A trade of players who recently both cleared waivers! And the rare recent Penguins/Flyers transaction! 2025 is going out with the a bang. Pittsburgh picks up defenseman Egor Zamula in exchange for Philip Tomasino. From the team: The Pittsburgh Penguins have acquired defenseman Egor Zamula from the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for forward Philip Tomasino, […]
A trade of players who recently both cleared waivers! And the rare recent Penguins/Flyers transaction! 2025 is going out with the a bang. Pittsburgh picks up defenseman Egor Zamula in exchange for Philip Tomasino.
From the team:
The Pittsburgh Penguins have acquired defenseman Egor Zamula from the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for forward Philip Tomasino, it was announced today by President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Kyle Dubas.
Zamula is signed through the 2025-26 season, and his contract carries an average annual value of $1.7 million.
Zamula, 25, has appeared in 13 games with the Flyers this season registering one assist and is plus-4. He’s also dressed in three games for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms of the American Hockey league, notching two assists.
The 6-foot-3, 200-pound blueliner has spent all six years of his professional career with the Flyers organization, recording 41 points (8G-33A) in 168 regular-season NHL games. At the AHL level, Zamula has notched five goals, 51 assists and 56 points in 130 games with Lehigh Valley.
The native Chelyabinsk, Russia represented his home country at the 2020 World Junior Championship, picking up five points (3G-2A) in seven games en route to a silver medal.
Prior to that, the undrafted defenseman enjoyed a three-year career in the WHL split between the Regina Pats and Calgary Hitmen.
Both players, interestingly enough, will remain in the AHL; Zamula is reportedly heading to Wilkes-Barre to start and Tomasino is going to Lehigh Valley. It was also rumored and whispered that Zamula might have eventually gotten towards a contract termination with the Flyers, so we’ll see how long he is going to stay in the AHL to acclimate with the Pittsburgh organization.
Zamula had a pretty good season in the past but has struggled to find a full-time niche in the NHL due to skating concerns. He has been responsible defensively in spurts, however.
Zamula and Tomasino might be about mirror images of one another; Tomasino an offensive-minded forward fell out of favor with a soft 2025-26 season. He was working on a one-year contract worth $1.75 million. Zamula is the same but opposite as a defender, on a $1.7m cap hit. Both are of similar ages and get a new start in a new spot, albeit looking like the impacts of the swap might not make major headway for the future of either organization.
The other interesting item might simply be the fact that the Penguins and Flyers even engaged in completing a trade at all. The team’s had not made a meaningful trade of two pro players since 2002 (the Pens did, however, deal a 2011 third round pick in 2010 to the Flyers for the negotiating rights of Dan Hamhuis but they were unable to come to terms and Hamhuis opted to become a free agent. The third round pick, ironically, ended up being traded to Arizona and back to Pittsburgh in time for the 2011 draft, becoming Harrison Ruopp, who never played in the NHL).
Truth be told, today’s deal wasn’t even the first PIT/PHI trade in 2025; back at the draft the Penguins traded the 12th overall pick (that they received from Vancouver in the Marcus Pettersson deal) over to Philadelphia in exchange for the 22nd and 31st overall picks. The Pens would eventually navigate out of the 31st pick and up a little to end up coming out of draft night with Bill Zonnon and Will Horcoff. The Flyers took Jack Nesbitt at No. 12. Nesbitt has 28 points in 27 OHL games this season, Horcoff has been off to a hotter start tearing up the NCAA. From the moment of the draft, we noted that the Nesbitt vs. Horcoff development battle will be an interesting one to track over the years, since their frames and styles are very similar and Pittsburgh opted to steer to Horcoff. It’s early yet for a victory lap but that doesn’t look like a bad idea six months post-draft.
Anyways, Tomasino for Zamula is another deal between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and show a swing towards thawing relations among the mindset of trading between rivals. Sometimes it’s been fairly common (the two PA clubs made four trades with one another over a decade-long period from 1992-2002, including the absolute blockbuster that sent Mark Recchi and a future first round pick to the Flyers in exchange for Rick Tocchet, Ken Wregget and Kjell Samuelsson. Imagine that today!) Other times, like basically 2003-24 it’s been incredibly rare to see the rivals get together and make a deal. Today’s transaction is hardly Recchi-for-Tocchet on the magnitude scale, but just as appealing to see previously existing barriers of trading partners continue to fall.
Category: General Sports
