Flyers haven’t tanked, but got the talent teams tank for

Since Danny Briere became general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers and kicked off the rebuild, he has been clear about one thing: the team was not going to tank .

This upset a lot of Flyers fans.

The frustration is understandable. For starters, the rosters of recent Stanley Cup winners are littered with 1st-overall draft picks: Aaron Ekblad on the Florida Panthers, Nathan MacKinnon (and Erik Johnson) on the Colorado Avalanche, Steven Stamkos on the Tampa Bay Lightning--and that\'s to say nothing of the Edmonton Oilers, twice the runners-up with Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins as 1st-overall selections. That doesn\'t even account for Edmonton\'s other two 1st-overall picks from that era, though Nail Yakupov and Taylor Hall haven\'t been on the team for quite a while.

Then, if you branch out from 1st-overall picks to merely top five, it\'s even more staggering: Cale Makar, Jack Eichel, Alex Pietrangelo, Victor Hedman, the Sams Reinhart and Bennett, Aleksander Barkov--the list goes on. If the Flyers were going to commit to a rebuild without tanking for top draft picks, how could they hope to construct a perennial Stanley Cup contending team? If the teams who\'ve won have shown anything, it\'s that you can\'t win without players taken at the top of the draft.

Generally, that\'s true. In the Flyers\' case, however, they drafted the kinds of prospects teams tank for, but without the tanking. Let\'s take a look at some of the players the Flyers drafted and how consensus viewed them, potential high-end contributors the Flyers acquired outside the drafts, as well as one player that could outperform his draft slot to the point that he\'s on par with lottery selections. We\'ll begin with the blue chip guys, Matvei Michkov and Porter Martone.

The Blue Chippers

Boy, the 2022-23 season made you want to pull your hair out, didn\'t it? Chuck Fletcher refused to acknowledge the need for a rebuild, made a series of utterly baffling trades and signings, and he hired John Tortorella as head coach to squeeze as much out of the mediocre roster as possible. In a draft year with unreal talent stacked at the top between Connor Bedard, Adam Fantilli, Leo Carlsson, Will Smith and Matvei Michkov, the Flyers were shooting themselves in the foot from the moment the puck dropped in Game One. They finished with the 7th-overall selection-- just outside that upper echelon of talent, and the whole season felt like a waste.

Come draft day, however, none of it mattered: Matvei Michkov fell right in the Flyers\' laps.

It\'s worth remembering that, up until Russia invaded Ukraine and was no longer allowed in international competition, 2023 was shaping up to be the Bedard-Michkov draft. Then, geopolitical tensions lessened Michkov\'s ability to show out on the international stage, and a three-year KHL contract put teams off as well--not to mention a slow start in his draft year. Carlsson and Fantilli soon proved they were legit and, as centers, played a more coveted role than \"diminutive winger\" Michkov. Here\'s Elite Prospects talking about Michkov in their 2023 Draft Guide:

\"Under ordinary circumstances and in any other year, Matvei Michkov is the consensus No. 1 pick, viewed as a player with the potential to alter a franchise’s short- and long-term prospects from the moment he walks the draft’s stage.\"

Elite Prospects 2023 NHL Draft Guide

A first-overall caliber prospect that the Flyers got at seventh. EP ranked Michkov fourth in their guide, but they go on to explain that\'s largely due to the noise and risk around him. Scott Wheeler of The Athletic had Michkov ranked number two in the draft , and Corey Pronman ranked him third . Worst case outlook, the Flyers got a top-five ranked prospect that year, and a guy who could outshine everyone else in that draft when all is said and done. That\'s a player you tank for, and the Flyers didn\'t need to.

Two years later, the Flyers had similar luck, but first, a thought experiment: imagine the Flyers\' 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons were reversed. They bottom out in 2023-24 and pick sixth, then make progress with the addition of Michkov and pick 12th the following season. Is that a better outcome than the one we have before us?

It\'s a bit of a tough sell. Porter Martone, selected sixth overall by the Flyers this summer, is a top-three caliber prospect--and there\'s a good chance that nobody available at sixth in 2024 comes close. Here\'s EP again, discussing Martone:

\"Some of us consider [Martone] a first overall-worthy prospect, believing that his pace, physicality, and skating will improve, moulded by the pressure of the professional game, just like they did for other clever and skilled prospects before him.\"

Elite Prospects 2025 NHL Draft Guide

Despite a tough draft lottery loss where the Flyers fell from fourth to sixth, they still got one of the most highly thought of prospects in the draft. EP had Martone ranked third in their Draft Guide, Wheeler had him ranked fourth , and Pronman had him third , the same as EP . Again, the Flyers didn\'t tank, but wound up with a prospect widely regarded to be in the top three of his draft year--certainly within the top five and, in some circles (as EP noted), a real candidate for consideration to go first. Another player front offices tank to acquire, but again the Flyers didn\'t intentionally gut the team to get him.

The Acquisitions

In the last three and a half years, the Flyers have acquired three young players that were all selected in the top 10 of their respective drafts: Owen Tippett (10th overall, 2017), Trevor Zegras (ninth overall, 2019), and Jamie Drysdale (sixth overall, 2020). All three were distressed assets when the Flyers traded for them (and in Drysdale\'s case the Flyers gave up their own fifth-overall pick in Cutter Gauthier), but they\'ve all flashed the potential to be top-of-the-lineup contributors: Tippett has the size, speed and shot to be an imposing power forward; Zegras has borderline one-of-one puck skills; Drysdale\'s a phenomenal skater with scoring and top power play upside. Delivering on the promise of their draft slots, however, has been a mixed bag--though those inconsistencies are what made them available to the Flyers.

Due to their ages, there\'s a lot of projecting when it comes to Zegras and Drysdale. Both have had their careers hampered by coaching, injury, and a blend of the two. What\'s important, though, is that Briere demonstrated he\'s able to acquire high pedigree talent with significant upside outside of the draft route--the Zegras trade, in particular, exemplifies this, considering what the Flyers had to give up. It\'s not hard to imagine a world where a fresh start for Zegras and continued development for Drysdale revitalize their games and confirm they were worth their draft slots.

Tippett\'s in a more precarious position. He\'s older than Zegras and Drysdale, has been with the Flyers for three seasons, and is signed to a long-term contract; he\'s also coming off a down season that has fans questioning if he even has that top-six potential he\'s flashed before. Opinions on Tippett vary wildly, and all have some sort of legitimacy, but it remains fair to be bullish that he\'s got 30-plus goal potential in a unique player profile--and if that is his plateau, he\'s deserving of that top-ten selection. Even if he\'s only a 25-30 goal guy, that\'s still a valuable player on a Cup contender.

The Riser

The Flyers have been due a player that outperforms their draft position, and they may have one in Tyson Foerster. Selected 23rd overall in the 2020 draft, Foerster has played 166 games (23rd most of the 2020 class), has scored 48 goals (10th most) and 83 points (15th most). Foerster\'s goal count is better than 2020 top-10 forward selections Marco Rossi (45), Jack Quinn (39) and Alexander Holtz (23) while playing in fewer games than all but Holtz. Using Micah McCurdy\'s sG model -- an attempt at a catch-all metric for a player\'s overall on-ice contributions -- Foerster\'s on a similar or better trajectory to all three of those players:

X-axis represents age. Courtesy HockeyViz.

That\'s just within his draft year, and restricted to top-10 picks; let\'s look at a couple other wingers who went top three in recent drafts and how Foerster\'s career stacks up. Those wingers are Kaapo Kakko, Alexis Lafreniere, and Andrei Svechnikov.

X-axis represents age. Courtesy HockeyViz.

Svechnikov had quite the high in his age-22 season, though he was limited to 64 games in the 2022-23 season due to injury. One would expect a bit more from such high picks--Lafreniere in particular, being a first-overall selection--and Foerster\'s hanging right there with them. A healthy start to 2025-26 , and he\'s got a real shot at surpassing them all in their age-23 seasons.

Of course, that\'s just one collection of data. Over at Evolving Hockey, they use expected-Goals Above Replacement (xGAR) , which attempts to assign a number that encapsulates a player\'s impact on their team. Over all seven players\' careers--Foerster, Rossi, Holtz, Quinn, Svechnikov, Kakko and Lafreniere--Foerster has the second and fifth best xGAR scores of the lot.

Player xGAR Marco Rossi (2024-25) 16.1 Tyson Foerster (2024-25) 13.3 Andrei Svechnikov (2019-20) 12.7 Marco Rossi (2023-24) 12 Tyson Foerster (2023-24) 11.5 Data courtesy Evolving Hockey

Most of these statistics focus on offense, but what about defense? Foerster\'s well known for is in-zone play and, lo and behold, the stats once again bear that out: he is above average in his own zone, according to the data tracked at All Three Zones.

Courtesy All Three Zones

There can be little doubt: Tyson Foerster\'s on a path to becoming a highly impactful NHL forward. Maybe not a true star, per se, but a top-six lock with top-line potential--and the Flyers got him at 23rd overall.

What this all goes to show is that, in some cases, draft positioning can mean very little. Nothing is ever promised or guaranteed, and tanking for a top pick doesn\'t mean you\'re getting the sort of star player you\'d expect. Sometimes, you get an incredible run like the 2023 draft, where a potential generational guy in Bedard went first, followed by Carlsson, Fantilli and Smith--all of whom have true top-line upside. Other times, you get a draft like 2019, where it\'s murky after the clear 1st-overall selection, and it isn\'t worth going scorched earth only to lose the lottery.

No Tank, No Problem

It\'s one of the most tiresome refrains from pro-tank fans: that it\'s impossible to get top talent at the draft without bottoming out. The Flyers, however, in Michkov and Martone, have picked up two players who are exactly the kind of prospects teams tear it all down for--and outside the top five, too.

Would we really feel better about the rebuild if the Flyers drafted Michkov fourth or Martone third, around where consensus had them ranked--but the team was a dumpster fire in the process? Are those the sorts of hairs we\'re going to split? Yes, the Flyers got lucky--lucky that Michkov and Martone fell to them. Of course, winning a Stanley Cup takes quite a bit of luck, doesn\'t it? You can only stack the deck so much and, despite pursuing a road less taken, the Flyers have in their organization two players who could be the driving superstars of a perennial Cup contending team.

Speaking of luck, the Flyers have shown they can get players with pedigree through trades. Tippett may be a product of the Fletcher regime, but Briere bringing in Drysdale and Zegras is a continuation of that. All three of those guys can be top-of-the-lineup, impact NHL players if things go well, and those kinds of risky bets are necessary parts of building a Cup contender. Maybe they never reach the level of \"star,\" but you need darn good players regardless.

Then, there are the players that outperform their draft slot--and the Flyers seem to have one in Foerster. Again, maybe he\'s never a true top-line star forward (at least, not as a driver), but there\'s a path for him to become a top-six lock and outplay quite a few wingers who have higher draft pedigree.

Whether it\'ll all be enough isn\'t yet clear, and there are still holes to fill, but the Flyers have managed to get the kinds players teams tank for--and they did it without blowing the whole thing up. Maybe they\'re onto something.

Talking Points