Optimistic fans will, at times, overestimate what their team is capable of. They don’t see limitations everyone else does. But Flyers fans probably could have looked at one another and agreed that this season didn’t have the NHL Playoffs on the menu.
Not when you have a young team that lacks NHL experience and chemistry. It will come though, and there are a lot of reasons to be hopeful about the Flyers. No, they didn’t have the right coach for the job, but you can trust general manager Daniel Briere to find a suitable replacement for John Tortorella.
Once he does, Coach X will have a lot of raw talent to work with, and it’s what will make this Flyers team fun to watch in the coming seasons. And you can claim that in 2024-25, Briere laid most of the foundation. But what is it that makes this team so exciting despite the obvious downer of a year?
Flyers got some top-end talent that put on a show at times in 2024-25
Nobody else jumped out at me more than Matvei Michkov. No, he wasn’t the best player on the team this season, nor did anyone expect him to be. Still, 60 points and 24 goals later, and you can conclude that Michkov’s going to be a beast of a forward once he figures out the NHL. And yes, I said, ‘figures out the NHL.’
Travis Konecny will stick around long enough to see this rebuild through, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Sean Couturier was fine with providing a veteran presence as his career inches closer to twilight mode. Plus, he’s old and experienced enough in this league to know the situation, and having him around as an asset would likely speed up the process.
Then, there’s the endless list of youngsters like Owen Tippett, Noah Cates, Bobby Brink, Tyson Foerster, and Jamie Drysdale, just to name a sliver of players. Yeah, looking at this lineup early in the season, I couldn’t help but think to myself that no way, no how, was this going to be anything more than a terrible hockey team…but terrible in a good way.
The Flyers were going to give up a lot of goals and lose a lot of games
As the season winds down, the Flyers find themselves 28th in the league with 271 goals allowed. They’ve lost 37 times so far in regulation, and find themselves as one of the worst teams in the Eastern Conference. But it was going to happen. It was a guarantee. But do you know what else was? Growth.
And the Flyers are a prime example of why I have so much fun watching rebuilding hockey teams not named the Chicago Blackhawks - because the Blackhawks didn’t grow in the same way as the Flyers, or the Columbus Blue Jackets, or the Utah Hockey Club.
Yeah, teams like Columbus and Utah were a cut above the Flyers, as were the Anaheim Ducks, another team I got my eye on. And when you look at Anaheim, you’ll have a pretty good idea of where the Flyers should be next season. Not yet a good team, but one that will come into their own and give fans a lot of hope.