Looking at the fantasy impact of the Flyers acquiring defenseman Andrew MacDonald

Fantasy Impact: Islanders trade defenseman Andrew MacDonald to Flyers.

The Flyers get: A defenseman who can eat up minutes and provide some moderate offensive production.

Fantasy Players impacted: MacDonald, Travis Hamonic, Thomas Hickey, Nicklas Grossman, Luke Schenn

MacDonald plays a ton of minutes and has averaged over 25 a night this season to lead the Isles. He's never been a huge point producer, although this season has been his best offensive year so far with 24 points and unless something shocking happens, MacDonald should be able to shatter his career high in points. He was a minus-19 on the season, but that was likely more to do with the Islanders as a whole. When New York made the playoffs last year he was only a minus-2.

It's tricky to say whether this moves helps or hurts MacDonald. His overall ice-time will likely drop in Philly as they have an above average defense corps, but he should still see some opportunities on the power play. It's hard to see him supplanting Timonen, Coburn, Streit, or Meszaros in the rotation, but overall the talent pool is better right now in Philly.

The Flyer defensemen that should be worried are Nicklas Grossman and Luke Schenn, since unless the Flyers scratch one of the aforementioned four (very unlikely) then one of them will be finding themselves in the press box here and there.

As far as the Isles go, MacDonald played most of his shifts with Travis Hamonic, so expect his stats to take a slight hit depending on how New York juggles things around. One guy to look out for is Thomas Hickey, he could take advantage of some extra ice-time. The former fourth-overall pick has been playing just over 18 minutes a game, but that should increase above 20 a night with MacDonald being gone. He would be wise to use the final stretch of the season to show what he is capable of.

Fantasy players this helps, in order:

Andrew MacDonald

Thomas Hickey

Fantasy players this hurts, in order:

Travis Hamonic

Luke Schenn

Nicklas Grossman

You can have further discussion on the move in the comments section and here in the forum.

Michael Amato is an Associate Editor for DobberHockey and a News Editor for theScore. You can follow him on Twitter at @amato_mike