Believe it or not, winning is good for the Flyers’ rebuild

No fanbase is as tired of Stanley Cup pretenders as that of the Philadelphia Flyers, victims of countless non-starting playoff runs since the team axed coach Peter Laviolette in 2013.

Between general managers Paul Holmgren, Ron Hextall, and Chuck Fletcher, the prevailing strategy was to surround superstar captain Claude Giroux with expensive has-beens and never-weres and hope for the best. After Fletcher traded Giroux to Florida and got himself fired just over a year later, it seemed the Flyers would finally tear their roster down to the tack strips under incoming president of hockey operations Keith Jones and GM Daniel Briere. The new brain trust started hot, drafting potential franchise centerpiece Matvei Michkov and putting discontented veterans Kevin Hayes and Ivan Provorov out to pasture. For once, the Flyers would struggle by design, not by sheer force of ineptitude. Something strange has happened in the meantime, though: they started winning.

Coach John Tortorella, a Fletcher hire whose clout with team chairman Dan Hilferty rivals Briere’s, if not Jones’s, has his players living up to the Broad Street Bullies moniker that had become a parody before he arrived: the Flyers are 18-10-3 through 31 games, good for second in the Metropolitan Division and fifth in the Eastern Conference. That is too big a sample size to write off as a flash in the pan, especially after Tuesday’s overtime win in New Jersey stretched their latest points streak to eight games.

According to resident Daily Faceoff statistician Scott Maxwell, this team is no paper tiger.

“The Flyers are far from a facade so far this season … they’re just outside the top 10 in terms of generating chances, and they’re top five in terms of preventing them, which better suits the make of this team,” Maxwell said. “This isn’t a stretch of good luck; their record matches the play on the ice.” Despite nonexistent preseason expectations, Tortorella’s Flyers are a defensive juggernaut in the thick of the playoff picture as the midway point of his second season in Philly draws near. Oddly enough, that could prove beneficial to their long-overdue rebuild.

Most rebuilding teams must hit rock bottom to draft enough star power to escape the doldrums of the NHL, but thanks to good scouting and better luck, the Flyers have that part taken care of. In 2022, they drafted Cutter Gauthier with the fifth selection. The power forward scored 7 goals in 10 games at the 2023 IIHF World Championships and has dominated at Boston College.

A year later, Russian phenom Matvei Michkov fell into the team’s lap at seventh overall despite generational talent thanks to geopolitics and that pesky KHL contract. The duo headlines a deep pipeline that Daily Faceoff lead prospect analyst Steven Ellis ranked as the NHL’s eighth-best before the season. With 22-and-under skaters like diminutive playmaker Bobby Brink (5G, 14P in 25GP), winger Tyson Foerster (8P in 11GP since US Thanksgiving), and lefty d-man Cam York (22:27 ATOI) already contributing at the NHL level, all the Flyers need to contend is time.

With so much talent set to debut (or improve) in the coming seasons as is, why squander the highest levels of morale and fan interest the team has achieved in nearly a decade with another basement season? Jones and Briere aren’t buyers, but an already-loaded prospect pool means they aren’t desperate to lose either.

While the Flyers’ winning ways have not hurt their long-term plans, they are actively improving the team’s cap outlook. During Fletcher’s disastrous time at the helm, he handed out several speculative contracts among the league’s worst values by the time Briere took over.

Some of his gaffes still resonate; the Flyers will pay Hayes over $3.5 million a year to play for St. Louis until 2026, and though Rasmus Ristolainen has admirably reinvented himself as one of the league’s heaviest hitters, he is not a $5.1 million defenseman. Still, Tortorella’s propensity for getting the most out of his players means that when it comes time for Briere to swing deals on the Flyers’ road to contention, he will not struggle with the sort of cap albatrosses he inherited last spring. 

When Travis Sanheim signed for $6.25 million AAV in the summer of 2022, he struggled to play physically or parlay his high-end speed into production at either end of the ice. Think Nick Leddy with a top-four cap hit (sorry, Blues fans). A season and 20 pounds of muscle later, the 27-year-old leads the NHL in average ice time (25:29) and is far outscoring his career averages (21P in 29GP). Further up the ice, a bounceback season from 23-year-old left wing Joel Farabee, who is just two goals from equaling his paltry 2022-23 total (13) in less than half the time, has cast his own $5 million AAV extension in a more favorable light.

They aren’t the only high earners on the Flyers enjoying big seasons. Star centerman Sean Couturier (7G, 21P in 28GP) is back from the pair of surgeries that held him out of 135 consecutive games and controlling an obscene 64.67% of high-danger chances. Feisty winger Travis Konecny has emerged as an elite sniper under Tortorella (46G in 90GP). Players that were once unmoveable for all the wrong reasons are now major trade chips. If Briere cashes in, he could land a treasure trove of picks while clearing cap space for goalie Carter Hart and winger Owen Tippett’s extensions. If not, he keeps the building blocks of a second-place team. Talk about holding all the cards.

While Briere must think long and hard about whether his pseudo stars are most valuable on the ice or the trade block, their successes so far will help stave off the losing culture that often infects young teams. The Flyers may have only won 31 games in 2022-23, but in that campaign, they reached .500 as late as February with a roster that would have struggled in the Calder Cup playoffs.

With Brink and Foerster added to the mix and Couturier and Cam Atkinson back from injury, Philadelphia is good enough to stick around even longer this season. That matters in the long term. Teams cannot just flip a switch when they are ready to contend on paper. Ask the Ottawa Senators and Buffalo Sabres, who publicly announced the end of their respective rebuilds only to find they cannot forget how to lose even with star-studded top sixes. That the Flyers are playing meaningful hockey this early will pay dividends when it is time to “win now.” 

Philadelphia is not there yet, and with the Carolina Hurricanes and New Jersey Devils behind them in the standings despite superior personnel, the postseason is far from a sure thing. Some negative moves feel inevitable. Pending UFA defenseman Sean Walker has been excellent but only joined the team as a throw-in from the Provorov trade. He will likely suit up elsewhere before the season is through.

Tough decisions loom. With ready-made replacements like Tippet and Foerster on deck, can Briere afford to ignore calls about 2025 free agent Konecny? Answers will emerge in the coming months, but the important thing is that the Flyers will not bottom out as long as veterans like Couturier, Scott Laughton, and (hopefully) Nick Seeler are around to perpetuate the ‘Torts’ method of defense in front of the stellar goaltending tandem of Hart and Sam Ersson.

That might hurt their draft position in the immediate future, but it proves the “New Era of Orange” is about building a winning culture that will last even as Gauthier and Michkov join the ranks.