Of the many storylines the Philadelphia Flyers will have entering the 2022-23 NHL season, how the team divvies up the ice time at the right wing position will be one of the more interesting plots to follow. The front office didn’t make any moves to alleviate the overcrowding during the offseason, which now begs the question as to how the roster will shake out as the 2023-24 season gets underway.
There are four RW slots and at least seven players fighting for those roles, being Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, Cam Atkinson, Wade Allison, Tyson Foerster, Garnet Hathaway and Bobby Brink. Not to mention Joel Farabee and Nic Deslauriers, who can slot in at either wing position.
It’s not as easy as just moving them from wing to wing without a care in the world. Some players just don’t succeed when out of position. Now, that being said, without making moves, at least one or two of the right wingers will have to move to the left side in an experimental role, but it shouldn’t have come to that in the first place.
In an ideal world, Travis Konecny, who’s coming off a career year, would’ve been dealt for assets during the 2023 offseason to not only cash out while his value is at its peak, but to guarantee on open RW slot, but it didn’t happen. So he’ll return and claim one of the two top six roles. Hopefully he can have a repeat season and the team trades him at the deadline, but if they didn’t trade him while his value was at its peak now, why would they do it later?
Owen Tippett is the only other one pretty much guaranteed to have a main roster role with the Flyers next season. The 24-year-old had a great showing during 2022-23, scoring 27 goals and 49 points in 77 games. The organization clearly has a lot invested in his progress and he’ll be sitting in the other top six spot.
As for everyone else, well that’s where things get interesting.
Cam Atkinson, now 34 years old, will return after missing the entirety of the 2022-23 season with a neck injury and subsequent surgery. He still has two years left on his current contract at a $5.8 million cap hit. Given the age, cap dollars and the whole missing a full season with a major injury thing, the Flyers are pretty much stuck with him. He’s the second oldest player on the team after they signed Marc Staal, and has plenty experience when it comes to dealing with Tortorella, so his locker room leadership will be greatly appreciated, though it will cause some positional chaos on the roster.
He should be the first one shifted to the left side to let the youth play on their natural positions, but historically, the Flyers have played the young guys out of position in favor of the vets keeping their natural roles, a scene that has most notably played out on defense with York and Zamula playing on the right side in favor of Nick Seeler and Keith Yandle playing in the left.
If things weren’t complicated enough, the Flyers signed depth winger Garnet Hathaway for two years during free agency. The Flyers felt as though one enforcer in Nic Deslauriers wasn’t enough, so they found a clone to stick on the right wing, too. He’s probably a lock to play the fourth line RW more often than not.
As for Foerster, Brink and Allison, well, the inaction with Konecny and Atkinson, and the addition of Hathaway really boxes them out of the main roster.
Brink is 22 and missed half of last season after undergoing hip surgery in the summer. He scored 28 points in 41 games upon his return to the lineup. He stated during a development camp interview that he’s feeling significantly better after a few months of rest since the conclusion of the season, so getting a chance to enter the 2023-24 season fully healthy at the AHL level isn’t the end of the world, but he’s still considered one of the better prospects the team has, especially at the professional level.
Foerster will turn 22 in January. He led the Phantoms in points last season with 48 in 66 games and was one of only two Phantoms players to hit the 20-goal plateau. He’s their top prospect at the professional level. He should’ve challenged for a roster spot out of camp, and while that battle may theoretically go down on paper, there’s a good chance he doesn’t make it on the opening night roster thanks to the absolute cluster above him.
It’s a pretty anti-rebuild stance when your 22-year-olds, who could both very well be ready for NHL ice time, find themselves in the AHL to accommodate the 27 and 34-year-olds.
Wade Allison’s fate is also of interest. Tortorella doesn’t like the guy, and because he’s under the microscope, his play has suffered because of it. They’re trying to teach him how to play a solid, boring two-way game, when the best use for Allison is all-out offense with reckless abandon. Now, there’s reasonably one main roster spot left, and considering he’s the NHL main roster veteran, he could earn that role, especially if he gets tagged in and out in a 13th forward role, instead of one of the prospects sitting in the press box regularly. Allison has far more to give, it’s just a matter of whether or not he and Tortorella can see eye to eye long enough to uncover the rest of his potential.
Also worth noting that the 2023 seventh overall pick Matvei Michkov is also a right wing. Granted they won’t have to directly worry about his presence for the next few seasons, but will have to account for a roster spot soon enough, a hole they may have to start focusing on now.
In a perfect world, Owen Tippett is on the top line, Tyson Foerster makes the NHL as a second liner, Bobby Brink falls in on the third line and Allison retakes his role on the fourth. The kids (who just so happen to be the ones with the highest potential of the bunch) make the team and spend the wasted season adjusting to the NHL so they’re ready to go when things start turning around.
Though in the real world, it could be Konecny on the top line, Tippett on the second, Atkinson on the third and Garnet Hathaway on the fourth with Allison sitting as the 13th forward. Just the most disappointing outcome that doesn’t actually progress the team any further than it has been. For the prospects, well they’ll just have to ride out another season in Lehigh Valley and wait for an injury to occur to get a breadcrumb thrown their way.
Not the ideal rebuilding strategy.
The complete hands off approach the organization seems to be taking when it comes to addressing this logjam is very odd. Sure, the team isn’t going to compete this season and they’re still very much in the primordial stage of this rebuild, but it comes across as strange that they didn’t try and carve out a spot for their top prospect or sell high on Konecny which would not only give them assets but alleviate some serious pressure on the wings.
Why change what’s completely and utterly broken? It’s gotten the Flyers this far, so why deploy a new strategy now? Guess we’ll have to wait until training camp rolls around in September to see how the team plans on attacking this problem, but in the meantime, it’s left some major confusion about what kind of strategy they are attempting to utilize at the right wing position.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: nhl.com
brotherlypuck.com 