Quote:
Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald
Completely untrue. Phillips has been available to every team - for free - and has not been picked up. If every other team in the league wanted Phillips the Flames would work a trade for him in a heartbeat and take whatever asset they could get. It is obvious this isn't the case. If this huge demand were out there, he would have been moved already because it appears the Flames know he's not in the plans for anything but the AHL squad.
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Phillips was only available for teams to pick up around camp time, many good players go through waivers at that time. At that time in the year teams have already planned what their day 1 roster will look like to an extent, they do not plan for someone like Phillips to be available + they would be forced to have him on the NHL roster. I have zero doubt that Flames can get assets for Phillips if they were to trade him, but that asset is not significant enough for them to actually make a trade, due to him having 1 NHL game it is a complete random guess if Phillips could actually work in the NHL, so teams do not want to give up assets for that.
It makes no sense to trade Phillips from the Flames perspective, he can still be recalled this season and could contribute, risk vs reward is not worth it for the Flames in trading him.
My point is that if Phillips was already in each team's organization, majority of them would have already recalled him and give him a chance as it does not hurt them in the slightest. They can literally just send him back to the AHL... Probably at least 20-25 teams are going to show interest in singing Phillips next year and you bet they will give him more of a chance than the Flames.
Why are you so confident in saying there are no plans for Phillips at the NHL level? We are still only ~1/4 into the season, and we have not had any major forward injuries, we are a new team this year and Sutter clearly wants to see what he has at the current composition. I think they view Phillips as the guy they might give a chance to if the forwards keep struggling, there is no reason to trade him for a 4th/5th/6th round pick