The Philadelphia Flyers are not going to strive to lift the Stanley Cup by the end of next season, but they are going to try to get better. The main sentiment coming from general manager Danny Briere at his season-ending press conference was fairly straight forward: He doesn’t want another year where this team is finishing towards the bottom of the overall NHL standings.
Knowing this, the Flyers are probably going to address their goaltending issues this summer. Sam Ersson will still be around but whether it is by trade or a free-agent signing, some stabilizing presence will be brought into the crease alongside the young(ish) Swede. That’s the major position of need sorted, but what about the other glaring hole in the lineup?
The Flyers lack center depth to the extreme and they know this. It’s obvious. Sure, Jett Luchanko could be on next year’s roster at 19 years old, but that is no certainty. And the Flyers might be trying to swing big and trade for a young, top-six center but that is typically very expensive and those players are rarely available. The one route they could go — and Daily Faceoff’s Anthony Di Marco mentioned it last week — is pursuing a “stopgap” centerman in unrestricted free agency.
It is most likely the fourth or fifth option this front office truly wants to take, but it is possible. They want to turn a corner and getting some sort of skill down the middle might be necessary.
So, what kind of unrestricted free agent could they be after? Obviously, it would be a shorter-term contract. Sam Bennett is going to sign for maximum term somewhere and for a lot of money, so he doesn’t make sense for this exercise. But, the player also has to have more actual scoring touch or skill than what the Flyers currently have. Noah Cates, Sean Couturier, and Ryan Poehling are already here and ready to play. Even if Luchanko makes it, that is a fairly low bar for offensive skill. This new center has to pose a little bit more of a scoring threat than all of those players.
Knowing all of that information and requirements for this search, let’s look at some options.
Pius Suter
The Vancouver Canucks centerman might just stay in the Pacific Northwest since that team is desperate to not have so many players depart them at once and leave Quinn Hughes really pondering about his future with the team — so he might not be available on July 1. But, he would be just such a prototypical signing for the modern-day Flyers.
Suter is going to be 29 years old next season, and most likely will be taking a contract somewhere in the three-year range with a $4-million AAV. The Flyers can definitely handle that no question, but is he really worth it?
Last season for Vancouver, because of an increased role as the Canucks were dealing with substantial injuries to their two main centers (and traded away one of them mid-season) Suter was able to score a career-high 25 goals and 46 points in 81 games. Not outstanding numbers but solid — and, he is a center than is better defensively than offensively.
Suter can probably hang at the top of the Flyers’ lineup and not look out of place, but the term might just be a little too long to handle unless they are able to draft their center of the future this June (Michael Misa or James Hagens, basically). With that player locked in for the future, they might be fine paying for someone who will eventually be a third-line center when this team is actually a contender again.
But, there are more exciting options out there.
Mikael Granlund
Instead of handing a 29-year-old their biggest contract of their career, why not give an aging out impact top-of-the-lineup center a short-term deal and hope that they still have something left to offer?
Mikael Granlund has already shown that he is willing to provide some veteran presence on a non-playoff team looking to get slightly better. He signed with the 2024-25 San Jose Sharks. Like, come on. Now that he was able to show he still has something left in the tank and is currently with the Dallas Stars, the 33-year-old center could bring his talents to Philadelphia.
Granlund would instantly be the Flyers’ center with the most offensive potential. He could be on the top power-play unit, give Matvei Michkov someone to play off of, and just raise the floor of this team’s offense in all situations of the game.
What kind of contract would Granlund be looking for? We cannot imagine at his age any team in the right mind offering anything more than two years and his new deal having a cap hit any higher than the $5-million AAV he currently is at. Considering the Flyers have some wiggle room, after some restricted free agent deals are done for Philadelphia, giving an offensively minded veteran some more security and the opportunity to play with a young Russian phenom, could be a fun option.
Granlund does feel like the best option to really give these players something to work with down the middle, if the Flyers do want to dive into free agency to solve this problem.
Christian Dvorak
Christian Dvorak was supposed to be the answer as a top-six center for the Montreal Canadiens when they acquired him. That was now several years ago and the 29-year-old has never scored more than 38 points in a season in his entire career.
No, no, no. Please don’t close this tab already. We swear we can actually find a reason why the Flyers would sign this guy.
We already talked about how this supposed stopgap solution would need to still raise the bar in terms of skill down the middle, and considering Ryan Poehling actually scored more points per game than Dvorak this season, this might not be the answer. But, this is also a possibility if general manager Danny Briere wheels and deals and suddenly he needs someone to replace Poehling as a decent bottom-six center to just play. Dvorak would easily be that guy and any team offering more than a one-year contract for this player would surely regret it. He can be the most temporary of solutions and he’s completely fine. An unexciting signing if we have ever seen one, but he would still give the Flyers someone that can actually play center in the NHL. Hey, maybe this would even force Noah Cates to his more natural position at left wing and the lineup improves from there.
Jack Roslovic
Another option that wouldn’t be all that exciting, but there is certainly some skill there that could be utilized. Roslovic tied his career high with 22 goals this season for the Carolina Hurricanes, despite primarily playing in a depth role and averaging under 14 minutes per game.
Signing a player who is coming off a career year and is shooting 15.8 percent is not the smartest thing to do, but it certainly feels like there could be more in there with Roslovic. Whether it’s his effort defensively or just something else about him, he never truly gets a cemented chance near the top of the lineup despite being hyped as that kind of player all the way back when he was a Winnipeg Jets prospect. And even so, this year he turned around one key attribute of playing down the middle, by finishing above 50 percent at the faceoff dot — an outstanding 54.1 percent faceoff win rate, to be exact.
There could be something more! Roslovic is 28 years old and if the Flyers feel like they can uncover a next level to his game — maybe throw some actual defensive structure around him and pour on that Brad Shaw magic — he feels like a player Philadelphia would feel comfortable giving more than just a couple years to. Again, if they don’t get a top center in the 2025 NHL Draft and they don’t trade for one or get one via offer sheet, it’s not the worst option to go out and get someone like Roslovic to fill that hole temporarily. It might pose more risk, but at the very least he’s a bottom-six center that doesn’t kill penalties but can contribute slightly on the power play.
Not the major fix this team needs, but if the Flyers want to gain a little bit of an edge when it comes to the overall skill and ceiling of this roster, someone like Roslovic could certainly help.
Obviously, signing any one of these players would be a sign that the Flyers’ first few plans fell through. It’s not the most comfortable situation or really one to get all that excited about, but we at least know that this team isn’t going to act like the Flyers teams of the past, otherwise Brock Nelson or Sam Bennett would be in the Orange and Black as soon as July 1. It’s something else and it could be any one of these players if the Flyers want to pivot ever so slightly to being more competitive.
