There’s nothing wrong with winning. For some reason, there’s a section of the fanbase that believes if you don’t celebrate like they won the Cup every time they win a regular season game against the Coyotes, you don’t want the Flyers to win at all.
There’s nothing wrong with abandoning the idea of a full fledged proper rebuild. In fact, this website has been more gung-ho about making trades than anybody over the last few seasons, whether it be Patrik Laine, Alex DeBrincat, Timo Meier, various rehab projects and even Leon Draisaitl, much to the chagrin of the readers at the time.
The new front office regime led by rookie GM Danny Briere spent the entire 2024 offseason preaching about a rebuild, then followed that up by using the next calendar year doing, well, not much reminiscent of what a typical rebuilding team would be doing. Instead, the team has seemed to course correct a bit, riding the momentum from their much improved on-ice season and seem more focused on the short-term product than they do the long-term future.
It’s challenged how committed they actually are to the future and what path they’re going to take heading into the 2024 offseason, especially if they do indeed make the playoffs. And if the franchise is going to abandon the concept of the rebuild (even if they refuse to stop saying the word in a poorly veiled attempt to sell their snake oil), then the responsibility falls on the shoulders of the front office to take steps forward during the summer. Meaningful, positive, franchise-altering steps.
The reason for this PTSD stemming from the Flyers putting a good-but-not-great team on the ice with seemingly no real plan for the future is because it’s not the first time this has happened in recent history. The Flyers rolling with a roster generally considered a non-playoff team and over-exceeding has happened twice since Ron Hextall claimed a rebuild for the first time in 2014.
First in 2017-18 when a few players over-exceeded thus the team made the playoffs and got destroyed by a legitimate playoff-caliber team and struggled to regain their level of play the following season after a relatively quite offseason, and again in 2019-20, where they rode the momentum of a hot season until the pandemic came along and ruined that streak, and the front office failed to do… well… anything during the offseason and it led to the worst stretch in franchise history.
Capturing lightning in a bottle can result in very exciting short-term results, but it’s not necessarily a valid strategy for building for the future when the team is still faced with various massive questions.
The 2023-24 season serves as a stepping stone for what’s to come. Even if they actually make the playoffs this season, there’s practically zero chance they can pull off a herculean effort to win one round against a legitimate playoff caliber team, let alone win the Cup. It’s always been about how the team responds during the 2024 offseason. Since they’re winning games and shut down the avenue of rebuilding through the draft like a prototypical successful team, it puts significantly more pressure on Briere and the front office to pivot towards assembling a contender relatively quickly, which has been where the Flyers organization has struggled dating back to the late Holmgren days, now over a decade ago.
There needs to be a vision for a brighter future, whether they grow it or buy it. And considering they’ve failed on all fronts when it comes to prospect development and it’s been nearly 15 years since the Flyers organization made a blockbuster trade, whether or not the front office is capable of actually picking a direction is a very real question.
One thing they can’t do is nothing. Briere sitting on his hands and, for all intents and purposes, running the roster back in near entirety and expecting the same or better results is just piss poor management. 18 of the 23 players are already under contract for the 2024-25 season, and with the fate of Sean Walker and Nick Seeler still unknown at the time of this writing, it’s possible 20 of the 23 are run back. That’s not exactly leaving a ton of room for a sweeping wave of change, either in the form of prospects or offseason acquisitions.
If the organization doesn’t step up during the 2024 offseason and address some of the critical holes on the roster, even if Tortorella can keep them afloat, what are the odds they run the team back for the 2024-25 season and get better results than they’re getting right now? If they continue to hinder the growth of their prospects and their veterans like Konecny, Sanheim, Tippett, Walker, and Couturier are all playing at or near their peaks, how much more natural internal does the roster have.
And that’s not to say this roster is bad or needs to be stripped and rebuilt. But the glaring holes are obvious and refusing to address them in favor of championing the mucking and grinding of strong work ethic just isn’t a smart approach for longterm success. They need high-end centers, a couple extra players that can score with regularity (especially on the powerplay) and to figure out who stays and who goes on the defense. It may not be a crazy long list, but they’re some of the hardest holes to fill, especially from outside additions.
Maybe the team doesn’t deflate the way they did in 2018-19 or 2020-21. It’s possible Torts can keep the pace as a bubble-playoff team every season, but is that all they want to top out as? Tortorella had similar results during his tenure with the Blue Jackets. During his six seasons behind the bench in Columbus, they made the playoffs four times, but were booted in the first round in three of those seasons. They famously upset the heavy favorite Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of 2019, but were then quickly dispatched by Boston in the second round.
And based on many social media conversations, that seems to be where the biggest divide between the fans comes from. Some are totally fine returning to a bubble team and hoping for a miracle storybook run, where others want them to build a legitimate Cup-caliber team so they don’t have to hope to be the historic outlier- they can just win.
The work ethic the Flyers have displayed under coach John Tortorella has been a refreshing change of pace, especially since the post-pandemic Alain Vigneault-led Flyers were a spineless on-ice atrocity. Making the 2024 postseason certainly wasn’t expected and, in some ways, is icing on the cake for a group that has worked hard to get there, even if it’s a short run. But the organization resting on their laurels is the last thing they need to do right now. There needs to be gigantic steps forward this summer to avoid falling into the rut of a first-round exit team every year.
At the end of the day, all sides of the fanbase want the same thing- to party on Broad Street with the Stanley Cup. You can be happy with the current product. After the last few seasons even a slightly above average team has been a great sight on a night-to-night basis. But it’s ok to acknowledge that this team isn’t good enough to be a real contender and the front office has a tremendous amount of building to do before they get there, and it doesn’t make anyone better or worse for wanting more. Being cognizant of the struggles should prevent topping out as a bubble team, because we’ve been down the path of mediocrity one too many times over the last few seasons to pretend everything is going to magically work out after one overachieving campaign.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: nhl.com
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