April 25, 2024
Christopher Hanewinckel/USA TODAY Sports
Last summer's seventh overall pick Matvei Michkov on stage with the Flyers' front office at the 2023 NHL Draft in Nashville.
With the Flyers' season over and the organization still with its stated focus on the future, attention will increasingly start to shift toward the NHL Draft in Vegas at the end of June.
General manager Danny Brière and co. will take the strides that a number of younger players made this season, but when it came to pushing after a playoff spot for most of the year only to miss out on one at the very end, that was never going to do them any favors in terms of draft positioning.
Right now, with the order as it is, the Flyers would be picking 12th overall in the first round after finishing the season 38-33-11 for 87 points. They'll also get another first-round selection later on via Florida and the Claude Giroux trade from two years ago, but where that one falls will depend on how far the Panthers go in the playoffs.
There is a chance that the Flyers' own pick could jump up the board through the draft lottery, which should occur sometime early next month, but the odds are slim because of how they finished and because of a change to the lottery format where 10 spots up to No. 2 is the furthest they'd be able to go if they win – meaning there's next to no chance of landing consensus top pick and Boston University product Macklin Celebrini.
Per Tankathon, the Flyers have a 2.5 percent shot at winning the lottery and jumping up the board. So basically, the strong likelihood is that they'll be working with a mid- and late-round selection in the first.
It's not an ideal draw for a team that has repeatedly emphasized that it's in a rebuild and is still very much in need of young, high-end talent, but it's not an impossible one to work with either. Scouting is just going to have to be on top of its game all while Brière could look to get creative.
Because, granted, he's just over a year in and has had to work with some difficult and bizarre hands already.
"I mean it's extremely tough to do," Brière said of acquiring more skill during his exit interview last week. "We're gonna be looking for it, and we're gonna have discussions with different teams. The bulk of it still needs to be done through our young guys, mostly through the draft. I still believe, with the pick that you mentioned, that we can get a very talented player.
"Outside of that, I mean it's tough. When teams have talented players, they don't want to trade them away. What I'm saying is more that we're probably not going to throw a lot of money at a free agent to come in and take us overboard. We're not going to trade young players for older veterans who are going to bring more talent. We're still going to respect that timeline that we've put in place. That hasn't changed, but if there's a trade that makes sense and can bring more talent, and there's a way that makes sense, maybe it's a hockey trade, we're definitely open for business and we're gonna keep exploring that."
If the ping-pong balls do end up keeping the Flyers at No. 12, then Finnish forward Konsta Helenius, US winger Cole Eiserman, and Canadian center Tij Iginla could be among the notable prospects within their range – though Iginla's rising stock could very well lead to him getting picked up earlier.
We'll take a deeper dive into prospects who could be on the radar in the weeks to come, and especially once the lottery does set the draft order.
For now, here's a rundown of the Flyers' picks for the 2024 draft, which will either be 10-11 in total depending on some lingering trade conditions:
• 1st: Own (12th overall, lottery pending)• 7th: Own.
You can also see the full slate of Flyers draft picks over the next several years HERE.
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