The Flyers Could Have So Much More

Often, I’m extremely critical of the Flyers. On the surface, this isn’t entirely surprising. Any analyst who analyzes something that produces bad to mediocre results on a repeating basis will probably be critical, because it’s a target rich environment. But “critical” isn’t the word that my detractors use.

It’s fine that I have detractors but permit me to make an observation about how they go about it.

The word they use is “negative.” It’s a far more emotionally charged word, so I applaud them on a rhetorical level. But it’s also false. I’m not negative. I’m critical, I’m skeptical, and I’m demanding. But I’m not negative.

See, for me to be negative, the implication is that I refuse to see just how good I have it. It’d be like me being a fan of the Carolina Hurricanes and wanting to pack the franchise up and move it to Arizona because they haven’t won a Cup, rather than enjoying one of the league’s most consistent contenders and the most constant threat to… one year… finally win it all.

If I was watching that and found a way to be constantly critical, constantly skeptical, constantly demanding of more? Then I would be unreasonable. I’d be negative.

The Flyers are none of those things.

The Flyers are a laughingstock well on their way to being the Buffalo Sabres. I’m sorry if that offends some people, but reality hits like cold water sometimes.

When did Buffalo become a meme, exactly? Around a decade of missing the playoffs?

The Flyers are already half-way there, and they’ve just lost 7 of their last 10 games after Saturday against the Rangers.

What they’re doing isn’t working, and so I point that out… a lot. I point that out a lot, because they continuously go back to the well, and they get the same poor results every single time.

The narrative weavers around this franchise have successfully changed the meaning of the term “rebuild” from “creating something anew” to “doing whatever the hell you want,” after 3 years of telling everyone that “rebuild can have a thousand different definitions, and Danny chose one” or whatever such nonsense they argued until everyone was just too exhausted to continue with the debate.

But while they might’ve cudgeled everyone into eye-rolling acceptance, they didn’t change reality. No, reality is still here. It still asserts itself every single day, and much to the unending chagrin of this franchise, its most common form of manifestation is in a Flyers loss or a string of losses.

The reality is that the Flyers did not execute a rebuild, nor did they try. A rebuild would mean that they took a roster, realized it utterly lacked the core pieces required to win a championship or ever come close, and then took every possible avenue to acquire the aforementioned core pieces.

Did they do that?

No, they didn’t.

The narrative weavers say, “Well, they didn’t do a tear-it-down rebuild but they did a Dallas Stars rebuild.”

Okay, let’s clarify something really quick. Rebuild is not a word with such a vague definition that it requires qualifying terms in order to know its meaning. There is one. And if you didn’t tear your team down to the studs, then you didn’t rebuild. Because you didn’t need to.

Now that we’ve established that, let’s stipulate that a rebuild in the traditional sense… while a very viable path to winning… is not the exclusive path. Contenders have opted out of a rebuild successfully before.

Yes. Dallas did it. Washington did it. It can happen, and I wouldn’t be honest by saying otherwise. But the Flyers have been at this for nigh-on three years. We can cut away the idea that we’re dealing in hypotheticals. We have a trendline to analyze. So, let’s do that.

The Flyers abandoned a core of Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek, Sean Couturier, and Ivan Provorov in order to move onto something new. The former 2 players arguably aged out, and the latter most player just wasn’t particularly good.

They transitioned from that core… which oscillated from barely in the playoffs to barely out on a yearly basis, and never did anything in the years they were in… to something new.

They embraced a new core of Sean Couturier, Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim.

That core is awful. It has produced zero playoff berths. It has never once finished in the top-half of the league standings. It has finished in the bottom 10 in 2 of the 3 years it’s been tried, and in the bottom 5 in its most recent full season.

Not only is it presently horrific, but it’s also doomed to only get worse as all of these players are 26 or older. 3 of the 4 are 28 or older.

The organization fancies themselves the equivalent of the Dallas Stars who, in their eyes, did execute this kind of transition successfully.

In reality, the Stars ran into the same problems the Flyers have.

They started with a core of Brad Richards, Mike Ribeiro, and Loui Eriksson. This was as the Mike Modanos and Sergei Zubovs of the world were aging out.

That core went absolutely nowhere. They were not even close to good enough. Until, finally, the 2017 draft hit.

The 2017 draft created the foundation of future Stars cores, including the one we appreciate today. Jason Robertson, Miro Heiskanen, and Jake Oettinger all came from that draft.

Roope Hintz was a later pick from 2 drafts prior, while the Stars core was still faling to accomplish anything of significance.

Thomas Harley was added 2 drafts later. By the time he was drafted, the Stars had shown their first signs of life. Why were they starting to come alive?

Because Miro Heiskanen was and is transcendent. It’s a crime that he isn’t universally recognized as a top 3 defenseman in the world. People credit Dahlin’s talent but excuse him the responsibility of doing anything with his talent because he exists in Buffalo.

And that’s true, as far as it goes. Dahlin is a wonderful talent, and certainly a top 5 defenseman in this league.

Miro Heiskanen inherited an utterly mediocre team, and through the sheer depth of his brilliance, turned them into something relevant.

The Stars’ Cup run was practically a fabrication of Heiskanen’s Niedermayer-like excellence, erasing the opposition’s transitions and providing the Stars a Nascar raceway whenever he was on the ice.

He later added to his offensive game, but even this earliest form of Heiskanen at 18-21 years old was a revelation.

Of course, that Cup run did come in the bubble and it was a bit fortunate. Miro couldn’t have literally transformed that Stars core by himself, but he did provide the catalyzing spark.

Soon enough, Roope Hintz ascended and Jason Robertson was welcomed into the core.

The Stars kept Benn and Seguin around, but frankly, they haven’t done much to perpetuate the competitive viability of the team. They’ve largely been passengers, which is fine. I don’t mean it in the condescending coach-speak way. I just mean that this core exists independent of those two players, even if they’re still contributing members of the team.

They’re not primary needle movers, because they tried to be that and it really didn’t go well.

It’s time for the Flyers to reach this understanding. Travis Sanheim, Travis Konecny, and Sean Couturier are not players who will move the needle. They can watch it move. They don’t sit on the opposite end. They might even help those who can move the needle. But that’s it.

That isn’t me insulting them. That’s me coming to terms with reality after years of watching that needle fail to move.

And yet I’m not negative. I’m not blind to the light at the end of the tunnel, if the Flyers can simply bring themselves to drive. We’re starting to find players who… just maybe… can move that needle.

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Trevor Zegras has just entered his prime, and that prime has manifested in the form of a point-per-game player without much in the way of help.

Zegras has 35 points in 34 games to lead the anemic offense of the Flyers. He’s a magician with the puck, and he’s a true dual-threat who’s just as likely to thread an incredible needle with his passing as he is to blast a one-timer.

He was tried at center for the first time in a very long time all season against the Rangers, and he thrived.

After taking Carl Grundstrom off the line and replacing him with Nikita Grebenkin, Zegras led a line with the youngster and Travis Konecny to out-shoot the Rangers 6-2 and controlled 61% of the expected goals.

That isn’t with defensive anchors flanking him. That’s with two no-defense players on either side, and it didn’t matter. He was great.

Zegras could be the number 1 center for this franchise. Maybe not in the vein of Nathan MacKinnon, but a legitimate top-of-the-lineup center.

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Matvei Michkov is a hockey genius who, over the first 1.5 years of his career, is second on the Flyers in 5v5 scoring despite being 8th in 5v5 ice time. He has played nearly 300 fewer minutes than Travis Konecny in that situation and trails him for the team lead by only 7 points.

7 points in 300 minutes is massively lower than his career average rate.

He’s also developing into quite the special 5v5 possession player. His second-year rates with and without Konecny resemble what Claude Giroux did during his should-be MVP campaign for a year 2 Konecny.

Year 2 Matvei with veteran Konecny compared to MVP Giroux with Year 2 Konecny pic.twitter.com/TLFR7oqqtR

— Derek Dunn (@SuitableAlias) December 21, 2025

On the surface, Michkov and Konecny are having fairly similar second years with Matvei on a pace to mildly outscore TK in similar minutes. But they are only peers when you strip those numbers of all context.

Konecny played half of his 5v5 minutes with Claude Giroux at the peak of his powers. With Giroux, he was on the ice for 34 Flyers goals over those 527 minutes.

Without Giroux, he was on the ice for 18 Flyers goals over those 507 minutes.

Matvei Michkov has been on the ice for 20 Flyers goals in his 406 minutes so far this season. And he’s the one who has had a positive impact on current Konecny’s scoring rates, rather than the other way around.

If defense is your concern, don’t bother. Michkov has outscored his opponents 20-18, which is a shade below what his expectations peg the score at. Travis Konecny was outscored without Giroux, 19-18. So, yes, year 2 Konecny also surrendered goals at a higher rate than Michkov while scoring less.

I don’t know how good Michkov can be this season in a featured role with as much focus on the offense as Travis Konecny gets. But I’m ready to find out.

I don’t know how good Michkov will be in his prime, but I do know that he has the potential to be one of those players who kickstarts a new core through his unique brand of hockey brilliance.

And I know that the current core lacks that.

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Denver Barkey made his NHL debut last night, and he was sensational. He’s yet another player who seems to lack a panic threshold when he has the puck. He wasn’t always an offensive dynamo in juniors, and his AHL numbers hardly scream future star.

But I’ve watched a lot of Barkey over the years, and I’m pretty sure that his brand of hockey will translate to the NHL and create a closer grouping between his NHL scoring rates and his AHL scoring rates than what’s usually the case.

He’s a tremendously smart player with a super high motor who both gets to pucks and makes plays with them once he’s there.

I sure wouldn’t expect 2 assists per game, but this kid is a legitimate player right now who deserves a spot on this team.

And yet even the coach who says he’ll fight for him admits that the front office might have other plans or that the team might not be able to carve out sufficient ice time.

Why the hell not?

Does Travis Konecny need to play 23 minutes to lead all skaters, as he did against the Rangers?

Simply taking him to 18 would give both Barkey and Michkov the opportunity to play over 17.

“But Derek, Travis Konecny kills penalties!”

Yes, he is on the penalty kill unit. And he does a terrible job while he’s on it. He doesn’t stop anybody. Over the last 3 years, no forward on the kill gives up more chances and goals than he, ecept his former running mate: Scott Laughton.

He isn’t on the penalty kill to play defense. He’s on the penalty kill to score. Which is fine, but you’re telling me that we can’t have anybody else doing that? Is Denver Barkey is incapable of doing that? Come on, be serious.

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So, no, I’m not negative. I have no doubt that people will continue to claim that I am, and that’s fine, but the reality is that I’m anything but.

For one, the Flyers are guilty of all the crimes (against hockey) that I accuse them of. We needn’t proceed with the trial, and they can waive their right to an attorney, because nobody would seriously argue that any of this is wrong.

But moreover, I do not think the Flyers are resigned or destined to become the new Buffalo. I don’t think hockey in Philadelphia is necessarily a failed experiment, nor a relic of a bygone era.

They can have something better right now. They can choose to be better, to be more engaging, tomorrow. They can address most of my criticisms on a whim, and all of them in a calender year.

But will they choose to? That’s entirely up to them.

Do they really want to be better?

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