Rookie GM Danny Briere spent his post-hiring media tour in the spring using the word “rebuild” liberally, but his actions throughout the draft and free agency didn’t exactly paint the picture of a classic NHL rebuild. He traded Ivan Provorov, but the rest of the biggest assets on the team- Scott Laughton, Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim, etc- all remained on the roster. Then he doubled down by bringing in guys like Garnet Hathaway, Ryan Poehling and landed Sean Walker in the Provorov deal to shore up the depth on the roster, all that plus the return of Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson, who have proved to be healthier and better than anticipated.
By the time training camp and the preseason rolled around, Briere changed his tune, stating he expected the Flyers to win as many games as possible, the complete opposite goal of a rebuild.
When the puck dropped for the 2023-24 season, the Flyers have lived up to Briere’s word, starting the year with a 3-1-1 record and playing some of the best overall hockey they have in years.
With the main roster firing on all cylinders under the tutelage of John Tortorella, despite the small sample size, it looks as though the Flyers may be a significantly better team than most expected them to be. It opens up some questions as to what their next step in the “rebuild” is if this trend continues.
At the end of the day, the one thing the Flyers need more than anything else is high end talent. There are two ways to acquire said talent- draft it or add it via trade or free agency. If they win more games than anticipated, which appears to be the case, they will torpedo their draft positioning, taking them out of the idyllic bottom three selections, and depending on where they finish, out of the top ten picks entirely.
If the roster is too good to snag that top draft pick in 2024, then the flip side of that coin is whether or not the team adds talent to the roster via trade or free agency.
It has been a long time since the Flyers went big game hunting in free agency. James Van Riemsdyk and Kevin Hayes in 2018 and 2019 are the only recent examples, which really stretch the meaning of “big game” in the first place. Other than that, they signed the corpse of Vinny Lecavalier in 2013. He had the name value but not quite the on ice results. They’d have to go back to Chris Pronger via trade in 2009 and, ironically enough, Danny Briere via free agency in 2007 since their last marquee additions.
With that lackluster track record partnered with John Tortorella seemingly calling the shots when it comes to roster construction, there’s reasonable doubt that the Flyers add even one major piece in the 2024 offseason.
Tortorella has openly buried the notion the Flyers wanted Johnny Gaudreau last summer, and he’s taken public shots at players like Trevor Zegras in the past, as well as his former team, the Columbus Blue Jackets, not exactly dripping with high end talent during his tenure. He had short stints with Artemi Panarin, who couldn’t get out of Columbus quick enough, and chased away Pierre-Luc Dubois, and later butted heads with Patrik Laine.
Those Columbus teams ended up being similar to the direction the Flyers are trending- a hardworking team who is, on the whole, capable of winning regular season games but lacking the high end talent to make noise in the postseason after they snuck their way in.
For fun, let’s say the Flyers miss the 2023-24 playoffs by five points, an outcome that seems plausible at the moment. Do they really go into the summer and trade away Travis Konecny or Scott Laughton in a rebuilding effort? They’re going to post their best season since the pandemic started and then sell their assets, theoretically taking a step back? Even if that’s the right move to follow their stated rebuilding goal, it doesn’t make much sense to backtrack their momentum.
But it seems just as unlikely that they go into the 2024 offseason and look to add a missing key piece or two. Between Tortorella’s open opposition to skilled players and the organization’s absent recent history to adding that talent, it’d be a mind-blowing outcome if they landed whoever is the top free agent forward on the market.
It feels like the Flyers are stuck between two unlikely paths- rebuilding properly or preparing for “go time,” with seemingly improbable odds they pursue either direction to their fullest ability.
It’s possible they could run it back with the same core still in place and sprinkle in a few more prospects next season with Cutter Gauthier likely in tow, but considering getting the prospects proper playing time has been a separate adventure on its own, if they get gun shy about giving, say, Ronnie Attard, Olle Lycksell and Adam Ginning ice time, and the roster looks nearly identical to this season with a similar close-but-no-cigar missed playoffs finish, is it still going to resonate with the fans?
A rebuild doesn’t have to be linear. Especially if the team has no interest in dealing their veteran core. The clock is ticking if they want to be competitive with players like Konecny and Couturier. They’re not going to transform into a playoff-caliber team in one offseason, but adding a few pillars to the roster that they can win with in the next few seasons should be on the table. Look no further than the New Jersey Devils, one of the NHL’s hottest teams for proof of that. They added Dougie Hamilton in 2021, before they were ready to compete, and he went a long way to establishing that blue line. They also added Timo Meier at last season’s trade deadline. He helped them secure a playoff spot but they didn’t win a Cup, but now he’s a piece of their future too, helping insulate their home grown youth.
Danny Briere, Keith Jones and John Tortorella can’t be afraid to make the Flyers better. Forward progress should be the name of the game. It was the downfall of both Ron Hextall and Chuck Fletcher during their tenure as GM- being noncommittal and failing to asses, diagnose and address the weakness on the roster. Can the Flyers’ organization get out of their own way for the first time in over a decade during the 2024 offseason? or is it more of the same ol’ mediocre one-foot-in-one-foot-out stuff? A hot start to the 2023-24 season is a good thing for the Flyers, but all it’s going to do it turn up the heat on the front office for solutions in 2024.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: nhl.com
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