Flyers have the cap space, assets to be aggressive this summer
The Philadelphia Flyers could look significantly different when they start the 2025-26 NHL regular season.
With Rick Tocchet as the new head coach and ample cap space, general manager Daniel Brière has plenty of opportunity to overhaul the roster with hopes of returning to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
After missing the postseason with a 33-39-10 record in 2024-25, PuckPedia projects the Flyers to have more than $24 million in cap space heading into the offseason, giving them flexibility for improvements.
On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli dove into how they might approach their roster build.
Yaremchuk: They made the big splash with naming Rick Tocchet to be their next head coach, and giving him that big five-year contract. Now it’s time for them to spend on this roster. $24 million in cap space, and that’s with 10 forwards, seven defensemen, and two goalies on the roster.
Frank, they have a surplus of cash and a surplus of assets. If Daniel Briére wants to get aggressive, this might be the summer to do it.
Seravalli: I think they will be, because they recently just scouted at the [IIHF] U18 [World Championships], and we’ve had Steven Ellis on so many times to talk about how special the 2026 NHL Draft class is already shaping up to be.
The Flyers are thinking: ‘Well, we really don’t want to be in the lottery situation again,’ but I could make the argument for a team that’s struggling to find difference makers that [2026] is exactly the year that you want to be the lottery, because you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a special player if you’re picking anywhere from 1-4 and not just for the shot at Gavin McKenna.
[This year] you’ve got seven picks [in the first three rounds], so you’re looking at this and you’re going: ‘how do we find a way to leverage assets, and how do we also leverage our coaching hire?’ Which is exactly what they’re trying to do.
They made a very clear point in this press conference last week with sharing Rick Tocchet, which was to say, ‘we hope that he helps us in recruiting players because they are ready.’
They believe they can take a step forward, and they want to take a step forward. I would argue that without some clear positional boxes checked—no franchise goalie, no franchise defenseman, no franchise center—that’s going to be really difficult to do.
Any coach can only be as good as the players that he has in front of him. I think the Flyers have their work cut out for them, and a lot of work to do. Let’s see what they can chip off this summer.
You can catch the Flyers segment and the rest of Monday’s episode here…