RYAN KENNEDY: Danny Briere, GM of the Philadelphia Flyers, thank you so much for doing this. We’re doing this interview in the team’s brand-new dressing room, where a lot of young players who made the Flyers this season will make their home. I’m interested in your expectations of these youngsters and what they can learn as they help the team on the ice.
DANIEL BRIERE: I think that a little bit of that started last year. Travis Konecny took a big step last season, Owen Tippett did, too. As did Morgan Frost and Noah Cates, so there was kind of a shift up front for us last year. Cam York on defense, but most of the switch started on offense, and this year, you had guys like Bobby Brink and Tyson Foerster, and we hope that the guys that I mentioned earlier will keep taking a step.
It’s something that was needed for the organization, for the future of this organization, so we’re excited about that. Now, we hope to see that maybe a little more on defense with Egor Zamula, Emil Andrae, and we have other guys also in the minors that are almost ready to play.
So, for expectations, it’s tough because we’re a young team, and I’m not too sure. It’s going to depend on players’ growth. We wanted to surround them with quality veterans as well. It’s really tough to really know what’s going to happen this year with our team. What I’m hoping for is to see some growth, players getting better and really taking a step like we’ve seen last year.
We also have Joel Farabee, who’s still very young, but because he’s been around so long, we feel he’s an older veteran. We’ve seen him take a bigger leadership role. So, it’s a really exciting time to be a Flyers fan, I feel.
RK: There are players that are going to be coming up onto the roster in the coming years. How important is it to have that kind of connective tissue? Obviously, this year, Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson coming back from injury is huge from a veteran perspective, but the fact that guys like Konecny and Farabee are already in their fifth, sixth or seventh seasons. How important is it to make sure that you’re not just getting a big sort of clump of 20- and 21-year-olds at one time?
DB: It’s critical. I really feel you can’t just throw all kinds of youth in a lineup and expect them to grow the proper way. That’s where guys like Couturier and Atkinson coming back was huge. The leadership that Scotty Laughton showed last year really is critical and important for our young guys. We wanted to surround them with guys that they feel comfortable with going on the ice, guys that will be there to protect them.
Nicolas Deslauriers last year, the role that he played I thought was critical for the growth of our young guys. Adding Ryan Poehling and Garnet Hathaway, we felt was extremely important again to help our young guys grow, feel comfortable going out there that nobody is going to take advantage of them. Up front, we like the look of our team, but we understand that there’s going to be some growing pains here and there. But we feel we surrounded our guys with key and proper leadership.
RK: This past summer, your first official draft as GM. Curious just what that experience was for you being at the head of the table, so to speak?
DB: It was exciting to be calling out the names, but, to be honest, most of the work was done by our amateur scouting groups. It’s their day, led by Brent Flahr. I thought they did tremendous work knowing the prospects in and out. We felt ready going into it, made a little bit of a splash with Matvei Michkov dropping to No. 7. We didn’t know what was going to happen there, but we were excited.
We don’t really have anyone like him in the organization. So, it was definitely different. I feel that a lot of people thought that we were going to pass on him and go into a different direction, but the upside of a player like him, we don’t have that in the organization, and that was something we felt that we couldn’t pass up at the moment.
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