The 2023-24 Philadelphia Flyers season marks the beginning of the Danny Briere era, and with the promise of a rebuild, theoretically that includes some tactical losing in the name of getting better draft positioning to secure future pillars of the organization. But after a summer when the Flyers didn’t undergo as much change as originally expected, do they end up in the win column more than anticipated?
The Flyers finished seventh worst in the league in 2022-23 with a 31-38-12 record with 75 points, five points below eighth worst Detroit and five points ahead of sixth worst Arizona. In recent seasons, a 75-point pace puts them in the 7-10 range, which puts their lottery odds at 6.5% on the high side and measly 3% – 3.5% on the low side.
While the current feeling of the draft lottery may be muted thanks to Matvei Michkov falling to seventh overall in 2023, in a typical draft that’s not nearly as deep, the Flyers more than likely won’t walk away with a superstar prospect like they did this year, thus they need to be as close to the bottom as possible to secure that top pick and next corner stone of the franchise in the 2024 entry draft.
The Flyers, however, just aren’t built to lose. They’re not exactly built to win either, but there’s far more talent scattered on this roster than a typical basement dwelling club, and certainly more than the bottom few teams in the league.
John Tortorella is a major factor in this team’s ability to squeeze wins out of next to nothing. The fact the Flyers walked away with 31 wins and 12 OT losses last season was thanks almost entirely to the work ethic he instilled in his new club. The offseason moves were made in his image, ditching the players he wasn’t fond of like Kevin Hayes and Tony DeAngelo, and keeping the ones he was like Scott Laughton and Travis Konecny. With the roster fine tuned a bit more to his liking, it’s rational to expect that he can once again get at least 75 points out of the team with everyone buying in to his message.
The caliber of talent on the roster itself is a bit hit and miss.
The defense is a hot mess and shoddy at best. It’s the biggest glaring weakness on the roster with not a single soul a proven reliable player. Losing Ivan Provorov was the most notable move the organization made over the summer and will have the biggest impact on a night to night basis, or at least it should. In the current defensive climate, Provorov ate a ton of minutes (averaging over 24 minutes a night during his career) but his play individually wasn’t good enough to bail out the lackluster defense with regularity. It’s not like they lost Victor Hedman at his absolute peak.
With 22-year-old Cam York expected to be coronated as the team’s next top left-handed defenseman flanked by Rasmus Ristolainen on the right side backed up by the likes of Travis Sanheim, Nick Seeler, Sean Walker, Marc Staal and Egor Zamula, this could very well be one of the worst defense corps the Flyers have rolled out during their 10 years of mediocrity, which is saying a lot.
The goaltending has the biggest unknown factor, simply because as of this writing there isn’t a guarantee as to who is even available for the Flyers. The fate of Carter Hart has is up in the air until the Team Canada investigation comes to a close, and Russian goaltender Ivan Fedotov is having his contract disputed by the IIHF to see whether or not his deal with the Flyers is valid or not. It drastically changes the battle plans if these two are or are not in the lineup this season.
Hart gives the Flyers a chance to win every night. Fedotov was typically regarded as one of the best goaltenders in the world prior to his military abduction last summer. If they both end up on the roster for the season, that’s a Cup-caliber goaltending duo, not a team who’s looking to psudo-tank.
Even worst case scenario in net (Hart going away and Fedotov remaining in Russia) Sam Ersson and Felix Sandstrom will likely be their number one and number two. While there may be less game stealing going on as there would be with either Hart or Fedotov, it could be a lot worse than an Ersson/Sandstrom duo in net, especially of Ersson steps up into the starting role he’s projected to eventually take.
The forwards are where the idea of a “tank” really falls apart. This offense group isn’t elite by any means, but there’s far too much talent to easily lose games with regularity. There’s not a single player who’s guaranteed to pass 60 points, but there’s at least half a dozen would could believably hit 50. They’ve basically got a roster composed entirely of middle six depth. No stars, but not much dead weight either.
Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, Morgan Frost, Joel Farabee and Noah Cates are going to make up the nucleus of the forward group next season, with the returning Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson plus the possible full-time debuts of Tyson Foerster and Elliot Desnoyers, there are plenty of reinforcements coming to the rescue. If they avoid the seemingly ever-present injury bug and get a bit of luck from their prospects, this forward group should at least be able to hold their own on a nightly basis and could very well be the tipping point to stealing a few wins if the goaltending holds up.
All in all, this team is not your typical rebuilding-by-tanking club. There’s far too much talent to place them in the basement of the league unless injuries mount or things go much further off the rails than it would appear at face value, and let’s face it, it’s the Flyers, either one of those scenarios could end up being true.
There’s a good likelihood the Flyers surpass the 30-win mark again, which would immediately disqualify them from top lottery odds, as the bar hovers closer to 20-25 games for the worst teams in the league.
From a foundation building standpoint, it may not be the worst thing in the world if they find themselves in the back half of the top ten. Being the pesky underdogs that just won’t quit thanks to John Tortorella’s tutelage may end up going further in the long haul than a few extra spots in the draft order would. That being said, the one thing the Flyers desperately lack throughout the system is star power, and the best and cheapest way to acquire that is through the draft, which comes most plentifully from the top three selections, which the Flyers more than likely aren’t going to end up in.
Is it smarter to win a few more games in the name of the Torts effect or is it smarter to strip the team of talent and properly rebuild this mess? They sure seem to be leaning towards the former, and time will tell if they ultimately made the right call, because this team isn’t going to be a bottom five team in the league in 2023-24.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: nhl.com
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