The Danny Briere-led Philadelphia Flyers made a baffling choice during the 2024 offseason when they decided to do essentially nothing. Even with the arrival of Matvei Michkov, no changes were made other than buying out Cam Atkinson and not re-signing Marc Staal. The entire crew that barely missed the playoffs in 2023-24 returned for 2024-25, and the biggest question is why? What exactly is their vision and plan over the next year?
Regardless of the 2025 offseason and whatever it is they supposedly have “cooking” next summer, it doesn’t really explain their hands off approach right now and it’s left fans wondering that to expect this season.
The theory that some have come to in order to stay within the lines of the loose “rebuild” the Flyers continue to preach is that they are indeed attempting to tank to get their own 2025 first round pick as low as possible. Based on the last few weeks of the 2023-24 regular season, it could be a possibly sound theory.
And with a relatively ugly 1-5-1 start thanks to failures at the goaltending and center positions, two areas of weakness well known but ignored by the front office, fans and commentators alike have once again defaulted to calling it a “tank” in an attempt to explain the unexpectedly bad results.
Let’s role down the avenue that the Flyers are indeed fine with whatever happens this season. A couple extra losses translating to a higher draft pick, then a big 2025 offseason to clean up the mess and actually win next season. The pipeline could certainly benefit from a top ten selection and they have an abundance of assets to make a few moves or two next summer if they so choose.
The flaw in the logic? It’s the antithesis of a stealth tank.
The biggest problem with the idea of a tank is that the Flyers have recently handed out some big contracts to players. Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, Nick Seeler and Garnet Hathaway all signed long-term extensions within the 2024 calendar year to compact Sean Couturier, Travis Sanheim, Joel Farabee already under multi-year deals.
It makes the idea of “one bad season and a quick turnaround” virtually impossible to pull off. The only unrestricted free agent on the roster in 2025 is Erik Johnson. There’s only four restricted free agents- Cam York, Tyson Foerster, Morgan Frost and Noah Cates, with at least two of them (possibly all four) likely to be re-signed.
They committed to a huge chunk of this core, and based on their “path of least resistance” attitude during the 2024 offseason, they could just run the same group back yet again next season too. So unless this is a five-plus year tank, the more likely thought here was that the front office truly believed that this group was good enough to win, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
If they didn’t re-up all these guys early, dealt Konecny for assets, and left half a dozen players walk in free agency then went hog wild with money and draft picks in the summer, maybe there’d be some grandiose tank and quick turnaround vision by the front office, but the contracts they handed out stunted any potential fast and easy progress in its tracks.
It does beg the question why wouldn’t they just embrace the “tank” and sell off some of their main roster assets to make achieving their goal of bottoming out easier? The answer is probably because their propaganda under the “new era of orange” has been a hard working squad that doesn’t give up easily. And especially after overachieving during the 2023-24 season, openly taking a step back, especially with Michkov in tow, doesn’t line up with their organizational messaging.
Between the goaltending, running back their 26th ranked offense and dead last ranked power play, an expected bottom 10 finish is certainly within reason if things continue to go wrong, but under the guise of a super secret tank, the team somehow has to take steps back while all the individual youngsters somehow take steps forward. Michkov, Ersson, Foerster, Brink, Drysdale, etc all prove they can stick in an NHL lineup but the team has to drop 20 standings points.
Is that possible? Kinda, but it’s some backwards logic if ever there was. If the 25-year-old and under players on the roster all step up then bottoming out probably won’t happen, yet the roster is still overall starved of talent where making the playoffs, let alone having any kind of run, still feels like a fantasy.
Looking back at recent Flyers history, teams that overachieve and follow it up by running it back often fail miserably. 2018-19 and 2020-21 are both examples of unexpected runs not being followed up on and finishing worse than the season before. And it wasn’t a super secret tank that the fanbase credited Hextall or Fletcher with, it just pissed everyone off that their time was wasted by a front office that was terror-struck at the idea of building when the opportunity presented itself.
What the Flyers internal plan is for the 2024-25 season and particularly the 2025 offseason is anyone’s guess. But their complete lack of understandable direction during a rebuild has made many skeptical about their intentions. Are they looking for a super secret tank? Are they looking to compete with a roster that clearly wasn’t good enough to do so last season? The reality is there’s no good reason why they stayed in neutral during the summer to begin with because it didn’t actually help them achieve any potential goal they may have. But hey, who needs a logical plan when you can just have blind faith in the Brie-era, right?
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
brotherlypuck.com 