Looking down one, the Flyers are buyers, trying to make a playoff push beyond the NHL trade deadline on March 6.
The other road is more well-trodden by this organization: the one where they are sellers. In the distance, maybe one can make out a third road, the one general manager Danny Brière has mentioned, that entails a quiet trade deadline.
But Flyers president Keith Jones and Brière have long said “the players will decide” which road the organization will take. It’s hard to gauge where things are right now.
Standing pat doesn’t make sense, but which direction are the Flyers heading? Are they the team from the beginning of the season or the team that has three wins in the past 15 games? And what about the future, with players like Porter Martone, Alex Bump, and Oliver Bonk waiting in the wings?
The Flyers closed out the unofficial first half of the season with a 2-1 overtime loss to the Ottawa Senators on Thursday. Jamie Drysdale scored late to tie the game after a master class by the Flyers’ six-man unit before Tim Stützle dipped the puck around Dan Vladař in overtime.
“Obviously a huge point for us,” defenseman Nick Seeler said. “But, man, it would have been great to get that extra point. But you know what? I give our group a lot of credit. Fight till the very end.”
The loss left the Flyers with a 25-20-11 record through the first 56 games, as the NHL is on a break for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. They sit eight points out of two different playoff spots — third place in the Metropolitan Division, behind the New York Islanders, and the Eastern Conference’s second wild card, which the Boston Bruins occupy. The Flyers also have two games in hand on the Islanders and one on the Bruins.
“Some good, some bad,” coach Rick Tocchet said when asked to assess the first 56 games.
It’s fair for a team that at one point boasted one of the best penalty kills, conceded among the fewest goals, and, for once, has a power play that didn’t completely stink. But after their massive January slide, the Flyers are tied for 16th on the penalty kill (79.1%), tied for 21st in goals allowed per game (3.16) — on Jan. 1, they were 10th (2.85) — and are ranked 28th on the power play (16.1%).
But like a famous ex-Phillies pitcher once said with another team that shall remain nameless, the Flyers are saying: “Ya gotta believe.”
“The season’s not over,” captain Sean Couturier told The Inquirer on Wednesday. “People seem almost like we’ve thrown in the towel, but we haven’t. We still believe in our group, and it’s really on us to just kind of step up and take our game to the next level.
“We’re still in the mix here. A little behind, but we still have [26] games left, so lots of hockey left. Anything can happen from now on, and we’ll just control what we can control.”
Flyers defenseman Travis Sanheim will be playing for Canada at the upcoming Olympics in Italy.
No, Couturier hasn’t gone off the deep end. The Flyers may be a handful of points out of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but they really do control their own destiny.
Of their remaining 26 games, 18 are against Eastern Conference teams, with just three against the two teams below them in the conference, the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils. After returning on Feb. 25, they have seven games against one of the 10 teams below them in the overall NHL standings.
“We’ll need to get red-hot, I think that that’s kind of it,” Drysdale said. “I think we’re capable of it. Everyone, take this break and reset — good luck to [Travis Sanheim and Vladař] and the guys who are playing in the Olympics — but we’ve got to come out swinging right away, not waste a game.”
Time is definitely not a-wastin’. It’s a bit bonkers to think that the season has just 26 games remaining and will end in 67 days on April 14 against the Canadiens. Where the Flyers will be at that moment is the biggest question mark.
When the majority of the team reconvenes on Feb. 17 in Voorhees for practice, it will be the same squad. There is a leaguewide trade freeze until 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 22. Across the 12 subsequent days — until 3 p.m. on March 6 — there’s a good chance teams, including the Flyers, will start wheeling and dealing.
But sellers or buyers? The recent slide, and with how poorly the Flyers have played this month, are good indicators that the team isn’t in a spot to add pieces; however, as expected, they certainly aren’t giving up inside the room.
“I think just everything we learned in this first half, kind of put it all together and go on a run,” defenseman Cam York told The Inquirer on Wednesday after the team’s final practice.
“We’re young, but we’re an experienced group at the same time, I think, and I think we all want that pressure almost and we expect to make it.”
Yes, teams can go on runs and make pushes. Heck, the St. Louis Blues were last in the NHL on Jan. 1, 2019, and then, after that fateful day in South Philly where they sang “Gloria” at The Jacks NYB, they went on a magical run ending with the team hoisting the Stanley Cup
Of course, we’re not saying the Flyers are heading there, but the point is: As much as losing streaks can happen, so can winning ones. Can the Flyers dig themselves out of the hole they dug themselves and get back to who they were just a month ago?
Flyers general manager Danny Brière will have some tough decisions to make ahead of the March 6 trade deadline.
And who will be there for that?
There is no denying that the Flyers need to make room for the future. So with a team that isn’t far outside the playoff picture, do you upset the apple cart now or wait until, what most expect, the offseason?
Regardless, it’s a tough call to make with the team kind of there but not fully there in the playoff race. While Jones and Brière have said the players will dictate how they go, right now, it’s sell. Because while the message from the players is that they believe, the play on the ice right now is telling a different story.
So, two roads diverge in Philadelphia. Will they take the one less traveled? Or the one that they’ve gone down before?
Flyers general manager Danny Brière stood in the Gene Hart press box at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Tuesday and stated that he “wanted to address a little bit of the noise that is going around.”
Although he first spoke on the team’s recent “rocky patch,” the main objective was to — obviously — discuss the recent discourse swirling around his coach, Rick Tocchet, and one of the franchise’s rising stars, Matvei Michkov.
“We’ve never hidden anywhere. We’ve been up front with our fans. We have nothing to hide. So I don’t have a problem with that,” he said of the comments recently and the information divulged publicly.
“We’ve been up-front. That’s why I’m talking here. We have nothing to hide.”
Are Michkov’s days in Philly numbered? The short — and long — answers are no. After posting 26 goals and 63 points in 80 games as a rookie, Michkov has struggled to find that form. Entering Tuesday against the Washington Capitals, he had 13 goals and 28 points in 53 games, putting him on pace for 20 goals and 43 points.
“One thing I can tell you, first of all, is: Matvei Michkov is not going anywhere. Let’s make that clear. OK,” the GM said. “Matvei is going to be here for a long time. He’s going to be a good player here for the Flyers, and what he’s going through right now is all part of the learning process. So that’s out of the way. He’s not going anywhere. He’ll be here. He’ll be a good player.”
On reports Michkov wasn’t in shape for camp
In mid-October, the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast reported that sources told them Michkov was “out of shape” and when asked the same day, Tocchet revealed that the Russian winger suffered an ankle injury this offseason — which the coach said he “didn’t even know about” — which impacted the winger’s training and put him ”a little bit behind the eight ball.“
“One thing I know about Matvei is how driven he is. He wants to be the best player he can be,” Brière said Tuesday. “He admitted himself that he wasn’t in the best physical condition coming in. It’s going to be tough to catch up now. He’s in better shape than he was when he arrived this season.
“Unfortunately, everybody is in better shape than they were in training camp. So it’s really tough for him to catch up with the amount of games that we have, the amount of travel that we have; it’s just tough for him to catch up in season. He’s going to do that in the offseason. It was a good lesson for him, and just going to make him a better hockey player coming next year.”
Matvei Michkov has endured a sophomore slump, as he has just 13 goals and 28 points in 54 games.
Michkov said in early December he would spend the time during the upcoming Olympic break training to get ready for the rest of the season. “If you’re going to have good physical form, everything else will come along,” he said through a team translator.
But as Brière said, it is a short window.
The winger also said at the time he would start training in Voorhees at the Flyers Training Center over the summer.
“We hope so,” Brière said when asked specifically about that. “Yeah, he said that, and we hope that’s true. Again, being around Matvei the last few years, I know how driven he is, so I have no worry about the future. I think this is just a little hiccup.”
There’s been some conjecture that Tocchet is not happy with Michkov. It was the same when John Tortorella was here as the team’s head coach. As he did last season, Brière tried to temper that on Tuesday.
“I said it a couple of years ago, when Matvei arrived earlier than expected, we knew there would be some bumps along the way, and that’s kind of what is happening,” Brière said. “The other thing I can tell you, and I talk to Rick Tocchet on a daily basis, he wants Matvei to succeed. He wants to develop him to be the best player he can be, and along the way, there are tough lessons that come with that. That’s like raising a child.
“There’s tough lessons that he’s learning. It doesn’t matter if he’s playing 12, 14, 16, or even if he was playing 52 minutes a night; he’s learning along the way. It’s part of the process, and it’s going to make him a better player along the way.
“And Rick Tocchet wants that. He wants to be here for the long haul to lead this team. Him and Matvei, they have a good relationship. Sometimes they’re fiery. Sometimes when you’re not winning, things are done and said, but they always come back to the table. And they want the best for this team, and Rick wants the best for Matvei.
Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet and winger Matvei Michkov have not seen eye-to-eye on everything this season.
At the Flyers Charities Carnival on Sunday, Tocchet was a guest on the PHLY podcast and was asked about Michkov’s minutes.
“Matvei did not come into camp in shape. It’s hard to play your way into shape. I have not told him, or any of our players, to [not] take a guy one-on-one, come out of the corner with the puck, make a play through the rush. Right now, he’s having a tough time in these situations,” Tocchet said.
“So, you could say other players try. Maybe they don’t have [the same] skill set, but we’re trying to get [Michkov] to that level, how to develop him. [That is] practice, making sure you are on time for treatments and stuff like that. There is so much that goes into [your development], the way you eat.”
Some would say these comments, especially about missed treatments, should have been kept in-house. Brière said the comments were not directed at Michkov, per se, saying it was about all the youngsters on the team learning how to be a pro from treatments, massages, workouts, and proper nutrition.
Totally not concerned about the answer from Rick Tocchet about Michkov’s ice time from PHLY pic.twitter.com/8j5KTdn0AU
“He showed up, he wasn’t in the best physical condition. That’s true. And Matvei was the first one to admit it. But Rick knows how important he is to the future of this organization. He wants to make it work,” the GM said Tuesday.
“The coaching staff has probably spent more time with him, trying to help him out. So there’s no problem with the relationship there. … I don’t see any issues between the two of them. They are both very critical of themselves, and they both have that inner drive. I played with Rick Tocchet, I see how Matvei is. They’re both very driven individuals, and they want the best for the team and for the Flyers.”
Flyers president Keith Jones went on the PHLY podcast, too, and said: “It’s important we keep reminding them [the coaching staff] to play our young players and involve them in the process of getting better, I mean that’s the only way they do get better.”
It was an interesting comment considering Michkov is the second-youngest player on the team and is averaging 14 minutes, 32 seconds a night, the ninth-most among Flyers forwards.
"It's important that we keep reminding them [the coaches] to play our young players and involve them in the process of getting better" 👀
“Those are always discussions that we always have within the staff. We always talk about that. And that’s part of the rebuild, right?” Brière said. “Everybody’s aware that we’re trying to build a team that’s going to be good and contend for Stanley Cups down the road, not just to make one appearance in the playoffs and then miss out the following year.
“We’re trying to create a team here that’s going to be good for years to come, so that’s kind of the direction that it was meant for.”
Danny Brière has officially been the Flyers’ full-time general manager since May 11, 2023. In the two-plus years since, he has made 27 trades, with most involving draft picks or swapping players in the AHL.
But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been splashy deals. And two of the biggest ones are with a little guy he doesn’t hate working with, Pat Verbeek of the Anaheim Ducks.
As the Flyers get set to host the California team, let’s revisit them:
Who was involved in the Flyers-Ducks trades?
Trade 1: Jan. 8, 2024
Flyers received: Jamie Drysdale and a second-round pick in the 2025 NHL draft
Ducks received: Cutter Gauthier
Trade 2: June 23, 2025
Flyers received: Trevor Zegras
Ducks received: Ryan Poehling, a second-round pick in the 2025 NHL draft (Eric Nilson), and a fourth-round selection in the 2026 draft.
As for Gauthier, Flyers fans may want to look away.
Selected with the No. 5 overall pick in 2022, Gauthier never played for the Flyers after forcing a trade out of Philly.
“We tried to give him space,” Brière said the night the trade was made. “We tried to get in touch with him many times. They would not communicate, as far as the Gauthier side. So at some point, we had to make a decision.”
Why? No one knows.
“It wasn’t one specific reason why I asked for a trade,” Gauthier said on a Zoom with Anaheim’s media after the trade. “It was multiple, [recurring] issues that I’d seen over the past year and a half, two years of being under the Flyers organization. It kind of hit me all at once, thinking, ‘I can’t move forward with this, and I really need to step up for myself and see what’s best for my future,’ and that’s what I did.”
Last season, Gauthier notched 20 goals and 44 points in 82 games, finishing fifth in Calder Trophy voting with 92 votes — well behind fourth-place finisher Matvei Michkov — and was named to the All-Rookie Team. Amid that, he returned to a city that did not show him any brotherly love on and off the ice in a 6-0 thrashing by the Flyers last January.
Cutter Gauthier, once the Flyers’ top prospect before forcing a trade, has 19 goals this season for Anaheim.
This season, he already has 19 goals and 39 points in 42 games for an upstart Ducks team that is tied for third in the Pacific Division. Gauthier, who turns 22 this month, is on pace for 37 goals and 76 points.
In October, Gauthier had an eight-game point streak, helped by his first NHL hat trick against the Florida Panthers. He skates on the left wing of the Ducks’ top line, alongside Leo Carlsson and Alex Killorn, while also getting time on the second power-play unit, where he has tallied four power-play goals and eight points.
Poehling, a first-round pick in 2017 for the Montreal Canadiens, resurrected his career in Philly after being signed to a one-year, bet-on-himself deal on July 1, 2023.
The speedy center, who collected 28 points in 77 games that season, became a favorite of then-coach John Tortorella and earned himself a two-year extension on Jan. 26, 2024. The following season, despite being impacted by injury, he set career highs in goals (12) and points (31) in 68 games with the Flyers.
Across his two seasons, Poehling was heavily relied on to kill penalties. He skated the second-most shorthanded minutes among forwards (235 minutes, 17 seconds). He tied Scott Laughton and Garnet Hathaway for second on the team with three shorthanded goals during that time frame and tied Hathaway, with whom he was often paired, for third with five shorthanded points.
Poehling, who has two goals and 14 points this season, has eight points across his last 12 games while centering Anaheim’s fourth line with Jansen Harkins and tough guy Ross Johnston.
What happened to Drysdale and Zegras?
In summation, two words: good things.
The two buddies have been key to the Flyers’ good vibes this season, with Zegras leading the team in goals (15), points (39), power-play goals (five), and power-play points (12) through 40 games.
While Zegras has officially put his last two years in Anaheim behind him, Drysdale has quietly shifted from being just a purely offensive blueliner who is questionable on defense to a guy who can play a complete 200-foot game.
Jamie Drysdale, who is still just 23, has improved defensively in his first year under Rick Tocchet.
With Drysdale paired with Emil Andrae since Nov. 22, the two have skated more than 300 minutes together and have been on the ice for 18 goals by the Flyers and just nine against.
So does Drysdale like being the veteran on the pairing with Andrae, who is the same age as him (23) but has played 182 fewer NHL games?
“A little bit, I do, yeah, I like it,” Drysdale said. “I love playing with Emil. He’s got a good mind, and I think that we have similar mindsets as well on and off the ice. And it’s good to build off each other.”
Drysdale is known to be a quiet guy, but he says he’s been more chatty on the ice, which is important as the veteran in the pairing. And a lot of it is to remind himself what to do, too, which seems to be working.
He takes a lot of pride in his trajectory, noting that the defensive side is “coming to me more naturally now.” And while Drysdale’s power-play time is up and down, coach Rick Tocchet likes that he is consistent at five-on-five and is very good at following his philosophy of skating forward to defend.
“Well, I had heard a lot of different things, but what’s his identity?” Tocchet said when asked what he knew of Drysdale before coming to Philly. “And I didn’t really know that, but I know the one thing is that he came to camp in really good shape and he wanted to shake the tag that he wasn’t a good defensive player.
“So he corrected those two things, right? Came in great shape. He’s been really good [at] defending, so now we’re going to ask him [for] a little more offense eventually, but that’s a work in progress. I don’t want him to suffer in his other parts of the game to try to get the other part. I think he’s just got to chip away at that part, and he’s a very coachable kid.”
What is the trade grade today?
Originally, our Drysdale-Gauthier trade received an A-minus grade, and the Zegras trade an A. Today, almost two years after the former and just over six months after the latter, it’s an overall A.
Why?
Although Gauthier would rank No. 2 in scoring on the Flyers behind Zegras across several categories and has a promising career ahead of him as a goal scorer, the forward made it clear he didn’t want to play in Philly. So why keep a malcontent?
Trading him away became inevitable, and it made sense to bring in another young guy with pedigree like Drysdale, who has not only shown a stark improvement — and a desire to do that — but is good in the room. He has become a key defenseman for the Flyers while skating an average of 21:35, tying his career high from 2023-24. And he has worked so well with Andrae that the Swede has finally become an everyday defenseman on a pairing earning top-four minutes.
And what can one say about Zegras? The New York native has been a revelation on the ice and in the locker room.
Those 39 points in 40 games are setting him up to demolish his previous career highs — he’s on pace for 31 goals and 80 points — set in 2022-23, before then-Ducks coach Greg Cronin moved him to the wing. Is he playing the wing in Philly? Sure. Is he also playing some center? Absolutely. And he’s in a spot where he’s able to shine with his creativity and awareness while also having buddies like Drysdale, Cam York, and linemate Christian Dvorak around.
Flyers players and close friends (from left) Trevor Zegras, Cam York, and Jamie Drysdale have had a strong season since being united.
“You’re always looking for high skill level, talented players, and at the time, he was a distressed asset. … You have to be thoughtful and a little bit lucky, and provide an environment where the player can shine,” Flyers president Keith Jones recently told The Inquirer.
“He’s done a great job,” Jones added. “It’s really proof of Danny’s willingness to wait for the right time, and he was really patient on this one. It’s been well-documented that it was a long process. Trevor kind of fit what we were looking for, and he has been all that and more with what he’s done for us.”
A star player was available for trade. The Flyers reportedly showed some interest. The team elected not to pony up the required assets to make the deal. The star player landed elsewhere and sent the Flyers back to the drawing board.
I’m obviously referring to Norris Trophy-winning defenseman Quinn Hughes being traded on Dec. 12 from Vancouver to Minnesota for a package that included blue-chip prospect Zeev Buium, middle-six center Marco Rossi, prospect Liam Öhgren, and a first-round pick. Hughes, the second-best defenseman in the world, and notably a well-documented fan of Flyers coach Rick Tocchet from their time together with the Canucks, is exactly the type of needle-moving superstar the Flyers are missing on their blue line. So why no deal?
That answer is more nuanced than “the Flyers were being cheap again,” and we will address that in a minute. Nevertheless, missing out on star talent has been an all-too-familiar and frustrating pattern for Flyers fans over the past few years as the team has carried out its rebuild and focused largely on subtraction rather than addition.
But that was all supposed to change next summer, when Danny Brière, Keith Jones, and the Flyers suggested they would pull out the checkbook and aggressively try and sign a marquee free agent. One problem: That 2026 free agent class, which was once headlined by Connor McDavid, Jack Eichel, and Kirill Kaprizov, has all but evaporated outside of soon-to-be-overpaid consolation prizes like Alex Tuch, 34-year-old Artemi Panarin, and Rasmus Andersson, none of whom play center, the gaping hole the Flyers need to address most.
With that in my mind, could/should the Flyers have pulled the trigger on a Hughes deal? And where might the team turn from here to solve its 1C problem?
The Flyers were right to pass on Hughes
To start, Hughes would have fit perfectly in Philly, as he is one of only three or four genuine game-breaking defensemen who exist in the league. One of the world’s top 10 players, his dynamic skating ability, particularly his lateral movement and ability to walk the line, and playmaking prowess would have provided a seismic jolt to an anemic offense and struggling power play, and subsequently bumped the rest of the team’s defensemen back into their appropriate slots. More simply, Hughes, while a wildly different player, would have been the team’s best defenseman since Chris Pronger’s injury-shortened spell from 2009-12.
The Flyers were interested in Quinn Hughes but reluctant to move their top two assets in Matvei Michkov and Porter Martone.
So could the Flyers have traded for him? In short, yes.
The Flyers boast a consensus top-10 prospect system, own several future first-round draft picks, and have players who would have intrigued Vancouver, namely Matvei Michkov and Michigan State phenom Porter Martone. Both of those players are viewed as untouchables for the Flyers, and not including them would have all but removed them from the Hughes sweepstakes. Some combination of Jett Luchanko, Jack Nesbitt, Tyson Foerster, Owen Tippett, Cam York, Oliver Bonk, and first-round picks, while nothing to sniff at, was not besting the return Vancouver ultimately landed, headlined by Buium.
What will infuriate Flyers fans is that the team had a chance to draft Buium just 18 months ago. Ranked No. 4 among North American prospects in 2024 according to NHL Central Scouting, the former University of Denver star slid directly into their laps in that draft, only for the Flyers to trade the pick to Minnesota and move down one spot and select Luchanko. While the Flyers still believe in the speedy Luchanko, the simple fact is the centerman is not as highly regarded a prospect as Buium leaguewide. Obviously, there is some revisionist history here, but if the Flyers had taken the consensus top player on the board in 2024, maybe they would have been in a better position to make this type of deal.
While the Flyers could have potentially pulled this deal off by including Michkov or Martone, they were right not to. But wouldn’t landing a superstar be worth the price of a promising young player or a highly regarded but unproven at the NHL level prospect? Not when you consider the Flyers’ current standing and Hughes’ current contract situation.
Hughes, 26, is only signed through the end of next season, and his agent Pat Brisson said “that under no circumstances could we guarantee a contract extension with anyone.” In other words, the Flyers, who are not ready to compete for a Stanley Cup in the next year and a half, would be rolling the dice on Hughes’ connection to Tocchet and willingness to extend beyond that point. That is far too risky for a team in their position, especially one that was already forced to punt away one high-end prospect in Cutter Gauthier, and couldn’t afford to part with another like Michkov or Martone for a one-and-a-half-year lottery ticket.
The Flyers passed on drafting Zeev Buium with the 11th pick in 2024.
So where do the Flyers go from here?
While the Flyers refuse to put a hard timeline on their rebuild and have continued to preach patience, the clock is ticking for a couple of reasons.
First, the team is 17-10-7 and more likely to earn a playoff spot than land a top-10 draft pick to select a prospective No. 1 center or No. 1 defenseman. For context, I’d count 27 players leaguewide as worthy of that true No. 1 center designation, and 15 of them were top-three picks, 19 were top-10 picks, and 24 of them were first-rounders. In other words, the Flyers either need to trade for a No. 1 center and/or hope they can uncover a gem like Robert Thomas (20th overall), Wyatt Johnston (No. 23), Tage Thompson (No. 26), Sebastian Aho (No. 35), Roope Hintz (No. 49), or Brayden Point (No. 79). Rightly or wrongly, the team is no longer constructed in a position to bottom out for that type of draft capital, and that isn’t likely to change going forward.
Second, as we mentioned earlier, there don’t seem to be any ready-made solutions left in free agency next summer. The top unrestricted free-agent center options available are Evgeni Malkin, who will turn 40 before next season if he doesn’t retire; former Flyers captain Claude Giroux, who will be 38 and has shifted mostly to wing over the latter half of his career; Nick Schmaltz, who turns 30 in February, has never reached 65 points, and is best on the wing; and Christian Dvorak, who is already a Flyer.
So who could be available if the Flyers are ready to deal? That conversation will always start with Thompson, who is on pace for his third 40-goal season in four years and is wasting away in Buffalo. The 28-year-old All-Star wouldn’t come cheap, but he is a unique player at 6-foot-6 and 220 pounds, and attractively, is signed for the next four years at a relative bargain price of $7.14 million.
Tage Thompson is one of the league’s premier goal scorers and would immediately fill the Flyers’ hole at 1C. He would command a Quinn Hughes-like haul though.
Buffalo, which changed general managers last week, still seems to think it can make the playoffs, but when that pipe dream is extinguished, which could be sooner rather than later, don’t be surprised to see Thompson push for a change of scenery. Buffalo and Philly make a lot of sense as trade partners, too, as Philly has some attractive young NHL pieces, prospects, and picks it could send back to Buffalo if the Sabres decide to tear it down … again. Thompson would be plug-and-play on the Flyers’ top line and bring a mixture of size, skill, and one of the league’s top shots to Broad Street.
Outside of Thompson, the path to landing a 1C or even a 2C is a lot murkier, as the Flyers would seemingly be out on guys in their mid-30s like Nazem Kadri, Brayden Schenn, and Ryan O’Reilly, with most others unavailable. Elias Pettersson, another high-end center who has been shopped in recent years, is also likely off the block now and would be an odd fit given his up-and-down time under Tocchet in Vancouver, anyway.
I’ve always wondered about Seattle’s Matty Beniers, who has been solid but hasn’t truly taken off offensively since being the No. 2 overall pick in 2021. With Seattle likely stuck with 31-year-old Chandler Stephenson for five more years (yikes), and centers Berkly Catton, Shane Wright, Carson Rehkopf,and Jake O’Brien rising in the system, could the Flyers pry Beniers, 23, away from the Kraken with the right offer?
St. Louis’ Robert Thomas and Toronto’s William Nylander are two others I could see becoming available for massive hauls if things break right. Detroit, which is under pressure to take a step and make the playoffs, and was also a leading contender for Hughes, might be tempted to move a young center like Marco Kasper or Nate Danielson for a package headlined by a proven top-six NHL winger.
Seattle Kraken center Matty Beniers is a young player with untapped potential.
How about a team like Minnesota, which just pushed its chips to the middle and went all-in? Would moving young Danila Yurov for immediate upgrades at wing or center, say Owen Tippett and Minnesota-born Noah Cates, make sense? Would Anaheim, which has its long-term top two centers figured out in Leo Carlsson and Mason McTavish, quickly flip 2025 No. 10 overall pick and oft-injured Roger McQueen for help at wing as it pushes for the playoffs? We know Brière and Ducks GM Pat Verbeek have each other on speed dial by now. Would Eastan Cowan, especially given his London ties, be a prospect the Flyers target if the Maple Leafs look to bolster their postseason chances?
One way or another, the Flyers’ search for a No. 1 center goes on, and there are fewer obvious solutions than ever. It’s time to act and time to get creative. Your move, Danny Brière.
It’s the time of the year to be thankful and Flyers fans have several reasons to be overflowing with gratitude.
Or at least you would think so …
The Flyers, whose front office made clear its desire for the team to take a positive step forward in its rebuild this year and be more competitive, are 15-8-3 under new coach Rick Tocchet, and have the seventh-most points and the seventh-best points percentage in the NHL. If the season ended Thursday morning, the Flyers would occupy the third spot in the Metropolitan Division based on points percentage and be in the playoffs for the first time in five seasons.
“We expect more of a fight internally, and we hope that it’s going to make us better, it’s going to hopefully make us more competitive throughout the season, and maybe push to get closer to the playoffs,” general manager Danny Brière said in September. “At the end of the day, we want to make the playoffs.”
Beyond their record, the Flyers have struck gold with inexpensive offseason acquisitions Trevor Zegras and Dan Vladař, the former flashing his puck handling wizardry and superstar potential, and the latter playing like a bona fide Vezina Trophy candidate over the first third of the season. The Flyers’ checkered history between the pipes is well documented, but maybe, just maybe, Vladař, who is 28 and signed through next year, can bring some consistency to the position for the next few seasons. And in the 24-year-old Zegras, a restricted free agent at season’s end who leads the team with 26 points, the Flyers hope they have identified part of their long-term solution down the middle.
The positives don’t end there. Zegras’ close friends Cam York (24) and Jamie Drysdale (23) have leveled up after surviving John Tortorella’s wrath, and so had fellow first-rounder Tyson Foerster (23), who had 19 goals in his last 30 games dating back to last season before suffering an upper-body injury on Monday that will sideline him for two to three months. York was banged up on Wednesday but is listed as “day-to-day.”
Owen Tippett, 26, has had more good moments than bad this season as he strives for consistency, while Matvei Michkov, who is still just 20, is coming on strong after a slow start. Noah Cates (26) and Bobby Brink (24) have also picked up where they left off last season, while the exciting Emil Andrae (23) looks to have made himself into an everyday NHL defenseman. In other words, the kids are getting better.
The Flyers have high hopes for 2025 first-round picks Porter Martone (right) and Jack Nesbitt (left).
The Flyers have more on the way as they boast a top-10 prospect pool in hockey and probably couldn’t have dreamed up better starts for their potential future stars. Porter Martone, the No. 6 overall pick in June, is dominating college hockey with Michigan State; Alex Bump and Denver Barkey are off to fast starts in their first full pro seasons with Lehigh Valley; and Egor Zavragin continues to put up historic numbers for a 20-year-old goalie in Russia. Even Jett Luchanko got the trade many felt he needed to further his development in the Ontario Hockey League. Martone, Bump, and Luchanko will all be expected to break camp with the Flyers next season.
So all is good in Flyers land, right?
Not if you scroll through X or find yourself wading through the ever dark and gloomy depths of Flyers Twitter:
“I hate Rick Tocchet hockey man…,“ tweeted @aftern_alex earlier this month.
or
“I DO NOT LIKE TOCCHET AT ALL. IF BREIRE AND JONES R ON BOARD WITH MICHKOV GETTING 13 MINUTES A GAME. FIRE THEM ALL,” wrote @Philly4everrr.
So why is a large portion of the fan base so unhappy amid the team’s surprising start? Well, it largely boils down to three things: (1) Tocchet’s style of play; (2) Michkov’s usage under Tocchet; and (3) the Flyers not tanking for a No. 1 center or No. 1 defenseman. Let’s explore those three points further.
Tocchet’s teams will never be confused with the ‘80s Edmonton Oilers, the ‘90s Pittsburgh Penguins, which he played on, or the Detroit Red Wings around the turn of the century. He’s a defensive coach first and has said as much. The Flyers are 25th in the NHL in scoring (2.85 goals per game) and are fourth-to-last in shots per game (25.2), which matches with previous Tocchet teams’ low volume of shots.
On the other hand, the Flyers are much improved defensively and have taken a lot of the “risk” out of their game. Some of that is thanks to better goaltending from Vladař, who has saved almost 11 goals above expected, per Money Puck. But the Flyers are also conceding fewer shots, high-danger chances, and rush attempts. They have allowed the eighth-fewest shots per game (26) and have surrendered the 13th-fewest high-danger shots at five-on-five (64), per Money Puck. They also rank 10th in the league in fewest expected goals against at five-on-five (54.9).
Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet has helped bring defensive stability to Broad Street.
Sure, everyone would love for the Flyers to score a few more goals and shoot a little more, but there also has to be an expected tradeoff there, as the Flyers last season were historically bad at keeping the puck out of their net (28th in goals against), and partly due to bad goalie environments had the league’s worst save percentage (.879). Tocchet’s philosophy centers around keeping opponents to the outside and allowing his goalies to see the initial shot, and the Flyers have largely executed that plan.
New coaches also tend to focus on laying a defensive foundation first and then building out from there. The Flyers, while improved, are far from a finished product offensively and weren’t this high-flying team that scored a ton of goals last year either — they averaged 2.83 goals per game. Making permanent judgments or broad assertions about Tocchet and the Flyers’ future after 26games and where the roster stands hardly seems fair.
The Michkov dilemma is probably the biggest criticism of Tocchet, as the Russian winger is ninth among Flyers in average ice time at 14 minutes, 51 seconds per game. There’s no way around saying Michkov started the season slowly — one goal in his first 13 games — as his conditioning was not up to par after an offseason ankle injury, and he made several ill-advised decisions with and without the puck. So it was hardly surprising to see him play less than other forwards.
Tocchet clearly wants the youngster to earn his ice time and kick some of his bad habits. He also wants to win games and, at times, has felt that he couldn’t trust Michkov in tight games when the team is protecting a lead. While it’s easy for fans to yell “Play Michkov more!” Tocchet has a responsibility to the rest of his players to hold everyone accountable and look out for the best interests of his team.
“I know he’s the lightning rod for everybody around here. He’s got to relax,” Tocchet said in mid-October. “He’s got to get himself into shape. He’s got to be in positions … you can’t just leave the zone. And it’s OK, he’s gotten better at it.”
Flyers right wing Matvei Michkov is coming on strong after a slow start.
Michkov has “gotten better at it” of late and has seen more ice time as a result. His better decisions with the puck and cheating less has coincided with his offensive uptick; he has four goals and seven points in his last seven games and is playing his best hockey of the season. Tocchet is rewarding Michkov’s improved play, as the Russian winger has skated at least 15:37 in three of his last four games.
While it can be frustrating to see a talent like Michkov playing less, it looks as if the message has been received and the winger will likely be better in the long run for it. That said, there needs to be a balance and Tocchet has to teach Michkov good habits without curbing his creativity or reprogramming such a talented player.
Despite what you may read online, Tocchet has no personal vendetta against Michkov or desire to see him fail. He simply wants him to play winning hockey and learn from his mistakes. While this relationship, language barrier included, remains a work in progress, don’t be surprised to see Michkov continue to get more ice time as the season wears on and for this to eventually become a whole lot of nothing.
Why aren’t they tanking?
Should the Flyers have tanked more and kept rebuilding for at least one more season, especially without obvious solutions for their future No. 1 center and No. 1 defenseman holes? This is a completely reasonable take, if not the most feasible one, considering how the roster is and was constructed.
Could the Flyers have bottomed out more and stripped their roster thinner over the past years to get more/better bites at the draft apple? I guess so, but they did largely do the latter.
Brière inherited many of the team’s salary cap problems and actually did some impressive work to get out from players like Ivan Provorov, Kevin Hayes, and Tony DeAngelo, and net high-end drafts picks and prospects in deals for Provorov, Sean Walker, Scott Laughton, Morgan Frost, Joel Farabee, and Andrei Kuzmenko. The only other three obvious and needle-moving subtractions would have been to trade well-paid veterans Sean Couturier, Travis Konecny, and Travis Sanheim. Rasmus Ristolainen is another player they might have moved, but bad injury timing has largely tied Brière’s hands there, not to mention the GM could still move him.
Flyers general manager Danny Briere has taken a patient and measured approach to rebuilding. Now, he wants the Flyers to take a step forward.
Given Couturier’s contract, which still has 4½ seasons remaining at a $7.75 million average annual value, he was and remains all but impossible to trade. Regarding Sanheim, Brière DID try to move him before his new deal kicked in but that move was nixed due to a St. Louis player opting not to waive his no-move clause. That nontrade might be the best move Brière didn’t make, as Sanheim has blossomed into a top-pairing defenseman and the Flyers’ leader on the backend. Whether the Flyers should have traded Konecny before extending him can be debated, but most teams usually try to hold onto 30-goal, almost-point-per-game players who are in their mid-20s and on an upward trajectory.
In other words, the Flyers largely carried out their rebuild the right way, they subtracted when it made sense, stockpiled assets, and didn’t jeopardize their long-term vision for short-term success, a la trading Walker amid pushing for the playoffs in 2023-24. But what about landing that all-important 1C and a 1D?
Those problems are not isolated to the Flyers, as those two holes, along with the starting goalie, are the three hardest to find. There is a shortage of true No. 1 centers across the league, and the teams that have them don’t usually like to give them up. The Flyers have also drafted centers in the top half of the past two drafts in Luchanko and Jack Nesbitt to try and address the position, and also have several young defensemen — York, Drysdale, Oliver Bonk, Spencer Gill — they believe could one day play in their top four.
Listening to Brière and president Keith Jones, the Flyers were prepared to pay up and probably envisioned finding that No. 1 center in what was once a rich 2026 free agent class. That crop has since dried up, but that doesn’t mean all hope has.
Armed with a deep prospect pool, future draft picks, including Toronto’s first in 2027, and a plethora of young wingers and defensemen, the Flyers have valuable pieces to package in a deal for a top-end center when one becomes available. Wouldn’t Tage Thompson look nice in burnt orange? Could things between William Nylander and Toronto turn sour? Might St. Louis be blown away to move on from Robert Thomas and tear it down? Is Quinton Byfield untouchable? The Flyers can bide their time for now and can feel good that they have the type of assets to compete with most offers.
Or on the backend, Norris Trophy winner Quinn Hughes, a huge fan of Tocchet from their time together in Vancouver, could soon be available. As could younger options like Bowen Byram, Brandt Clarke, and Šimon Nemec, for the right price.
The Flyers are set up well for the long term, whether they make the playoffs this season or not, so let’s just enjoy them for a while and see where this season goes. It’s been a long time since this city has had a hockey team it could be proud of. The complaining can wait.
Could Buffalo Sabres center Tage Thompson be the answer to the Flyers’ 1C conundrum?
On Monday, Flyers general manager Danny Brière pulled off yet another deal, shipping veteran defenseman Dennis Gilbert to Ottawa for defenseman Maxence Guenette. Both players were playing in the American Hockey League.
The move sees Gilbert, 29, return to Ottawa, where he finished up last season after being dealt by Buffalo at the deadline in the Dylan Cozens-Josh Norris trade. The Flyers signed the rugged blueliner to a one-year, $875,000 contract on July 1 to provide defensive depth, especially given that Rasmus Ristolainen was expected to miss the first few months of the season while recovering from triceps surgery. Gilbert had one assist and six penalty minutes in six games for AHL Lehigh Valley.
TRADE ALERT: We’ve acquired defenseman Maxence Guenette from Ottawa in exchange for defenseman Dennis Gilbert.
We have also agreed to terms with Guenette on a one-year, two-way contract. https://t.co/T6i6n9iPhj
In Guenette, the Flyers are getting back a 24-year-old defenseman with good size (6-foot-2, 209 pounds) and mobility. Ottawa’s 2019 seventh-rounder, who has played eight career NHL games, has spent the majority of the last four seasons playing for the Belleville Senators in the AHL.
An offensive defenseman, Guenette tallied nine goals and 23 points last season in 58 games. In 236 career AHL games, he has 27 goals and 116 points, twice leading Belleville’s defensemen in scoring, He had a career-high 40 points in 2022-23.
Guenette, a restricted free agent, has not played yet this season and signed a one-year, two-way contract with the Flyers following the completion of the trade. PuckPedia says that the contract is worth $775,000.
Monday’s trade is the fifth deal — most of them minor league transactions — executed by Brière since September. Last month, the Flyers traded Samu Tuomaala for Christian Kyrou. Kyrou has brought instant offense to the Phantoms’ blue line with a goal and nine points in seven games. Carl Grundström and Tucker Robertson, two other players acquired in recent deals, are also contributing regularly with the Phantoms.
Brière also has pulled off bigger deals in his two-plus years as Flyers general manager, including a shrewd move for Trevor Zegras in June and previous subtractions and future-centric moves involving Ivan Provorov, Scott Laughton, Cutter Gauthier, Jamie Drysdale, Sean Walker, Morgan Frost, Joel Farabee, and Kevin Hayes.
Don’t be surprised if Brière has a few more trades up his sleeve ahead of next offseason, as a once-promising free-agent class has all but evaporated and made a trade the most likely route if the Flyers are ready to try and acquire a star or bolster their options down the middle or on the blue line.
After an off-day on Sunday, the Flyers hit the ice Monday for practice in Voorhees, and there was a big piece missing.
Defenseman Travis Sanheim did not skate, and when asked if it was a maintenance day, coach Rick Tocchet said, “Kind of, yeah.”
“Just dealing with a little tweak here and there,” he added. “It’s better [for] us to just keep him off the ice. He’s played a lot of minutes.”
In his ninth NHL season, Sanheim ranks second among all NHL skaters in ice time, averaging 26 minutes, 28 seconds. He only trails Quinn Hughes of the Vancouver Canucks.
The blueliner, who does not skate on the power play, does play against the opposition’s top line and kills penalties.
“Just whatever’s asked of me, whenever they need me to go out there,” Sanheim said on Oct. 19. “I’ve got the lungs to do it. I recover pretty good. So just whatever they kind of ask [of me].”
Flyers defenseman Travis Sanheim, who ranks second in the NHL in ice time, has one goal and four points this season.
Ristolainen update
Rasmus Ristolainen is inching closer to a return.
“In Risto’s case, everything’s coming along nicely,” Flyers general manager Danny Brière said on Monday of the defenseman, who has been skating on his own. “Pretty soon, we’re hoping he starts practicing with the team.
“I don’t know how far away that is, but he’s progressing well, and everything’s going well. We’re hoping next month, in about a four-to-six-week range, hopefully he’s back with the team.”
Ristolainen has not played this season after undergoing surgery on a right triceps tendon rupture on March 26. In 2024, Ristolainen underwent two surgeries, including a repair to a ruptured triceps tendon. According to Brière in April 2025, the injury was similar, although he wouldn’t confirm if he tore the tendon again.
Before the start of training camp, the GM announced Ristolainen was expected to miss the first six to eight weeks of the season. It sounds like he is on track.
The Finnish defenseman played in 63 games last season, with four goals, 15 points, and the first positive plus-minus of his career (plus-3) while averaging more than 20 minutes. One of the Flyers’ top blueliners, Ristolainen, who also played on the power play this season, last played on March 11.
Bonk update
It’s been weeks since prospect Oliver Bonk has been spotted on the ice. The 20-year-old, who just turned pro, is dealing with an upper-body injury that kept him from participating in the rookie series against the New York Rangers in early September and training camp.
Flyers defenseman Oliver Bonk will make his professional hockey debut this season.
“Things are not moving … as quickly as we expected,” Brière said on Sept. 16, adding that he underwent medical imaging that morning despite skating with the rookies in a noncontact jersey.
Unlike Ristolainen, his timeline is still to be determined. But the hope is for the highly touted blueliner to get back to action soon.
“As far as Oliver, we didn’t know how serious it was at first. We’ve kept him out of rookie camp, and it lingered. We kept him out of main camp, thinking that it would get better, and it’s been a slow process with his upper-body injury,” Brière said on Monday.
“But it’s going well now. We’re just hoping that there’s no setbacks. We’re trying to give him the time and proper space between skates for him to feel good enough to come back and play. It’s a little tougher on a timeline with him. We’re kind of waiting on the progression and making sure there’s no setback on him.”
