Adam Proteau has been calling for the Philadelphia Flyers to rebuild for quite some time. Now that they are, he looks at the next steps.
Adam Proteau has been calling for the Philadelphia Flyers to rebuild for quite some time. Now that they are, he looks at the next steps.
For a very long time, the Philadelphia Flyers have done everything in their power to be a Stanley Cup playoff team. Far more often than not, they’ve failed.
In fact, since the 2012-13 season, Philadelphia has gotten out of the first round of the playoffs just once, and it has missed out on a post-season berth seven times in that span. And in the Flyers’ past three seasons, they’ve been on the outside of the playoffs looking in.
You can understand, then, why Flyers fans are fed up with the team’s attempts to retool on the fly (pardon the pun) – and why they’re relieved to finally see team management embark on a rebuild.
That much was clear this past week, when new Philly GM Daniel Briere sent Ivan Provorov to the Columbus Blue Jackets in a three-team trade that brought back a first-round draft pick (originally belonging to the Los Angeles Kings) this year, a second-rounder from the Kings in 2024, and a second-rounder from the Blue Jackets in 2024.
To get that many top picks, Briere had to take on the albatross contract of former Kings goalie Cal Petersen, as well as veteran blueliner Sean Walker. But that’s precisely what a team on a full rebuild needs to do to eventually have enough young talent to become a legitimate Cup contender. You won’t get generational players by finishing 18th in the NHL year after year. You need to be bad before you’re good, and that’s the path Briere has chosen for Philadelphia in the months and years ahead.
Briere may bury Petersen’s onerous contract in the AHL next season, but that’s something big-budget teams ought to do to give themselves a leg up on low-budget organizations.
The Flyers’ full rebuild is also why there’s a sense in hockey circles that Philadelphia is going to trade starting goaltender Carter Hart. Hart is only 24 years old, but by the time Philly is a true Cup front-runner, he’ll probably be closer to 30. So, why not deal him now and recoup more upper-round picks and prospects who’ll be able to contribute meaningfully down the line?
And let’s look at Philadelphia’s prospect situation. In the upcoming draft, the Flyers now have a pair of first-round picks and six selections in the first four rounds. In next year’s draft, they have four picks in the first two rounds. That’s a great start to the rebuild. You need to keep all your first-rounders, knowing full well they’re going to be top picks in the draft, because your plan is not to be very good at all for the time being.
This is why it’s imperative that Philly tears it all down and, in doing so, puts itself in a position to secure one of the top picks and select a bedrock talent to build around. As of now, they have some talented prospects in their development system, but none of them qualify as generational assets. And the Flyers aren’t going to get one of those in the 2023 draft, as they’re picking seventh overall in the first round. No, they’ll need to be much worse than they were this year if they’re going to get the best odds at winning a draft lottery and selecting first-or-second-overall.
All they need to do to see why that’s the most proven long-term winning strategy is to look at the Chicago Blackhawks – a formerly-great team that went through the entire competitive cycle and chose to go on a basement-to-roof rebuild. The Blackhawks stunk out the joint for many years and wound up winning the draft lottery for the upcoming draft. The Hawks will take junior hockey dynamo Connor Bedard with their No. 1 pick this year, and Chicago supporters now have genuine hope they’ll be able to improve sufficiently enough to win Cups again.
Flyers fans sometimes take it on the chin for being a fickle bunch, but we’ve always said that they’d be amenable to a full rebuild, so long as Philadelphia management commits completely to that rebuild and doesn’t take shortcuts in the process. We think Briere understands that. We think the Flyers will be able to suffer through dozens of defeats if they understand there is light at the tunnel’s end.
At long last, Flyers brass are ready to start from scratch and bulldoze the roster as they identify which youngsters are going to be complementary parts of the team four or five years from now. If Philadelphia’s draft and development team identifies and grooms more young talent to potentially become part of the core, that’s terrific for the franchise.
However, make no mistake – Philly is now on a road with many bumps ahead until further notice. But they know that, at the end of that road, there’s going to be a Bedard-type of superstar wearing Black and Orange. This is why Blackhawks fans will now tell you all the pain of their losing seasons was worth it. Chicago got its superstar for the next 15 years and beyond. That’s what the Flyers will likely have a handful of years from now.
It’s worth repeating because it’s true: the way the NHL’s talent distribution is structured, you must be bad before you’re good. For too long, Philadelphia has tried to fast-track a needed rebuild, and they’ve paid the price for it by being a regular visitor to the league’s mushy middle, a place where you never win games or draft lotteries.
Briere knows this to be true, and finally, the Flyers are on the proper path to relevance again. If you’re a Philly fan, that’s a philosophical sea change that’s well worth celebrating.