Flyers win the Goyette-Kaplan swap on upside, barely

This is the trade two teams make when they've stopped waiting on a kid, and I think Philadelphia got the better lottery ticket. David Goyette led the OHL in scoring three years ago. Devin Kaplan hasn't found his game since leaving Boston University. Neither one has figured out the AHL yet.

The Kraken sent Goyette to the Flyers for Kaplan on Thursday, the day the Kraken opened their season. It's a one-for-one swap of 22-year-old forwards from the 2022 draft. Goyette reports to Lehigh Valley. Kaplan reports to Coachella Valley. Nobody is moving into an NHL lineup tonight.

Why Seattle let go

Goyette was a monster in junior. He put up 282 points in three seasons with Sudbury and won the OHL scoring race in 2023-24 with 117. Then the pro game happened. He has 28 points in 108 AHL games, and only 10 in 51 last season.

That's the drop you worry about with a 5-foot-11 center whose game was built on time and space. The skill is real. The space he had in Sudbury isn't there in the AHL, and two years is long enough for an organization to decide it isn't coming.

Why Philadelphia let go

Kaplan is the opposite bet. He's 6-foot-3, a right wing out of the U.S. National Team Development Program, and he scored 64 points in 115 games over three seasons at BU. The Flyers took him in the third round, 69th overall, and he jumped straight from the Terriers to the NHL in April 2025.

That one game is the whole NHL résumé. Per NHL data, he played 12.2 minutes in that debut with one hit and no shots. Last season in Lehigh Valley he had 13 points and 62 penalty minutes in 49 games. Big, willing and not yet producing is a profile a team can find again.

My read

Philadelphia wins this on upside. A player who once put up 117 points in the OHL has a ceiling Kaplan doesn't, and a new coach in a new building is exactly what a stalled scorer needs. Seattle is betting size and college habits age better than junior numbers. That's a fair bet. I just think it's the safer one, not the better one.

The clock makes it urgent for both of them. These are prove-it years, and the AHL is where it gets decided.

Prospect watch:

• David Goyette (PHI) — C, 22, Seattle's second-round pick (61st) in 2022. Final year of his entry-level deal, RFA in 2027. Assigned to Lehigh Valley. Timeline: needs a real AHL scoring year before he's an NHL call-up option.

• Devin Kaplan (SEA) — RW, 22, Philadelphia's third-round pick (69th) in 2022. Final year of his entry-level deal, RFA in 2027. Assigned to Coachella Valley. Timeline: a bottom-six NHL role if the production follows the size.

Rights clock: both teams have until next summer's qualifying-offer deadline to decide whether either one is worth a second contract.