i'm taking from this is Gauthier wanted out because they didn't want to sign his ELC and give him his 10 games at the end of the season?
It's implicitly believed the Flyers reneged on a pretty major promise, but I didn't cite that because I couldn't nail down a hard source for it—try to offer some analysis based on established reporting. But yes, he wanted to burn year one of his ELC and may have been promised that he'd be able to do that, but Briere had other ideas.
Briere was only a few days into being an NHL GM when he had to negotiate that with the player, and he apparently fell so flat on his face that Gauthier lost confidence in the franchise and demanded a trade shortly after. Despite being told not to contact him, the Flyers instead insisted on continually sending staff uninvited to try to meet with him—both at his college and when he was abroad for the WJC at the end of 2023.
My main focus was on the fallout. Gauthier
does seem like kind of a prick, but the Flyers
knew why he didn't want to play for them, continued to pursue him, and then ran a
massively dishonest smear campaign where they claimed they
didn't know anything and that if you don't want to be "Be a Flyer" then they don't want you (even though
they were the ones still trying to reconcile as late as two weeks before they traded him).
Their narrative was extremely effective at turning the fanbase against Gauthier and sullying his reputation around the league, to the point that he was receiving death threats. Which is a very f***ed up way for a billion-dollar company to behave towards a 19-year-old over contract differences, but pretty par for the course for the dishonest marketing operation that is the Philadelphia Flyers Presented By Comcast.
So if you're an agent and you see all that happening to one of your players, you probably don't want your other clients doing business with that company. Given that the Flyers are in this situation now with Johansen and mysteriously passed on Buium at the draft, it seems pretty obvious they've burned their relationship with the Overhardt representation group, and who knows how they appear to other players and agents around the league.