Flyers Overall Rebuild Grade: B
Core: B
Overall Roster: C+
Prospect Pool: A-
Head Coach & General Manager: B
Flyers Are Turning a Corner, Starting With The Young Core
When Daniel Briere took over as the Flyers GM at the end of the 2022-23 season, he committed to the rebuild. It was a tough adjustment as the Philadelphia Flyers had a team that wasn’t built to compete, and a head coach not suited for a rebuild either. However, fast forward to the 2025 offseason, and the Flyers are putting together a team that can potentially make a push for the playoffs.
It starts with Matvei Michkov, a star forward who burst on the scene as a rookie last season and already looks like a game-changing forward. Michkov covers up for a lot of issues on the roster and is the primary building block. The Flyers have also done a good job of finding the right players to work with Michkov, notably Travis Konecny, who has been a key facilitator for the young winger. Konecny has a new eight-year contract. He might not be a key part of the lineup within in a few years. However, he’ll be a much-needed veteran presence and, in the meantime, help Michkov become a star in the NHL.
Briere also selected Porter Martone with the hopes of eventually putting the two wingers together to give the team a top line that can score while also playing a physical game. With the acquisition of Trevor Zegras, there’s also a good chance the Flyers found stability at center. Michkov-Zegras-Martone could be the ideal line for today’s game if all three end up working out.
Martone headlines an intriguing prospect pool. While he won’t play on the NHL roster this season (unless it’s for a few games in April), Jett Luchanko, Alex Bump, and Nikita Grebenkin might. All three prospects are set up to take a good forward unit to the next level, if not this season, then next season.
Defense and goaltending remain the big question marks for this team, and none of the above-mentioned prospects fix either position. It’s why the Flyers are betting on Jamie Drysdale, who showed flashes last season, to emerge as that two-way defenseman and a core part of the roster for years to come. Goaltending, meanwhile, has no long-term fix and remains a weak link. That said, Dan Vladar is at the very least a reliable backup or someone who can split starts with Samuel Ersson this season, giving the Flyers some stability for a position that has otherwise been a liability.
The optimism surrounding the Flyers is also in part because of the coaching change. John Tortorella, who wasn’t Briere’s hire to begin with, also didn’t have a style suited to take this team to the next level. He wore out his welcome in the second half of the 2023-24 season but stuck around another year until he was finally axed late last season. A new coach is responsible for taking the team further than its near miss playoff push of 2022-23 under “Torts”.
Rick Tocchet is the right coach for that. There were mixed reviews on the hire, with some pointing out that he’s a retread and a former Flyer. Overall, Tocchet is known for getting the most out of his players and will lead a balanced team.
Outsider’s Perspective
“The Flyers specifically could benefit from adding another blue-chip prospect to complement Michkov.” Porter Martone is a blue-chipper but he’s another wing in a wing-heavy system. He’ll play at Michigan State in 2025-26.
Philly needs a top center. Could that be 2024 first-rounder Jett Luchanko? Maybe but the (soon to be) 19-year-old Luchanko right now looks more than a future excellent third-line center and serviceable second-liner in an ideal world. Time will tell.
For a team that’s taken the right approach, the next steps are specific. The overall impression on the Flyers’ rebuild is that they’ve taken the right approach, and the next steps are manageable and ones that can both put them in the playoff picture and the contending conversation soon enough.
The Bottom Line
The Flyers were a team without direction for years, and one the rest of the Eastern Conference could beat up on. They are starting to make progress, and with their young players continuing to develop, there’s a chance they’ll be competitive sooner than many anticipate. The Flyers still have a few needs they’ll address in future draft classes and next offseason but the difficult work is in the rearview mirror for Briere, at least that’s the impression for now.
Nice read, thanks Mike.
Thanks. Glad you like it (I was convinced based on the early comments that there would only be good reviews although with the Philly market, I should have known better).
Good analysis. There’s definitely hope in the pipeline and patience continues to be the keynote for discussing the team.
The new front office hasn’t been perfect but they’ve played the long game and it’s starting to pay off.
Flyers fans here. Sure hope you are prove right Mike. But have to be honest. I don’t see it. I fear this is a bottom 1/3 team for the foreseeable future.
The Rebuild is a LIE. The Gaslighting is real. Most Flyers fans are suckers and eat up this teams BS….they deserve this team
Watch them sell the crap out of Tocchet and blame everything on Torts. Torts who admitted to the world he never wanted to coach a rebuilding team and DB who said he still wanted to bring Torts back this year anyway. They have been gaslighting fans with the whole Tortorella is the savior PR blitz.
But yea, we’re going to ignore that because it’s all about selling tickets, for the comcast owned media and the team.
Torts is/was a dinosaur that the Flyers brought out of retirement because he was a Clarke favorite (just google it before complaining as the senior advisors were on the committee) but if DB had his way, he’d still be coaching the team as long as he wants.
Amen
The orange colored glasses don’t get any more orange than that.
Briere said 2 years ago his focus was on the playoffs. Jones told the players the rebuild was a lie. All documented yet here we are with the media continuing to push it. The fact of the matter is the Flyers have been capped out and are still capped out. It’s like being broke but saying you aren’t spending money because you are being smart with your money. There are ways around that of course, but then any pretense of a rebuild is gone and they would still be a bad team.
Michkov is a great young player and Martone is a great prospect but that’s pretty much it. You talk about Jett possibly being the a #1 center before admitting that he’s most likely a 2/3 (which is what everyone outside of the color commentator and rookie GM projected him to be). You talk about the question marks at defense and yet the Flyers passed on blue chip prospect Buium who was (and is) predicted to be the very thing they’ve been missing on the back end for a decade.
The rest are hail mary players. Zegras could turn things around (or not) but there’s a reason the Flyers got him for a song. Drysdale has been here almost 2 years and the media still touts his amazing potential instead of his actual production. Not saying don’t take a chance on them but you are betting that all of DB’s long shots pay off. Not going to happen.
That Tippett 8 yr contract isn’t aging well and is a cautionary tale on one dimensional players, he needs a bounce back year. Couterier is in his mid 30s and has 5 more years on his contract.
Can they make a push for the playoffs? Sure, they did in 2023 in which everything seemed to line up but it was fools gold. They didn’t beat a conference opponent for 3 consecutive months and were 13 points below what it traditionally took to get the 8th spot. Despite these bright red warnings, the Flyers were back baby, until they weren’t. In 2024 they ended up back where they started when Fletcher got fired, a capped out bad team (still hanging on to Fletcher’s 1st round pick but somehow giving DB credit for it?).