The 2025 offseason has come and gone and the Philadelphia Flyers are more than likely done making moves. That means that the roster that is currently assembled will more than likely be the same crew that is starting on opening night.
Danny Briere and the Flyers had themselves a busy summer compared to years past, but the quantity of moves doesn’t necessarily mean the quality of improvement was all that great. With the exception of Trevor Zegras, there weren’t many exterior additions that can be cited in the “game changing” category.
So will the 2025-26 Flyers really be better than last season’s version?
Forwards
The forward group was left largely the same, but saw the most notable offseason addition in Trevor Zegras. He, along with free agent signing Christian Dvorak are the most attention the Flyers have paid to the center position in literal years… though Dvorak is more or less a Ryan Poehling replacement, and Zegras is a rahab project at this point.
If Zegras can not only bounce back to his early season form, but hit new career highs while centering guys like Metvei Michkov, Travis Konecny, Tyson Foerster and Owen Tippett, then his renaissance will benefit his linemates and the team as a whole. A rising tide lifts all ships. If he can’t bounce back, or spends half the season hurt, it’s going to be another very dry, boring season when it comes to scoring goals.
The thing to watch here will be whether or not the Flyers give opportunities to their top prospects like Alex Bump, Denver Barkey, Nikita Grebenkin, etc. The Tortorella regime was not very good at all when it came to handing out ice time to the young guys, and now that the quality of prospect has risen drastically heading into the 2025-26 season, the Flyers can’t afford to be so dismissive with this crop of players.
Defense
The seven bodies on the blue line were left completely unchanged from last season. Sanheim, York, Ristolainen, Seeler, Drysdale, Zamula and Andrae.
The major story here is that assistant coach Brad Shaw, the lifeblood of crafting the defense, left and was replaced by former Red Wings’ assistant Jay Varady. It may be the most impactful thing that happened this summer, and not in a good way. If these players regress without Shaw, this goes from an uninspiring group to one that could be quite bad.
They need both Cam York and Jamie Drysdale to take massive steps forward. They were two players that didn’t necessarily bode well under Tortorella, so (especially York) will be one of the more interesting players to watch in terms of getting his career back on track.
The other notable thing is that Rasmus Ristolainen is slated to start the season on IR after offseason surgery. He had finally been playing pretty decent hockey over the last year or so. It’ll be a race between Noah Juulsen, Oliver Bonk and Helge Grans to temporarily replace him on the right side.
Goaltending
The Flyers have had the league-worst combined save percentage for two seasons running now, and they really didn’t do much to address that gaping hole during the summer. They signed free agent backup Dan Vladar, whose career numbers aren’t exactly inspiring when it comes to hoping there will be a major change.
But if he can come and and provide at least some basic stability, even just temporarily easing the work load for Sam Ersson, maybe they’ll be able to claw out of the basement of the league, but it’s safe to assume that the tandem isn’t going to be winning any awards any time soon.
That leaves Ivan Feodotov and Aleksei Kolosov in limbo when it comes to their place in the organization. Granted, neither have really shown anything that indicates that they’re good enough to really miss at the NHL level, but having five bodies under contract and four of them have shown enough to not be considered any good is a pretty big problem. They just gotta hope and pray that Carson Bjarnason steps into the AHL and looks like a superstar to alleviate future questions.
Special Teams
Considering the miserable state of the power play over the last few seasons, they didn’t really make an attempt to fix it. They finished 30th last season, snapping a three-consecutive year drought when they finished dead last (though their 15% success rate last season was actually lower than their 2022-23 15.6% rate.)
Zegras’ career best power play points in a season was 17, which was now two years ago. He has five power play points in the last two seasons since, so he’s not exactly guaranteed to overhaul the man advantage.
Michkov only registered 17 powerplay points last season, which was the same at Konecny, which were the only two players on the roster to even break double digits. Foerster was at eight.
They must be banking on the coaching change to do some work with the power play, the problem with that theory is that the streak of awful man advantage numbers actually started before the Tortorella regime took over, so a swap behind the bench won’t guarantee greener pastures.
The penalty kill was actually one of the few areas of strength under Torts, they even finished fourth in the league in 2023-24 with an 83.4% kill rate. They dropped to 20th last season thanks to the growing disdain between coach and team. Considering the roster is the same, expect at least league-average success, with any improvements largely showing up if the goaltending improves.
Conclusion
If the name of the game of the 2025-26 season is going to be baby steps in the right direction, the Flyers should hit that goal.
If the desire to take real steps forward and see progressive change, they’re probably going to fall flat of that goal.
It’s as simple as that.
It’s going to be hard to be worse than the Tortorella-era Flyers, so at least the bar is low when it comes to expecting progress, but if we’re going to measure progress on something more than “hey, they’re better than the dirt worst!” they got some work to do.
It was a very odd offseason for the Flyers. The hype and fanfare didn’t really match the level of moves that were made. But that goes to show just how starved for action the fanbase has become, that any morsel gets exaggerated.
There are reasons to believe that things could get better. It feels like the Flyers are a team with a bunch of pieces just waiting for someone to come and sew them all together. Is Zegras that guy? Maybe, but they’re likely going to need much more to truly compete in today’s NHL.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: nhl.com
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