The 2023-24 Philadelphia Flyers’ season was a roller coaster. On the whole, they’ve rose 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 and missed out on the playoffs because of it. What was originally anticipated to be a relatively quiet summer took a complete 180° turn with the potential arrival of 19-year-old Russian phenom Matvei Michkov. If he starts the season in Philly, the front office needs 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 always a major question in and of itself, here’s what the roster could look like to start the season.
Matvei Michkov – Trevor Zegras – Mitch Marner
Michkov shows up early, and the Flyers’ front office goes out of their way to make the two biggest additions the organization has seen in 15 years to compliment his arrival to round out a brand new, offensively dynamic top line.
Johnny Gaudreau – Morgan Frost – Tyson Foerster
The Flyers land Gaudreau in a swap of bad contract for bad contract. He immediately becomes the most dynamic player Frost has ever lined up with, and sophomore Tyson Foerster’s goalscoring ability should increase drastically because of it.
Noah Cates – Sean Monahan – Owen Tippett
Monahan’s bounce back season in 2023-24 should make him a decent candidate for a middle-six center role with the Flyers. Tippett lands on the third line, but should be interchangeable with Foerster if need be. Cates remains a shutdown winger.
Olle Lycksell – Ryan Poehling – Garnet Hathaway
Poehling can finally just play his normal 4C role, and Tortorella’s beloved Hathaway and less than beloved Lycksell will flank him.
Cam York – Travis Sanheim
The Flyers relied heavily on the York-Sanheim duo in 2023-24, so there’s no reason to think they won’t be together most nights in 2024-25.
Nick Seeler – Jamie Drysdale
Pigeonholing Drysdale as Seeler’s partner is a really dumb idea and drastically limits his ceiling, but it has been a pair the organization has already talked about rolling next season.
Emil Andrae – Ronnie Attard
Ronnie Attard’s contract coverts to one-way status, and Andrae is called up full time to quarterback a new, and much more dangerous power play.
Samuel Ersson
Ersson returns and holds down the starting role, but his time will probably be greatly reduced into more of a tandem role than his bonafide starter level of ice time last season.
Ivan Fedotov
Fedotov probably sees a decent amount of ice time throughout the season, or at least until one or the other establishes themselves as the starting goalie, rather than a hot potato of who’s less terrible like the conclusion of the 2023-24 season.
Notable Losses
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.
Sean Couturier– The newly named captain’s tenure comes to an end early after an offseason agent change and feud with head coach John Tortorella. They swap his 6 x $7.75 contract for Gaudreau’s 5 x $9.75 contract. Flyers take the higher cap hit but less term for a player that is significantly more dynamic than Couturier in their attempt to overhaul the offense.
Bobby Brink- Brink didn’t have the easiest time conforming to the Tortorella system, so he gets shipped out of town in one of the various high-profile trades the team makes this summer. Will they live to regret giving up on him? Probably, it’s the Flyers’ luck after all, but his replacement should be more than enough to make them forget all about him.
Scott Laughton– It sure seems like the Flyers screwed up not trading Laughton during the 2023 offseason or 2024 trade deadline, 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 and sign a third string AHLer to tandem with (maybe) 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
Matvei Michkov– The 19-year-old forward gets out of his KHL contract sooner than expected and joins the Flyers, thus the need to go crazy during the offseason and bring in some much needed forward reinforcements to prevent him from floundering on this otherwise anemic squad.
Trevor Zegras- Zegras is 22 years old and has 155 points in 211 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.
Mitch Marner- Marner is the biggest addition the Flyers have made in nearly 15 years. The 27-year-old forward has 639 points in 576 games and 195 of those point have come on the powerplay. Are there some potential downsides, especially in a Tortorella system? Sure, but he also has the offensive upside we haven’t seen in a very long time and he’s exactly the caliber of forward that Michkov can blossom with.
Johnny Gaudreau- The Flyers trade the 6 x $7.75 million left on Couturier’s contract for the 5 x $9.75 remaining on his. He’s far more useful that Couturier and, with the goal being fixing the lack of scoring, powerplay, and giving Michkov as many weapons as possible, It could be worth the slightly higher cap hit. And he checks the pandering box the front office loves as the hometown hero that Briere can bring home after Chuck Fletcher fumbled a couple years ago.
Sean Monahan– This is a very wing-heavy offseason, and especially if the Flyers ditch both Laughton and Couturier, they need a body down the middle. The 29-year-old Monahan has had some health issues, but he did manage 26 goals and 59 points in 83 games between the Jets and Canadiens this season. He should be a defensively sound, relatively cheap, middle-six body with a slight scoring upside to hold down the fort for a few years.
Likeliness
With the idea of Matvei Michkov making the early jump to North America, the Flyers need to turn their focus to overhauling their dreadful offense as quickly as possible. They have more than enough draft picks and prospects at their disposal to craft some major trades, assets that are better used to insulate Michkov than they are hoarded for the next five years for no good reason.
It’s three major moves. Zegras-for-Farabee, Marner-for-Konecny, and Gaudreau-for-Couturier. Throw Brink, Laughton and Ristolainen in those moves somewhere with a draft pick or two to even things out and it’s more than possible to make this work.
The additions of Gaudreau and Marner, plus Michkov and Andrae should be a gigantic plus for the power play. After three consecutive last place finishes (and apparently no coaching change) sweeping on-ice reform is their only hope of fixing their appalling man advantage, and this should be more than enough to make it happen.
The Flyers pretty much ignore the defense in this scenario, but they’ve an overabundance of blue line bodies as it is, and as long as Tortorella and Brad Shaw can continue to squeeze the most out of them, the collective effort should at least serve as a decent enough platoon for next season and hope for a stronger 2025 offseason class to attempt to fix any holes. It may not be the most ideal group ever assembled, but until they know if guys like Attard, Andrae and Ginning have an NHL future, making any shifts one way or another shouldn’t happen just yet.
Working the Cap
The Flyers’ combined low cost of their defense and goaltending mixed with a few key buyouts opens more than enough room to add some much needed forward help. It also utilizes Michkov’s entry-level contract to the fullest.
Nearly $19 million in dead cap is, well, less than ideal. But it’s a problem of the front office’s own making. They brought in Cal Petersen and Ryan Johansen, they retained half of Hayes’ salary and bought out Deangelo. Now, $10 million does come in the form of LTIR space, which still isn’t great, but does help immensely when it comes to the manipulation of the cap and isn’t just straight up dead dollars like the buyouts and retention.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: espn.com
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