Metro Moves: 2025-26 Philadelphia Flyers preview

We’ve finished up the greater NYC area recapping the summers of the Devils, Rangers and Islanders, today we look to the other side of the commonwealth to examine the Philadelphia Flyers.

Long the classic example of the big market team with limited patience and seeking quick fixes, when Daniel Briere was promoted to general manager in the spring of 2023 he promised a slow and careful rebuild to try and finally get things right. Briere has mostly stuck to his guns, avoiding flashy trades or big free agents signings while letting some of his bad contracts expire and trading veterans for future pieces. It’s been very out of character for this franchise to sit in the background and perform the quiet, slow process of assembling young talent, but the Flyers have chosen this path for a while now.

The Flyers are looking to build through the draft — they just made five picks within the first 48 selections in 2025. Between this year’s draft and last year’s, Philadelphia has made nine selections within the top-60 picks. That will take some time to pan out for the future, but their trades and recent down years have positioned them to have one of the top prospect pools in the years to come.

The John Tortorella saga is finally over after nearly three seasons. Tortorella was arguably a little too effective at coaxing out a 38-33-11 record in 2023-24 from a team that was angling more for the bottom of the standings but then finally imploded at the end of last year. In his place comes Rick Tocchet. The former Flyer player received a massive contract of five years at reportedly over $5 million per year. NHL Coaching salaries are starting to increase across the board and Tocchet was one of the most sought after coaches available, which parlayed into the second biggest salary around after Mike Sullivan with the Rangers. This is one area the big market team can still act like a big market team and spend whatever they please in order to get the coach they wanted, and the Flyers made sure that happened.

Additions: The Flyers’ two biggest adds both targeted their forward group. They picked up Trevor Zegras from Anaheim for a relatively low cost (sending Ryan Poehling and a second round pick back to the Ducks). Philadelphia also signed center Christian Dvorak, though only to a one-year deal worth $5.4 million. Philadelphia continues in the endless search in their net with the free agent add of Dan Vladar on a hefty $3.3 million contract for two years, despite Vladar not exactly shining in a backup role with Calgary in the past few years. On defense, the team added depth players Noah Juulsen and Dennis Gilbert.

Losses: There wasn’t a lot out the door this summer. The Flyers did more work at the deadline, shedding Joel Farabee, Morgan Frost and Scott Laughton. They pretty much kept everything since then, besides the trade of Poehling and allowing Jakob Pelletier (a portion of the return in the Farabee/Frost trade) to become a free agent and depart.

Matvei Michkov — Sean Couturier — Travis Konecny

Tyson Foerster — Noah Cates — Bobby Brink

Alex Bump — Trevor Zegras — Owen Tippett

Nicolas Deslauriers — Christian Dvorak — Garnet Hathaway

Travis Sanheim /Cam York

Nick Seeler / Jamie Drysdale

Dennis Gilbert / Noah Juulsen

Samuel Ersson

Dan Vladar

Veteran Rasmus Ristolainen is recovering from surgery, his return will presumably help the defense out some. Otherwise, the change from Tortorella to Tocchet will merit watching how much it will open up some of their players. The usage of some like York, Couturier and even Michkov was hit and miss depending on whether Torts was running hot or cold on them in the moment.

Michkov’s sophomore campaign will be watching. He finished fourth in Calder voting with a solid rookie year of 26 goals and 63 points in 80 games. Michkov offers some of that top-end, game-breaking skill that NHL teams salivate over. The Flyers will be counting on him to be their Kirill Kaprizov or David Pastrnak as the No. 1 winger capable of taking over games and be as dynamic as anyone. Those are big shoes to fill but the 20-year old appears to be on his way to shaping up like something similar.

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What will happen in Zegras’ second act? Zegras put up 61 and 65 points in his first two full NHL seasons from 2021-23. He was on video game covers and emerging as a young star player before hitting the skids and falling out of favor in Anaheim while going through injuries. Zegras only has 15 and 32 points in his last two seasons (in just 31 and 57 games, respectively), leaving him at a crossroads in what is also a contract year for him. Will the switch to a new team invigorate his career? At still just 24-years old he should be approaching his prime, and could make Philadelphia look like geniuses if he’s able to get back on track.

Is this year just setting the table for things to come? It’s difficult not to see this as another year setting the table for the future. The Flyers have $6.7 million in cap space from trades and buyouts this season that goes away. All their vets like Couturier, the LTIR-retired Ryan Ellis and Ristolainen will tick away that much closer to ending. Philadelphia isn’t trying to be non-competitive on the ice, but their foot isn’t really on the gas yet either as they continue to reload and allow time for players like Porter Martone, Jett Luchanko and Oliver Bonk to get closer to NHL ready.

Reasonable best case scenario — Tocchet comes in as a breath of fresh air to revive a locker room that was beaten down by the prior coach. The team plays more free and the Zegras and Dvorak adds down the middle give Philadelphia enough power to be a factor in the wild card race. Against all odds a goalie (be it Ersson, Vladar, Ivan Fedotov or Aleksei Kolosov) emerges as a viable NHL starter and the team makes a run to the playoffs.

Reasonable worst case scenario — The defense/goalie combo doesn’t hold up and the Flyers lose a lot of 5-4 or 4-3 type of games this season. Zegras gets hurt or doesn’t mesh well and doesn’t look like a long-term piece of the puzzle. It becomes another “wait until next year” type of season and sixth straight spring of no playoffs.

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The Flyers are positioned this season in an interesting way. There’s not much in the way of expectations, so it won’t be difficult to exceed them, or at least provide an entertaining year under a new coach to set the stage for the future. Sooner or later with a rebuild, you’d like to see a team put it into gear (though maybe not this team..) but Philadelphia looks content to play out the string one more year and give it time for their younger prospects to gain experience.

This should be a team in a better spot 3-5 years from now — but then again 3-5 years ago that last statement could have been made with a similar sentiment and optimism and hasn’t truly gained much progress. Time and patience has been on Briere’s side so far since he’s only had a couple years to truly start his rebuild in earnest, but even then he did not adapt the building strategy to trade prime-aged parts like Konecny and Sanheim to strip all the way down and bottom out like the Chicago’s and San Jose’s of the world.

In some ways, though loathe as they might be to admit it, the Flyers and Penguins are running in a sort of parallel path these days. The two PA rivals have:

For this year, the Flyers look about like a sixth place team, maybe plus or minus a spot or so. By design, they’re not going for it just yet but efforts to add talents like Zegras and 2025 first rounder Porter Martone could pay off in seasons to come.

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