The Philadelphia Flyers fought their way into the playoffs, eking out a handful of other teams in the late stages of the regular season. As we noted in the March Metropolitan Division Notebook, the Flyers are headed in a positive direction after their quick retool but there are also some significant questions whether it will hold up over time.
While the Flyers have been actively moving out veterans and restocking their cupboards in what looks like a retooling effort, the age profile of the roster leads to some questions. If we consider where they started from a few years ago on the roadmap, their primary contention cohort should be centered around their young guns like Matvei Michkov. Yet that’s a fairly sparse group at the moment and we can see a sizable cohort that is currently in their prime.
It’s this prime aged group and a couple of veterans that Daniel Briere seems to be hanging his hat on for the moment. The Flyers have a core group locked up long term and it includes none of the team’s young skaters. With a trip to the second round recorded this spring, will the Flyers decide they should continue to compete with this group?
Deciding that the current group is close would likely be a mistake. The Flyers have done a good job of filling their pipeline over the past few years and it looks ready to spit out more young help over the next few years. Briere’s task will be to find roster spaces at the NHL level for more prospects to step into and convert a few of the older skaters into younger assets before their age decline takes too big a bite out of team performance.
