How Do You Grade the 2024 Flyers' Draft?

Once a draft is done, media outlets assign draft grades to judge how a team did. Flohockey gave the Flyers a C+ as did the NY Times/Athletic. Yardbarker gave the team a C. Even if you look at how many "experts" viewed the first-round pick of Jett Luchanko, you saw the Flyers given anywhere from a C- to a B.

The truth is, we'll never know for sure how a draft pans out until the players selected show up in a Flyers uniform and hit the ice. The 2022 draft with much-heralded pick Cutter Gauthier seems like a total waste now. The 2017 draft looks like a disaster with Nolan Patrick nearly retired and fellow first-rounder Morgan Frost having just 15 more career goals than fifth-rounder Noah Cates despite playing in 72 more games. The 2016 draft has shown itself to be even worse.

The early returns on the 2023 draft look good. Oliver Bonk is a rising prospect. Goalies Carson Bjarnason and Yegor Zavragin are performing well enough. There are signs that Denver Barkey, Ryan MacPherson, and Cole Knuble show a lot of promise. The key to that draft will of course by Matvei Michkov. However, to be fair, he could also end up being an Alexander Daigle-sized bust.

The 2024 Draft class needs time to show their potential

If Luchanko turns out to be a stud and is centering a line someday with Michov and, say, Tyson Foerster as a front-line option, nobody is going to be complaining. Everyone will be praising Daniel Briere as having the vision to pluck him up before anyone else. Everyone was high on Konsta Helenius. Looking at his stats, I'm not impressed. To be fair, I haven't watched a lot of Finnish league hockey, so maybe there is something I missed.

Briere has loaded up on future draft picks. He has selected a lot of guys with really high ceilings potentially. Five years from now, this could be the foundation of the Flyers team and an example of how to turn a team around. It could also be yet another unmitigated draft disaster. Time will tell. As for now, I choose to be optimistic about this class. This class wasn't selected to make an immediate impact. This class was selected to make an impact later. Patience can be a hard thing, especially for a sports fan...especially for a Flyers sports fan who is starving from seeing this once glorious team delve into a decade of mediocrity.

Who knows, if the Flyers can't re-sign Travis Konency, maybe the point of this class is to prep for the future. Konecny, plus a few of those first-rounders could make for a nice trade to get Leon Draisaitl. He'd be out of Connor McDavid's shadow, be the unquestioned star on this team, and could be a great mentor to Michkov. Just saying.

Have patience. This draft is better than everyone is giving the Flyers credit for. If anything, it already looks better than any of Ron Hextall's drafts.