Do players not have to report injuries or get a physical before a trade? Just seems like something Philly should have been aware of before the trade. The timing of this is also weird though. Why would Philly have not tried to terminate him earlier in the offseason unless something just suddenly changed?
Yeah, if the injury was known about at the time of the trade, that could have been a problem. But according to sources at the time, neither Philly nor Colorado knew about it. Colorado was happy to use the Cap space for Walker and Mittelstadt. Colorado gave up a 1st to help facilitate it. So there was plenty of motivation on both sides to let the trade go through. Then Philly immediately waived Johansen. and assigned him to the AHL when he cleared. Which again, you couldn't do if he was injured. Then he didn't report to their AHL team claiming injury.
So it's a suspicious timeline, and both Colorado and Philly seemed to benefit from pleading ignorance to the injury at the time. The Flyers are a hair over the Cap right now with Johansen included, however. So it would be nice to liquidate him without having to use LTIR. I guess especially if they can't really find a diagnosed injury to justify using LTIR???
I don't know, I suspect everybody is trying to dodge the rulebook here, both the team and Johansen who doesn't want to play in the AHL but still wants his money. But I guess we'll see what the actual evidence is when it goes through whatever the appeal process is.