NHL Rumors: Huge Update On Owen Tippett Trade Rumors

Friday, April 24, 2026 ,
Philadelphia Flyers forward Owen Tippett celebrates goal during 2026 game.

For most of the 2025-26 season, Owen Tippett was the Philadelphia Flyers player most frequently attached to trade speculation.

The Boston Bruins had checked in on him multiple times.

The Vancouver Canucks were mentioned.

The asking price was steep, centered around top prospects and a first-round pick, and the conversation around whether the Flyers should move him before his modified no-trade clause kicked in this summer was a genuine one inside hockey circles.

Three games into the playoffs against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Jonathan Bailey of The Hockey News believes those days are over.

"Tippett, 27, may always be a polarizing player with offensive production that isn't quite in line with his overall skills and athleticism," Bailey wrote, "but as he enters his prime years, has found what makes him an effective NHLer."

The Flyers lead the series 3-0 after a 5-2 Game 3 win Wednesday night in Philadelphia, their first home playoff game in eight years.

Tippett added an empty-net goal to close out the victory and has an assist in the series, including a sequence in Game 2 against the Penguins that Bailey pointed to as the defining moment of his evolution as a player.

What Has Changed

Tippett was always a threat as a volume shooter and a speed merchant.

What he was not, until this season, was a reliable two-way presence. Under head coach Rick Tocchet, that changed.

Injuries to Tyson Foerster early in the season pushed Tippett into a penalty-killing role he had never previously filled, and he responded by racking up a career-high 166 hits while posting 28 goals and breaking the 50-point threshold for the second time in his career.

His shooting percentage reached a career-high 12.7 percent despite taking the second-fewest shots of his tenure in Philadelphia, a sign that the all-angles volume shooting that drew criticism for years has been replaced by a more selective, disciplined approach.

The sequence Bailey highlighted from Game 2 captured all of it.

Tippett played the puck to himself around a Penguins forward along the wall, carried forward, and found Garnet Hathaway for a shorthanded tap-in.

That is not a play the Tippett of a year ago makes.

"This time last year, that never seemed like it would ever be a possibility," Bailey wrote.

The Contract Looks Different Now

When trade rumors were at their peak this season, the conversation around Tippett was shaped partly by the urgency of his contract situation.

He is signed through 2031-32 at a $6.2 million AAV, and a modified no-trade clause kicks in this summer, giving him veto power over destinations for the next four years of the deal.

For teams looking to acquire him, or for the Flyers looking to maximize a return, this past deadline was described as the last clean window to move him without complications.

The Flyers declined to engage, and their decision is looking better by the day.

Bailey called the contract a steal for a player who now contributes as much as he does at both ends of the ice, and it is difficult to argue with that assessment while watching him drive play alongside Trevor Zegras and Foerster in a playoff series the Flyers are on the verge of winning.

Philadelphia has not won a playoff series since the 2020 bubble. They had not won a home playoff game since April 2016.

Tippett is a significant reason why the Flyers are in this position, and the trade rumors that followed him all the way to April are starting to feel more and more faint.

Photo Credit: Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

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