Last season, the Philadelphia Flyers were a Detroit Red Wings loss away from making it to the playoffs. But the Red Wings did not lose, and the Flyers’ decision to pull their goaltender led to the Capitals securing a first-round bye to get their teeth kicked in by the Rangers. While giving playoff experience to a young core does not hurt (see the Canadiens in the 2025 playoffs), the Flyers just could not handle getting into the playoffs. There will be more chances for the Flyers to get into the playoffs. Maybe this season will be the year?
First Half: Matvei Mania
Flyers nation hopes ran high as Matvei Michkov came to the United States a year earlier than expected. He continued to play for SKA Moscow in the KHL after the Flyers picked him in the 2023 draft. Then his team agreed to terminate the deal that kept him in the KHL, allowing him to sign with Philadelphia. Michkov playing under the Orange and Black became a reality instead of a hypothetical. It also meant moving Cam Atkinson off the team, but when you get one of the more hyped Flyers prospects since a dude named Lindros, you do what you can to make room for him to grow. Let’s get hyped.
The Flyers took the preseason hype and smashed it into a million pieces. While losing three out of their first four games while I’m sleeping—they started their season on the West Coast of Canada and America—makes sense, it does not make sense to take until October 26th to win a game at home. I’m a member of the r/flyers subreddit, and I can recall us celebrating when the Flyers scored a goal at home. It did not even matter if the road team had a lead, but scoring at home led to us acting like we were going to win the Stanley Cup. While the Flyers had one of the best penalty kills (83.4%, thanks to the Tortorella special of stout defense and shot blocking), their power play ranked 30th in the league. At least the PP isn’t dead last like it stayed for the last few seasons? The bar for decent power play from the Flyers resides in the abyss.
It also took them until October 26th to win a home game. In that game, captain Sean Couturier scored a hat trick; I can imagine that he grew sick and tired of the boos every time the road team scored against them and decided to take the scoring upon himself. Good for him.
Despite the team’s scoring woes, Michkov lived up to expectations. He scored two goals in his third game and was named the league’s rookie of the month in October. But he saved his magic for November, where he scored three game-winning overtime goals against the Blues (on a breakaway), the Predators, and the Blackhawks. Fun fact about the last one: I went to the game and saw him score it live. At first, I thought Konecny had scored as everyone stood up around me, but I only realized Michkov potted it when his goal was shown on the stadium monitors. While he did have issues with John Tortorella’s coaching style as well as getting shifted on various lines, he still performed well. In an interview a few days ago with a Russian outlet, Michkov stated the impact Torotella’s hard-nosed style has had on him as a player. He made his mark on a stacked Calder Trophy contention class and will be a star for years to come.
And now, a live look at Flyers goaltending, with Rod Brind’Amour representing opponents against the Flyers:
Yes, the Flyers offense did not give the goaltenders much support (238 goals for, a middling twenty-fourth in the NHL), but when all three goaltenders—Ivan Fedotov, Sam Ersson, and Aleksei Kolosov—have save percentages well below .900, there is a problem behind the pipes. The Flyers’ goaltenders gave up 283 goals, putting them at the same level of goaltending incompetence as the Buffalo Sabres, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the San Jose Sharks with Fourgiev. While it is easy to blame Carter Hart’s leaving the team to face sexual assault charges as a problem, Flyers goaltending has been a consistent problem, akin to the Phillies and their bullpen issues. Either goalies get traded elsewhere and thrive (Sergei Bobrovsky) or management invests in a goaltender who then rewards the team with poor performance or drafts a goalie who does not pan out (Ilya Bryzgalov, Felix Sandstrom). The only way to fix goaltending is to have at least a decent goalie, and right now, the Flyers do not even have that.
Pre-and Inter-Four Nations Facing Off Loop: Remember It’s A Rebuild
The Flyers took a significant step back in their play, which led to Danny Briere trading away players early. Nearly two months before the deadline, he traded forwards Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost to Calgary for Andrei Kuzmenko, Jacob Pelletier, and a 2025 second-round as well as a 2028 seventh-round pick. Frost and Farabee underperformed, with Frost due for at least one costly turnover in the neutral or defensive zone. He also had issues with John Tortorella’s coaching style and definitely needed a change of scenery. Joel Farabee’s production tapered off during the second half of the 2023-2024 season and the first half of this season. While Kuzmenko and Pelletier did have visa issues that kept them out for a few games2, they did do okay in the games they played with the Flyers.
At least the team annihilated the Anaheim Ducks in the two games they played, including a 6-0 shutout at home on January 11. One thing about Flyers fans is that we do not like it when a player publicly spurns them; Cutter Gauthier got drafted by the Flyers and then said he did not want to play for the team. So it makes sense that the Flyers fans packed the Wells Fargo Center to heckle Cutter. The best way to describe it is like a football game; the crowd’s energy helped carry the Flyers to a win. The loudest moment out of the fans booing every time Gauthier got on the ice was when Jamie Drysdale scored, snapping his goal drought against his former team. Chants of “Jamie’s better” erupted on the ice afterward. Drysdale has performed well; while I’m not sure developing him as a two-way defender is helpful, he has at least managed to play a full season without injury, which is a major accomplishment in helping him develop. You can’t grow your skillset if you’re recuperating from injury. Oh and to throw Cutter’s taunt back in his face, Gauthier did not circle the right game on the calendar. On the eighteen shifts he had on the ice, he amassed a -13.
Trade Deadline: Necessary Cuts
The Flyers made three trades at the 2025 Trade Deadline. Flyers legend Andrei Kuzmenko got traded to the Kings for a higher draft pick than the one the Flames gave to get rid of him. While Kuzmenko had potential, he was another forward on a team that had an abundance of them, and missed a few more games because of visa issues. Pelletier got a bit more playing time during the month in between the deadline and showed how well he could play, as contrasted to how slow Kuzmenko could skate.
Erik Johnson also got reunited with his first team, the Colorado Avalanche, in exchange for prospect Givani Smith and a 2027 first and third-round draft pick. While Johnson's playing his 1,000th game with the Flyers was a good story, he did not deserve to go through another rebuild in the limited playing time he had left. He also got playoff time with the Avalanche, although I would not recommend asking Avalanche fans how Game 7 against the Stars went.
The most heartbreaking one for Flyers fans was watching Scott Laughton get traded. The Last Supper picture he posted with the Flyers’ training staff on Twitter before his trade to the Maple Leafs is heartbreaking for Flyers fans. But the Flyers had to take advantage of the prospects trading Laughton would bring, such as a conditional first-round pick and Nikita Grebenkin (who already has an iconic quote in his NHL career). And at least Laughton saw more playoff experience than he would have with the Flyers this year.
Honestly, when I look back at the Trade Deadline, that goes for all three players who got dealt. They saw more playoff time with the teams they got dealt with, although only Laughton’s team made it out of the first round. It definitely will give Briere respect from older players for his honesty about where the team was concerning his rebuild plan.
But the Bruins at the Trade Deadline….good lord. The front office must feel really bad trading their captain for one first-round pick (it was a second-round pick before the Panthers made it to the Conference Finals, which is even worse) and then watching Marchand win a cup. No wonder they did not appoint a captain this season, as Marchand is a Panther for the next four years.
Congratulations, Bruins, you’ve just earned yourself a deep dive into your epic 2023 playoff choke in April of 2026. Book it.
Second Half: Mount Tortorella Goes Dormant
The team did not do well after the Trade Deadline. While stretches of bad play do come with rebuilding, scoring four goals in five games is a level of agony I did not sign up for. I had to push myself to watch the Flyers play, often rationalizing it by thinking about how fun it would be to listen to Jim Jackson and Brian Boucher cover the FlyBoys. They lost seven in a row, including a barnburner against *checks notes* THE CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS. Even when in contention for Tank Bowl, Chicago still loves to kick the Flyers in the teeth.
The only good line during this skid was, as always, the Brink-Forester-Cates line. Noah Cates is great on the forecheck and in the faceoff dot. The latter skill is important in gaining and keeping possession of the puck, and where players like Rod Brind’Amour became legends. While Tyson Forester does not have the scoring touch like Cates does, he is great at assisting in goals and alleviating defensive zone pushes by the opposing team. And Bobby Brink has excelled as an undersized but powerful forward. If the Flyers had any offensive zone pressure or shots, or even goals, you could point to the Brink-Forester-Cates line as a factor. They won battles along the boards, could defend and score, and often went up against the league’s top lines. While the latter point stems from how bad the team was, giving young players experience against the league’s best does not hurt in player development.
Tortorella then suffered from a fatal outbreak of foot-in-mouth syndrome. In a press conference after yet another blowout loss against the Toronto Maple Leafs, he said he would not want to coach in “this type of season”. The Flyers fired him and promoted Brad Shaw as their interim coach. He did well, as the team went on a winning streak. Michkov went on a tear, coming a post away from scoring a hat trick against Montreal and ending up leading all league rookies in scoring. While the Flyers could have tanked for a high draft pick as they did in 2023, giving Flyers fans hope that the rebuild will finish helps more than tanking for a high draft pick that may not pan out. Flyers fans got to see prospects Devin Kaplan and Karsten Dorwart make their NHL debuts, and they did well. Also, seeing Emil Andrae and Egor Zamula get more playing time gives me hope; both players have amazing upside, and I look forward to how they develop in the future. While the Flyers finished sixth from the bottom, seeing younger players get more playing time does not hurt.
Assessment:
The 2024-2025 Flyers season showed that last year’s team overachieved in its playoff push. Without the Travii (Travis Sanheim and Travis Konceny) and Owen Tippett having breakout years, the team went back to their status as a bottom-feeder team that they’ve held for three out of the past four seasons.
The difference between them and others in that status (i.e., the San Jose Sharks) is that they have more of their prospects waiting in Lehigh Valley, of whom some have played some games with the big team. Alex Bump, Oliver Bonk are some of them. Add their center in Jett Luchanko, as well as their hulking draft picks in forward Porter Martone and center Jack Nesbitt, and the team will be a threat in the next few years. And said forward core will only get better with the addition of the spurned Anaheim Duck Trevor Zegras; Michigan attempts will not only go up a thousandfold, but he also has the offensive talent that can complement Michkov’s playmaking and scoring abilities that he displayed in the 2024-2025 season.
New coach Rick Tocchet also has the defensive know-how to keep the team from overly relying on their forward core. It also does not hurt that he is a former Flyer; the organization loves hiring its former players. See the coaching tenure of former Flyers like Terry Murray and Craig Berube as examples of their love for former orange and black players as bench bosses (or GMs in the case of Bobby Clarke). Also, signing Christian Dvorak from Montreal, a defensive stronghold, can help. While I feel neutral about Tocchet’s signing, I have faith that he will help improve this team. Having a power play coach not named Rocky Thompson helps in improving the Flyers’ special team play. I’m pretty sure he’s happy to be out of the soap opera that was the 2024-2025 Vancouver Canucks. It still will only do so much to assuage my pain watching Brad Shaw coach with the hated New Jersey Devils. *sighs* I wish him well.
The Flyers still have to figure out their goaltender. While it seems they will keep Errson because he did the bare minimum of not looking dreadful out in net, he does need a decent backup. Adding a decent backup from Calgary in Dan Vladar will help with their quest for league-average goaltending. Fedotov getting more playing time in the AHL as he’s not the fourth-string back up to Kolosov will also help in developing him into the goaltender that he showed with his natural size and gutsiness when he started. Lest we forget, he outdueled Vezina and Hart, winning goaltender Connor Hellebuyck in Winnipeg—one of the best goaltending performances I’ve seen by a Flyers goaltender.— It can’t get any worse for Flyers goaltenders, right? Right?
On a hopeful note, thank you for enjoying this edition of Ice-Capades! I liked writing a season recap of my Flyers, and I may do it for the other teams I follow. But I do have other articles planned, including a hot take about the Anaheim Ducks in the 2025-2026 season and an article detailing the time Rod Brind’Amour scored two shorthanded goals.
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