The 2025 offseason is about to enter the dog days of summer as the draft and free agency are in the rear view. The Flyers’ roster is more or less set, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t lingering questions that won’t be answered until the season kicks off in October.
Number 5: Rick Tocchet’s Role
The Flyers had themselves a busy offseason, which may have put the fact that they hired a new coach on the back burner. They set the bar pretty low when it comes to replacing John Tortorella, but Tocchet isn’t exactly the grand change of pace everyone was hoping for. Not suffocating his own roster players and actually icing a team that gives opportunities to the future would be a good place to start, which brings us to…
Number 4: Do They Play the Prospects?
One of the consistent problems for the Flyers during the last few years of the “rebuild” has been the very limited opportunities for prospects to actually break onto the main roster, and get a half-decent chance to succeed for the few that actually get there. The Flyers chose not to make may subtractions from the roster, and have a large influx of prospects set to make the full-time jump to the professional this season.
Technically, all 23 spots are already filled without considering a single prospect. The injuries to Foerster and Ristolainen will open some temporary holes, but they still didn’t exactly set themselves up to commit to the future. It’s hard not to be frustrated with this self-inflicted log-jam. With any luck, the new coaching regime will at least be more willing to reward the prospects who deserve a chance rather than just cut the legs out from everybody.
Number 3: What Does 2026 Hold?
It’s been well over a decade now since the Flyers were movers and shakers when it comes to the free agency or blockbuster trade markets. But with the salary cap in the rise and a relatively well played 2025 offseason where the Flyers didn’t put egregious money on the books, they set themselves up nicely to finally make a big splash or two next summer.
Who do they have in mind? What will it take to get them? Those are questions that will have to wait for nearly a year until the 2026 offseason breaks on the horizon, but if there was ever a chance for the Flyers to finally save themselves and get the franchise back on track, 2026 will be the year to do it.
Number 2: The State of the Goaltending
In what ended up being their most questionable decision of the summer, the Flyers overlooked the position of goaltender once again. They added Dan Vladar, which, based on his stats, probably isn’t quite the answer they needed. So now they’ve got five goalies under contract and none of them are suitable, consistent answers at the NHL level.
They’re still clearly banking on Ersson figuring things out, but there’s a large enough sample size at this point where it shows he’s best served as part of a 1A/1B tandem, which Vladar likely doesn’t provide (and neither does Fedotov or Kolosov.)
They didn’t draft a goalie either (for the second consecutive year) so not only is today cloudy, they don’t appear to be setting themselves up for a real solution coming internally in the future either. It’s a mess that is hard to believe they’ve steered themselves into.
Number 1: Can Zegras be a True 1C?
Trevor Zegras turned out to be the big fish addition of the summer. He’ll have ample opportunity to be the top center on the Flyers, but the question of whether or not he can hold down the fort is still valid.
He was moved from center to the wing during his time in Anaheim, and he’s also spent a decent chunk of the last two seasons injured. He needs to not only return to his early career levels, he needs to stay healthy, and even breakout further than his previous personal bests.
They essentially got the guy for free, so any result is better than nothing, but the renaissance of the Flyers’ offense in 2025-26 will largely rely on what kind of season Trevor Zegras has on his new team.
Honorable mention
Tyson Foerster’s Injury
Foerster apparently picked up an elbow infection at the World Championships, and the extent of the problem is apparently still unknown. It sounds like he could miss little to no time, or he could miss the entire season. He seemed to be one of the players that best responded to the absence of John Tortorella, so hopefully this injury doesn’t cost him too much time, because he could very well be the breakout candidate of the 2025-26 Flyers.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: nhl.com
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