The Philadelphia Flyers are in an interesting position, heading into NHL Trade Deadline week. The team appears to be a bit of a quandary for what they might do come Friday at 3pm ET.
For the moment, they remain technically in range of a playoff berth, as they stand six points off of the Eastern Conference’s final Wild Card berth.
Quandry? There should be no indecision. They are 3 years into a rebuild and have accomplished what? No 1C, 2C, or 1D on the team or in the system. Plan A was to throw money at the missing elite talent in 2026 FA. Plan A never had a chance and sounds like a plot from the movie Dumb and Dumber. Plan B is to pretend there was a plan B to buy time until/unless something falls into their laps.
This is a badly constructed team with contracts designed for the team to be in contention now. Konecny turns 30 next year, Sanheim turns 30 in a month and both of these guys are signed until they are 35+. The Flyers are in no mans land. To many 5-8 year contracts to actually try to draft high and to bad to actually be relevant. They do have a kick ass pr dept and in the absence of a plan, fake it until you make it right?
I don’t think they have any choice but to go for the playoffs this year. If they do sell great but so what? Do we really need more players with size that hit and have the “culture” they’ve been drafting for? How many years can you draft for culture over talent? Just asking for a friend.
I think they talked playoffs to much this year, from the offseason on and ending in the season ticket letter promoting the playoffs. Eh, maybe they’ll blame it on Michkov as he seems to be the source of all the Flyers problems according to the coach.