Is The 13th Pick Goalie Poison For the Flyers?

Draft day, should be a time of excitement and hope for fans and their teams, even the Flyers.  Be it the beginning of a long awaited rebuild, a flurry of trades, or a future star slipping down into the home team’s lap, there are plenty of reasons for hype.  However, on rare occasions things don’t go as planned or management makes a move that drives the fan base to the brink and causes a media fire storm.  The Flyers could find themselves in just such a position with the 13th pick on draft night.

The 2021 Draft is considered to be weak by many of the scouting organizations with some bureaus seeing as few as eight potential first line players and a few optimistic outliers seeing as many as 11 first line players.  This leaves the thirteenth pick squarely in the top end side of no-man’s land, a place that no one wants to be.

If there is one advantage to this spot in this kind of draft it is that it is freeing. Freeing in the sense that the odds are heavily against picking the best player remaining. It allows a team to really take a chance on a high upside, boom or bust player because the rest of the talent pool is a muddled mess. The lack of clarity makes risky moves more defensible. But there is a scenario in Philly which could set the city ablaze.

It is very possible that the Flyers, if they still hold the lock come draft night, they could to be in a position to draft either of the two goalies who are thought to be first round talents. Worse still, scenarios could dictate that picking one of the goalies would be the team’s best move.