Let's for a second assume Phillips is the 2nd coming of St. Louis what's stopping Calgary from signing him, as an UFA, next summer?
But why would he want to sign in CGY? Okay, that's good point, but in that case he would've just left as soon as next season was up anyways.
Teams lose players to free agency all the time, I'd argue a lot of the unqualified RFA's were bigger losses than a guy we had in our system since 2016. It's a loss of a 6th round pick and the development time. At the same time Phillips didn't exactly take a job away at training camp.
A guy like Kylington did in a similar set of circumstances. A guy like Dube(same draft) had a much better production than Phillips in Stockton 2018-19, and 2019-20. He still struggled to produce any level offense consistently in the NHL over his first couple of seasons. That's why I would be surprised if Phillips gets more than 30pts this year.
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