June 17, 2025
Nick Tricome/PhillyVoice
Flyers GM Danny Brière and assistant GM Brent Flahr spoke to the media in Voorhees ahead of the NHL Draft on Tuesday morning.
The Flyers, along with the rest of the NHL save for Florida and Edmonton, are caught in a state of anxious quiet.
The draft is at the end of next week. Trade buzz hasn't been too substantial yet, but Flyers general manager Danny Brière said he expects it to really start picking up Monday into Tuesday.
There's a lot of future talent at the top of the board, and everyone is looking to move up, the Flyers included.
"So far, it's been pretty quiet on that front," Brière said during a pre-draft press conference in Voorhees on Tuesday. "It feels like everybody's trying to move up at the moment.
We've said from the beginning, we'd like to try to move up if it was possible, but right now there's just not a lot of options there. Teams are all looking to move up, so we'll have to be patient, and maybe there's an opportunity that comes where we can create value going the other way also."
They'll certainly have the capital to.
The Flyers are headed toward the draft with 11 picks, including the sixth overall selection and seven in total within the first two rounds.
"It's a lot of ammo to try to do different things," Brière said. "And not necessarily to move up or down, but it could be acquiring for the future. There's just a lot of possibilities."
In another crucial draft, and summer, ahead for the rebuild.
Here are a few more takeaways from Brière's, and assistant GM Brent Flahr's, pre-draft availability on Tuesday...
At the end of the Flyers' locker clean out in April, Brière said the organization was going to begin shifting from subtracting into adding.
A month later, they introduced Rick Tocchet as their next head coach, and Brière noted that having him behind the bench would help in making Philadelphia a more attractive destination for players down the line.
That's the thing, though, the Flyers are still operating for "down the line."
"The plan hasn't changed," Brière said. "We're not going to pay crazy assets just to do something crazy. It has to make sense. If it doesn't, it doesn't. We'll select our players. It might be all the picks, there might be nothing that changes. But, at the same time, if we have a chance to improve the team and it makes sense for the long term, we're going to look into it."
The Flyers, notably, have cap space loosening up this summer and especially next, along with having the league-wide benefit of the salary cap increasing over the next several years.
There's going to be room for them to make a splash at some point, and there might be potential avenues to one now via trade, but there's an awareness that there's still stockpiling and development to be done internally.
The Flyers don't seem to want to go foot on the gas into the open market just yet.
"It's on the table," Brière said. "But 'aggressive' is probably the wrong word."
Last month's draft lottery knocked the Flyers back to the No. 6 pick while the Islanders jumped to No. 1 and the newly-dubbed Utah Mammoth to No. 4 (the Flyers' original spot in the draft order).
The slide back disappointed fans. Brière admitted he was bummed about it initially, too. But he and Flahr also believe, after their evaluations, that they won't be blocked out from getting a high-end prospect (should they stay at No. 6, that is).
Process of elimination ahead of them might make the call easier, too.
"For us, we feel that there's, from two or three to eight, those guys are really, really close," Brière said. "So we'll have a tough decision to make at six. We know that, but instead of having to choose between five or six guys, it might be two or three guys."
Brière and Flahr, at another point, reiterated that with their top pick, the approach is best player available.
Caleb Desnoyers, Anton Frondell, and James Hagens are among the major names who could be available to the Flyers by the time they're on the clock next Friday night.
The full list of projected prospects who could go at No. 6 can be read up on HERE and HERE.
That said, the Flyers still have a glaring organizational need: Centers, and top of the lineup level ones.
Brière said Jett Luchanko's selection last summer and his development since helps in that regard. The GM also pointed to 2024 second-round pick Jack Berglund as a long-term project over in Sweden, and how Noah Cates' contract extension will help hold things down in the middle six over the next few years at the NHL level as more prospects come along.
But they absolutely do need more, and again, they have a lot of picks to try and figure that out with.
Brière isn't holding his breath to address the Flyers' center problem through trade though, not in search of a true No. 1.
"They're hard to find," Brière said of the center market. "So if we have the chance, we want to start – we started that a couple years ago – to start drafting [centers] and grooming the, and hopefully, down the road, it might take 3-4-5 years, but they'll turn into good players that we can either use here or as an asset to acquire something we need.
"It's just that centers have a lot of values these days."
In other words, don't get your hopes up for Connor McDavid in a year.
But all kidding aside, basically, the Flyers want their next star center to be from within.
The Flyers as they're constructed right now have become a bit of a small team.
Matvei Michkov, as their young star, is under 6 feet, and so are other core pieces like Travis Konecny, Bobby Brink, and Luchanko back on his way.
The team will need to get bigger as it moves ahead, but as far as the draft and their early picks are concerned, size will be considered, but won't be that major of a factor in the Flyers' decision-making for whoever they pick. It'll be skill and potential above all.
"It probably doesn't play into it as much as how competitive he is and the hockey sense," Brière said. "We're aware of it, but at the same time, we want to be careful.
"There are other areas," Brière continued. "We can protect those guys with the [Garnet Hathaways] of this world, [Nick Seeler], [Nic Deslauriers], those guys...We're aware, but at the end of the day, it shouldn't sway us too much."
This year's NHL Draft will be the first in a decentralized format.
The league will still have a stage in Los Angeles for all the picks to come get their new team's jersey, but each of those teams will have their own draft war rooms back at home.
The Flyers will have their HQ set up at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City, with a draft party open to fans at $6 per ticket.
NHL execs and scouts won't all be scrambling in talks trying to make deals on the same arena floor anymore. Instead, phones are likely to be ringing at a mile a minute with all kinds of monitors on and going across North America.
It's going to be different, for better or worse.
"I like, personally, being on the floor and being able to grab the phone on the table or walking over to get something done face-to-face," Brière said. "That's just me. But there's also the privacy part where, having so many picks, having the luxury to just be confined by ourselves and not worry about computers or lists being wide open, available to everybody, because we have so many picks, I think that's gonna be an advantage this year for us."
"I think it just forces you, also, to have a lot of potential trades up and down, probably, the night before or that morning of in place if certain things fall a certain way," Flahr added. "You're gonna have to do a lot more of that. We've always done that anyway, but usually you go over to the floor area and can still get a 'Are you interested in doing that at the start of the second round?' There's a lot of conversation, but now you have to do it by phone."
Make sure they're all fully charged.
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