It’s no secret that the Philadelphia Flyers were in deep trade talks with the St. Louis Blues about center Robert Thomas before last year’s deadline. They need to get a top-line center somehow and Thomas was seen as a fairly perfect fit. But now we know exactly what St. Louis wanted in return and there’s a reason why the deal didn’t happen.

On paper, Thomas really is the perfect fit for the Flyers. He’s a 26-year-old, right-handed center that can skate extremely well and has regularly put up a point per game no matter how good or bad that Blues team is. And for a bonus, he’s signed for five more seasons at a $8.15-million AAV, which is a bargain for all that he provides as a team’s top center.

If the Flyers could just get that sort of player on their team right now, they would pay a whole lot to do it. But, of course, there is a limit to what they would truly give up and that limit was exceeded in what the Blues were asking for.

Flyers balked at trade price for Robert Thomas

According to The Athletic’s Kevin Kurz, in a recent article, the Blues were asking for the sun and moon and for a huge part of the Flyers’ future, to be able to send Thomas to Philadelphia.

“Although the Flyers checked in on Thomas before the deadline, the ask on the 26-year-old was a non-starter for them — one Flyers source mentioned that in March, the Blues wanted Martone, Nesbitt and a first-round pick for Thomas, which was completely unreasonable in their view,” Kurz wrote Monday.

So yes, according to Kurz, the Blues demanded a package of Porter Martone, Jack Nesbitt, and a first-round pick for Robert Thomas. And of course, the Flyers balked at the idea of giving up all of those pieces in a deal for someone who, while extremely good as a top-six center, might not even take them over the top as a Stanley Cup contender — especially if they are giving up a burgeoning superstar like Martone and two possibly solid pieces that will help in future years.

And this conversation was even before Martone signed with the Flyers and made his NHL debut with the team. It was during the middle of his season at Michigan State, and no one even knew how good he would be once he turned pro. Martone of course went on to play the final nine games of the regular season, in which he scored four goals and 10 points as the team surged into a playoff spot. In the postseason it was a little bit of a different story as Martone scored just two goals and five points in 10 games — but it looks a lot better when Trevor Zegras was the only player to score more points than the 19-year-old winger did in the playoffs.

Another part of the reported ask was Jack Nesbitt. The 12th overall pick from the 2025 NHL Draft did not have an outstanding season, but considering he is a 6-foot-5 center that has back-to-back 25-goal seasons in the OHL, there’s some real value there and the Blues clearly liked him enough to demand the trade to include him.

And then there’s the first-round pick. It’s not clear what first-rounder the Blues asked for — since it is very different if the Flyers were giving up their first-rounder this season, or if it was going to be the Toronto Maple Leafs’ pick that ended up being unprotected. Now, it is difficult to imagine the Flyers not making the playoffs if they acquired Thomas mid-season, so that 2026 first-round pick of theirs would have still been in the second half of the round. But if, in this hypothetical world, the Leafs did not win the Draft Lottery and their pick next year remained top-10 protected, then there would be questions about how much it was valued.

But still, it’s a sizeable ask.

Why didn’t the Flyers make this trade?

While it is fairly obvious, the question still needs to be asked: Why didn’t the Flyers do this?

Adding a piece like Robert Thomas makes them an instantly interesting team and with a whole lot of young talent already on the team, or still developing, couldn’t they have feasibly moved a couple prospects and a first-round pick for someone who will, for the next five seasons, make this team so much better and solve a major problem?

Hypothetically and in a vacuum, sure. It makes perfect sense. Thomas is one of the best centers in the NHL. It’s not crazy to think of him as a top-15 center in the league and the Flyers could have paid a certain price to get that player. But are they actually in a spot where that makes sense?

Comparably, the Minnesota Wild pulled off a similar deal for Quinn Hughes. Now, Hughes makes much more of an impact to your team than Thomas — it’s not like the Blues were suddenly trading one of the best players in his position — but the Wild gave up their top prospect in Zeev Buium, a couple very good young players in Liam Ohgren and Marco Rossi, and a 2026 first-round pick. They went for it to get Hughes.

The Wild, though, are in more of a win-now scenario and can feasibly see the end of their competitive window with Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek in their prime, Matt Boldy entering his prime, and players like Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin approaching the end of their respective careers. That is the timeline they were working with so they sent more than half of their future off to Vancouver to get Hughes and try to win a Cup with him.

For the Flyers, they are not even close to being at that point of their competitive cycle. They are still developing the players that they hope to be on this team for the long haul. They do have more impactful veterans than a typical rebuilding team, like Travis Konecny and Travis Sanheim, that can give a thin veil of an impression that they are ready to make that all-in trade. But it wouldn’t have involved Porter Martone, no matter what.

We all saw how impactful Martone was almost immediately. Maybe without seeing that, we would be more willing to swallow the reality of the Flyers moving on from the 2025 sixth-overall pick, but after seeing him as one of their best forwards down the stretch and him reek of potential in the playoffs, moving on from him is a non-starter. And clearly the Flyers saw that when he was still a Spartan, as they decided to back out of these trade talks.

And even for Jack Nesbitt. Not every single member of the Flyers fan base loves that pick, but there is a path forward for him to hit some impactful potential. Nesbitt is heading to the University of Michigan next season and considering that, while being 6-foot-5, he’s listed at just 185 pounds, he is a string bean of a center. If he follows the same weight room routine that caused Martone to bulk up in his time in the NCAA and be able to handle the NHL, then there is some real possibility of Nesbitt being a player in a couple years.

Having a big, two-way center that, if he hits even close to his potential, is capable of earning a whole lot of points in a supportive role at 5-on-5 and be a netfront force on the power play, seems pretty darn valuable. Not someone who is impossible to include in a trade, but someone who might just add to the hurt if a deal is done and he’s not even the main prospect going the other way.

All in all, it’s easy to see why this trade ask was rejected and why everyone remains with their teams. And now, Porter Martone feels even more untouchable than he was during his time in college.