The 2023-24 Philadelphia Flyers’ season has been a roller coaster. On the whole, they’ve risen to the occasion under head coach John Tortorella but are still lacking the high-end pieces to truly be a competitor in a stacked Eastern Conference. With internal losses like Cutter Gauthier and Carter Hart, the front office is going to have to take a proactive stance heading into the 2024 offseason to address some weaknesses on the roster if the team is serious about taking steps forward back to relevancy.
Rolling with the assumption everyone under contract is healthy and ready to go on opening night in 2024, which is a major question in and of itself, here’s what the roster could look like to start the season.
Tyson Foerster – Trevor Zegras – Travis Konecny
Sitting atop the Flyers’ wishlist is a young, offensively dynamic center and Zegras fits that bill. He gets to line up with the two Flyers’ players that need that jump in their game the most in Tyson Foerster and Travis Konecny. He may not be a Tortorella favorite, but he’s exactly what this team needs up front.
Joel Farabee – Sam Reinhart – Owen Tippett
Sam Reinhart has been a different beast since arriving in Florida a few years back. He’s got 211 points in 209 games and may have priced himself out of what the Panthers can afford to retain his services. He can play either center or wing, which give the Flyers options for his use. He rides with Farabee and Tippett, who could both use an elite offensive producer to elevate their own games.
Noah Cates – Sean Couturier – Bobby Brink
With the arrival of offensive center depth, Couturier drops to the third line in a defense-first role, which should help expand the longevity of his career. Cates can shift back to wing full-time with the arrival of Reinhart, and Brink is still boxed out of a top six role given the depth on the wing.
Olle Lycksell – Ryan Poehling – Garnet Hathaway
Two-thirds of the fourth line return, but Olle Lycksell gets a main roster spot instead of Deslauriers. He should be able to play higher up the lineup, but his presence should be felt most on the powerplay.
Noah Hanifin – Jamie Drysdale
The Flyers lock down the top LHD on the market to tandem with their new young RHD to give him the best chance to develop into the top guy they need him to be.
Cam York – Travis Sanheim
The Flyers’ makeshift top pair gets bumped down to the second unit. Can the two lefties replicate their success yet again?
Emil Andrae – Ronnie Attard
The AHL reinforcements arrive and will come in handy when it comes to addressing the main roster powerplay struggles.
Sam Ersson
Ersson already signed an extension with the Flyers last summer and he’s now thrust into the starting role.
Anthony Stolarz
An old friend reunites with the Flyers, whose goaltending situation becomes a bit unclear in the immediate future with Hart out of the picture.
Notable losses– Scott Laughton, Cam Atkinson, Morgan Frost, Cal Petersen, Nic Deslauriers, Rasmus Ristolainen, Egor Zamula
Cam Atkinson– Atkinson’s production has fallen off a cliff and he’ll turn 35 in the 2024 offseason. He’s got one year left on his contract at a $5.8 million cap hit, which translates to a $2.35 million buyout cap hit in 2024-25 and $1.75 million in 2025-26.
Morgan Frost– The Tortorella vs Frost feud may never truly end, and Frost still isn’t showing enough to be a bonafide contributor or stand out above the crowd on a mediocre offensively anemic roster. They simply need better players at center, and Frost has to be shipped out to make it happen.
Scott Laughton– It sure seems like the Flyers screwed up not trading Laughton during the 2023 offseason, but after a year where he was basically useless from an on-ice perspective, his leadership skills won’t save him this time.
Cal Petersen– It costs the Flyers $3.85 million to bury Petersen’s contract in the AHL for the 2024-25 season. It would cost them just $1 million against the cap in 2024-25 to buy him out, with a $2 million cap hit in 2025-26. It means they can buy him out, sign Stolarz and add a third string AHLer to tandem with newcomer Alexei Kolosov next season for less than it’d cost to keep Petersen.
Nic Deslauriers– Deslauriers does have a 20-team no-trade list until June 30, 2024, but considering he’s the odd man out on the man roster and plays less than five minutes a night more often than not, it’s best to just move on from him and use his $1.75 million in a more appropriate way.
Rasmus Ristolainen– The trade rumors have been around Risto for the last few months. He’s been playing well under Tortorella, but it has also come with a much reduced role on the team. If Drysdale is their top righty, and one of Sanheim or York is taking second billing, there’s no need to be paying Ristolainen over $5 million to be tall on the third pair.
Egor Zamula– Zamula is an RFA who could very well re-sign with the team. Considering his role has been wildly inconsistent and his extension would be on the inexpensive side, whether he re-signs or not to fill the seventh defenseman spot doesn’t have much bearing on this exercise.
Notable additions– Trevor Zegras, Sam Reinhart, Noah Hanifin, Anthony Stolarz
Trevor Zegras- Zegras is 22 years old and has 146 points in 201 career games, with 35 of those points coming on the powerplay. He’s got two more seasons on his contract at a reasonable $5.7 million cap hit and the Flyers have more than enough draft and prospect capital to pull off a blockbuster trade with the Ducks.
Noah Hanifin- The defense needs help. They need a lot of help. They’ve needed a lot of help for well over a decade now. And the organization refused to bring in substantial outside talent since Chris Pronger in 2009. Both York and Sanheim, both natural lefties, have taken turns playing on the right side of the defense, so it’s a possibility they could sign Hanifin as the top pair lefty with one of the other two on the right and the other on the second pair lefty. There’s many internal options, but the organization clearly doesn’t care about playing any of them, so if they want help, going outside the organization is the only way to make an upgrade happen.
Sam Reinhart- Reinhart’s point-per-game pace across three seasons in Florida (with an astounding 82 of his 211 points coming on the powerplay) is the exact kind of production the Flyers’ lineup desperately needs. He’ll turn 29 in November, which isn’t an ideal age given his contract is going to have to be massive, but the Flyers have to take that risk if it means righting the offensively anemic ship in the short term.
Anthony Stolarz- The backup goalie market isn’t great this season, and Stolarz has posted decent numbers over the last few seasons in both Anaheim and Florida. They just need somebody who can hold down the fort that’s an improvement over Cal Petersen or Felix Sandstrom, and Stolarz is as good as anybody in that role.
Likeliness-
The Flyers basically have three main priorities this summer- Add scoring depth, particularly at center (especially on the powerplay), add one high caliber defenseman for Drysdale’s benefit, and find a backup goalie that doesn’t completely suck. They don’t need to become a bonafide Cup contending team overnight, but they do need to address their holes with some level of legitimacy, and two offensively dynamic top six centers (one of them being a young building block), one top four defenseman and an NHL-caliber backup goalie should be the bare minimum they could do to attempt to fix that.
Zegras and Reinhart should be no-brainers (assuming Reinhart makes it to free agency) and a NHL-caliber backup goalie is crucial. Adding a top defenseman like Hanifin does seem premature, but if it ultimately crafts Drysdale into a top guy, the investment will pay for itself.
Working the Cap-
The 2024-25 salary cap is expected to be at $87.7 million. Considering a vast majority of the Flyers’ roster is already under contract, and some of the expected losses come in the form of buyouts, calculating the numbers as close to real life as possible is relatively easy to do. The loss of Carter Hart and his undoubtedly hefty extension also gives the Flyers quite a bit of breathing room financially to address holes elsewhere in the lineup.
All in all, they’ve got about a million dollars in breathing room, even with all three additions in Zegras ($5.7mil) Reinhart ($9mil) and Hanifin ($7mil). This is essentially the Flyers taking advantage of entry-level contracts for the first time maybe ever. Andrae and Attard offset the cost of Hanifin, and Foerster, Lycksell and a cheap Bobby Brink extension give them financial room to address their center depth.
This also factors in a Zamula extension, whom may or may not re-sign, giving them a financial cushion for a seventh defenseman. We know how Tortorella loves his 7D, and with two rookies on the main roster in Andrae and Attard, having one extra body with experience in a depth role (Zamula or otherwise) is probably a sure thing.
Ersson on a team friendly deal for another two years along with *insert cheap backup here* for the next few years is a cheeky way to save some money. It may not be ideal, but if Ersson can hold his own as a starter, it more than works for now.
The dead cap is kind of insane, but it’s just the nature of undoing Fletcher-era mistakes and making smart calls now. It makes financial sense to buyout both Petersen and Aktinson, Tony DeAngelo is only on the books for one more season, and Hayes is just a decision they’ll have to live with until 2026. In this exercise, they’re still far enough under the cap where they can keep Ryan Ellis on regular IR.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: espn.com
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