Future of Flyers’ Giroux still to be decided as he reaches 1,000 NHL games

The ceremony honoring Claude Giroux for reaching 1,000 NHL games played will be an emotional one. Flyers players will wear Giroux jerseys for warmups, gifts will be given, and the highlights will be plentiful. There will also be grilled cheese sandwiches — his favorite — available for purchase all over Wells Fargo Center.

Then the puck will drop on the game against the Predators and reality will set in.

Four days after Giroux hears possibly the loudest cheers in his career it will be 2022 NHL trade deadline day. Four days after the Claude Giroux! chants end he could very likely be wearing another team’s jersey for the rest of the season.

There is the chance, however, that the 34-year-old Giroux decides against waiving his no-movement clause to stay in Philadelphia. Those odds seem slim as the Flyers, while they want to “aggressively retool,” don’t appear to be positioning themselves as Stanley Cup contenders in the very-near future. With his contract expiring this summer, a tough decision needs to be made and made very soon.

When Giroux signed his eight-year, $66.2 million extension on July 4, 2013, he probably didn’t envision playing for six different head coaches over the duration and experiencing three First Round exits, a Second Round loss in a bubble environment in Toronto, and four playoff-less springs. Championships were the vision, but with another season nearly complete without the postseason in sight for the Flyers, the captain could choose to chase a Cup elsewhere.

“I didn’t think I’d be put in the position to make a decision. It’s been probably the worst year since I’m here,” Giroux said on Sunday. “It’s not in a position that I want to be in. Obviously, there’s still some meetings and some things to talk