Spotify Wrapped season hits everyone differently. Some people open it immediately, proudly ready to defend their music taste. Others pretend they “haven’t checked yet” because they know it’s going to expose them.
The Philadelphia Flyers fall… everywhere on that spectrum.
When asked about their Wrapped, most of the room admitted they hadn’t actually looked yet — but that didn’t stop them from trying to predict what would be on it. And honestly? Their self-reported guesses were better than anything an algorithm could spit out.
Sam Ersson confirmed that he’s big on rap music, specifically citing his top artists as Drake and Kanye West, along with saying that the song “Juicy” by Biggie is heavy in his rotation. His goalie partner Dan Vladar, however, told me that he’s not a huge fan of rap music, instead preferring Czech music and 80/90s rock, citing Queen as a favorite.
Another huge rock fan in the room? Trevor Zegras. He’s also a lover of the rock classics, citing The Rolling Stones and Queen as his favorites, calling that era of music a time that produced some of the “the greatest songs ever recorded.” But if you really want to get the full Zegras listening experience, he says, make sure you’re listening the live versions.
What Your Favorite Flyers Listened To On Spotify Wrapped This Year
From Squirtle Saxophone Songs to Joel Farabee's lost mixtape, the Philadelphia Flyers are as much of a musically-inclined team as they are a hockey-inclined one.
Matvei Michkov, unsurprisingly, told me he mainly listens to Russian music, with Russian rapper MiyaGi being a highlight artist for him. He also shared a playlist that heavily features more pop-leaning Russian artists from the 2000s and 2010s.
Across the room, country made several appearances — Travis Konecny proudly declared himself a “huge radio guy,” naming Y2Country and The Highway as his go-to stations. Jamie Drysdale and Travis Sanheim chimed in with their own country staples—Drysdale named Luke Combs and Dermot Kennedy among his top artists, while Sanheim leans more towards Morgan Wallen, immediately naming Wallen’s song “Miami” as a favorite.
Official locker room DJ Owen Tippett said that he has a lot of playlists—“probably too many”—and likes “a little bit of everything” when it comes to music, but did guess that Post Malone was most likely his top artist of the year.
Even off the ice, the musical ecosystem around this team is equally eclectic. Flyers play-by-play announcer Jim Jackson shared a soft spot for Elton John and The Eagles (although his top song was “This Is Me” from the soundtrack of The Greatest Showman), while head equipment manager Rick Bronwell casually mentioned he keeps acoustic guitars at both arenas, and has, in fact, taken the stage to play some live music on Nashville’s famous Broadway strip.
The final result? The Flyers’ theoretical Wrapped wasn’t so much a list of top songs as it was a group personality test. And the personality, apparently, is an entertaining blend of hip-hop, Russian hits, classic rock, country radio, and whatever else happens to get thrown into Tippett’s pregame rotation (although Bronwell still yearns for the days where artists like AC/DC were the stars of the locker room playlist).