Flyers Mailbag: Future plans, PP solutions, and Elias Pettersson

With two days to spare, it’s time for the February edition of Flyers Mailbag.

As always, Part 1 will consist of questions from Twitter, and is accessible to all readers. Part 2, which will be published later this week, will be filled with questions exclusively from Diehard members from our Discord server, who all are guaranteed to have their questions answered.

@Spider28Spider: Do you think the organization has an actually viable plan to acquire a 1C and 1D in place, or do you think they’re just playing the waiting game and hoping a golden ticket falls in their lap?

I do believe they have a viable plan to acquire a 1C and 1D. And that viable plan is playing the waiting game and hoping a golden ticket falls into their lap.

OK, that answer was a bit facetious. But seriously, the only true viable “plan” to getting a player of that caliber is to bottom out, pick in the top-5 for multiple years in a row, and hope you nab an impact center or stud defenseman. And that plan isn’t even foolproof, because it still requires a team to get those high picks in the right drafts, draft the right players in those right drafts, and develop those players properly in order to reach their ceilings as 1Cs or 1Ds.

If you’re not drafting regularly in the top-five — where those no-doubt-about-it blue-chippers at prime positions tend to be selected — you basically have three pathways left to getting players of that caliber:

• Absolutely crush it on a low-percentage (read: later) draft pick
• Trade for one
• Sign one

The Flyers obviously are going to keep trying to dig up impact players in the draft even if they’re not picking in the top-5. Superstars do get taken outside of the highest heights of the NHL draft — it just isn’t an outcome that a team should depend upon when planning out their team-building strategy. If the Flyers unearth a 1C or 1D with a non-lottery pick, that should be viewed as a bonus, a karmic reward for years of bad draft luck.

So if they’re most likely not going to have top-5 picks, and they can’t depend upon non-top 5 picks to produce superstars at the center and defense positions, how can they get them? By accumulating assets, retaining salary cap flexibility, and waiting to pounce on an available player who does fit those parameters. Your question positions the strategy as not “viable,” but it’s succeeded plenty of times.

Look at most of the current Stanley Cup favorites. Florida traded for Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart, their two leading scorers. Colorado traded for Devon Toews. Vancouver traded for J.T. Miller and Filip Hronek. Vegas traded for Jack Eichel. New York traded for Mika Zibanejad (and technically Adam Fox, though those were special circumstances given he was a prospect who would only sign with the Rangers). Boston traded for Hampus Lindholm.

Trading for impact talent is very much a viable long-term strategy, and it doesn’t necessarily require a specific target in mind. The most viable execution of this strategy is to stockpile assets and put yourself in position to pounce on the relatively rare occasions when a player with that upside — say, a Trevor Zegras or Elias Pettersson — becomes available. Patience and flexibility is the key here, supported by long-term planning.

@J_Swim28: I request an optimism check. An update on where you’re at optimism-wise regarding faith in the team’s potential (the parts we have right now and future assets) to ultimately succeed and the management based on conversations with brass and what you have seen so far this season.

I’m a lot more optimistic about the future than I was entering the season, in large part because the season has adjusted my view of a number of key players.

Joel Farabee has convinced me he can be a 60+ point, play-driving, top-six winger. Sean Couturier showed he can still be a play-driving top-six center after back surgeries. Travis Sanheim proved he can thrive under John Tortorella. Morgan Frost is showcasing the ability to control play at 5-on-5, meaning that he doesn’t necessarily just have to be viewed as a points-only guy. Tyson Foerster has emerged as a potential two-way force on the wing. Sam Ersson looks like a quality NHL goalie and maybe a starter (and for a lot cheaper than Carter Hart would have cost against the cap). Oliver Bonk and Denver Barkey took massive steps forward in their Draft+1 seasons. Samu Tuomaala looks like a quality middle-of-the-lineup player, as does Bobby Brink.

None of these developments were anywhere near certain entering the 2023-24 season, and quite a few of them are straight up shocking.

Does this mean the Flyers are set? Of course not. They still need true top-of-the-lineup, star-level talent to really send this thing into overdrive. Matvei Michkov they of course hope is one of those guys; they’ll need one or two more who aren’t yet in the organization as well. But I’m seeing the makings of a team that has pretty much all of the other pieces, including the second-tier impact guys that a true Stanley Cup contender needs even with stars.

@kmq102: Aside from Michkov, what other current prospects offer the highest ceiling? Bonk appears to be a steal and potential top 4 D.

Bonk does plausibly have top-pair potential. I’m not quite there yet with him — I still worry about his puck-moving upside and whether he’ll be able to truly dictate tempo the way the best defensemen in the NHL do — but I can now at least see a path for him to become a top-of-the-lineup player rather than merely a middle-tier one.

After Michkov and Bonk, however? Alexei Kolosov has the athleticism to potentially be a No. 1 goalie at the NHL level, and Egor Zavragin is doing pretty unprecedented things in the VHL (Russia’s second-tier pro league) at age 18. I haven’t watched either of them enough — nor do I consider myself enough of a goalie expert — to contend that either has star-level potential, but they’re both exciting prospects.

Emil Andrae could be a solid second-pair defenseman. Denver Barkey has top-six potential if all breaks right, though he’ll have to overcome his size disadvantage to do so (no easy task). Devin Kaplan and Alex Ciernik have the physical tools to be top-half-of-the-lineup NHL guys, but both are ways away from being at that level. And I guess Massimo Rizzo is more of a top-six-or-bust guy than anything else; maybe his scoring will translate.

Mostly, however, I see this prospect pool as filled with a lot of quality middle-tier guys. Which is why I see this upcoming draft as so important. After losing Cutter Gauthier and graduating Foerster, Brink and Ersson, they need an infusion of potential impact prospects.

@DevonS93: Do you think the Flyers will make a change at power play coach in the offseason?

It’s a fascinating question, and one that in truth, I do not have an answer for.

I do get the sense that John Tortorella has a lot of respect for current assistant coach Rocky Thompson and his hockey knowledge, and doesn’t seem to be pinning the power play’s struggles on him. That said, Torts is all about accountability, and Thompson has managed the worst PP in the NHL this season. Going purely by results, a change is warranted.

It’s worth pointing out, however, that Thompson isn’t merely the PP coach. He also coaches the forward group as a whole, and that group has taken real strides this season — particularly Farabee, Frost, Ryan Poehling and arguably Tyson Foerster. This is pure speculation, but I do wonder if the Flyers would consider a role shuffling; keeping Thompson on the staff but adding another coach specifically to try and crack the PP code. It would certainly be a middle-ground solution.

@KeithMeyer25: Has the Carter Hart situation had any affect on the locker room? Their pre-break losing streak came right after the news came out.

When asked on the record, the players invariably respond that it didn’t impact them, but come on. It’s pretty difficult to imagine that Hart’s indefinite leave of absence and subsequent sexual assault charge didn’t jar the team at least a bit.

This is a very tight group of players; Hart himself said as much a few months ago. And it’s not like Hart was off on an island socially from the rest of the team — Cam York was his roommate. I’m not going to begin to speculate what Hart’s teammates knew and didn’t know about the incident that led London police to bring charges against Hart. But grappling with the back-and-forth of wanting to support someone you see as a friend with the reality of the awful thing that he might have done — yeah, I can see how that might take up some emotional bandwidth.

I also wouldn’t be shocked if it specifically impacted Sam Ersson, both physically and mentally. With Hart unavailable, Ersson made six appearances in 10 days to close out January, including a surprise appearance in relief of Hart against Colorado. He also was in the process of coming to the realization that he was no longer a tandem goalie, but the de facto No. 1 of an NHL team with designs on the playoffs. I suspect Ersson benefitted significantly from the week off, to rest up and also to prepare mentality for his new role.

@DR3Wheels: Do the Flyers make a run at Elias Pettersson this offseason and if so, what would a trade package for him look like?

The Pettersson situation is fascinating, because it does seem like there’s real smoke surrounding it.

Basically, the details are as follows. Pettersson — who scored 102 points last year for the Vancouver Canucks and is on pace for over 100 again this season — is a pending restricted free agent this summer, and won’t yet engage the Canucks on a long-term contract. The public explanation from his camp is that he wants to wait until the offseason to talk contract, which very well could be true. But there’s a lot of smoke coming out of Vancouver implying that the Canucks are unsure if Pettersson will ever want to sign long-term with them.

Basically, if Pettersson wants, he could refuse to sign anything other than a one-year contract in Vancouver this summer, which would take him right to unrestricted free agency, and then the Canucks could lose him for nothing in 2025. Thus, the trade speculation.

Players like Pettersson — a clear-cut No. 1 center still just 25 years old and with no serious injury concerns — rarely hit the market. If he is made available due to signability concerns, the Flyers have to check in with Vancouver. Would he have interest in signing long-term with Philadelphia? Would he want to play for John Tortorella? Would he see the Flyers as a team on the rise worthy of his trust? All of those questions would have to be answered in the affirmative before making a massive offer. If they are? Then sure, they should get in on the bidding in a big way. 1C is their biggest organizational hole.

What would it cost? It would depend, first and foremost, on how much leverage Pettersson gives the Canucks. If he makes it clear that he’ll only sign long-term with one or two teams or isn’t willing to sign long-term with anyone and therefore can be viewed only as a guaranteed one-year rental, then perhaps the package looks something like what Buffalo got back for Jack Eichel (a first, a second, a B-level prospect and a decent roster player to help make the cap numbers work). If Pettersson is open to signing long-term with a bunch of teams, and therefore 10+ clubs can get in on the bidding? We’re talking multiple firsts and at least one top-of-the-lineup roster player (think Farabee or Tippett caliber). In any scenario, Pettersson won’t come cheap, but the more of a bidding war Vancouver is allowed to create, the more they’ll get back for him.

@brianros1: Who is a center you’d target, either trade-wise or in FA this summer or next?

I don’t really see the point of going after non-impact level centers. If or when big names or young players with high-end upside become available, those are the guys the Flyers should look to add — and stockpile assets in order to put themselves in the running for them. I’m talking guys like Pettersson and Trevor Zegras, to be clear. Shane Pinto is a nice player who was linked to the Flyers at the start of the season, but he’s not a needle-mover. I’m not terribly interested in non-needle movers, unless they’d come cheap as reclamation projects like Poehling did.

@cmendels2000: What’s your sense of what’s going on with Coots?  He’s not terrible, but he doesn’t look like himself and is not getting the minutes I would expect. Is he hurt? Do you think he’s worn out this far into the season after not playing for so long?

Yup, I just think he’s just wearing down a bit. Don’t forget that Couturier missed a season and a half due to the back surgeries, and then averaged 20 minutes a night — an increase over his previous two non-injury plagued campaigns — through January. I think it’s reasonable to suspect that he could be running out of steam a bit.

That said, I do think Couturier’s struggles are a tad overblown. When Couturier has been on the ice in February at 5-on-5, Flyers have stopped just 77.19 percent of the shots they’ve faced. That’s horrendous luck, and it’s going to normalize at some point — the Flyers have generated 50.89 percent of the expected goals with Coots on the ice during this post-all-star break stretch (not peak-level Couturier, but not awful either) yet have scored just 18.75 percent of the actual goals. That’s going to normalize soon enough, and then his struggles won’t be as glaring.

@JMUFAN: Seems like Alexei Kolosov will be here pretty soon (at least on the Phantoms). What are his current strengths as a player and what does he need to improve at? Aside from the obvious getting accustomed to the North American game (traffic in front) and rink size.

His biggest strength is his ridiculous athleticism. Kolosov is a very fun goalie to watch — he makes highlight-reel saves on the regular, and Philadelphians will love his flashiness. He’s not the biggest goalie, but he makes up for it with explosiveness and a belief that he can stop any shot, no matter the difficulty.

His flaws? Basically the same as every young goalie — consistency and positioning. Philadelphia’s goalie development crew can’t wait to get ahold of Kolosov this summer and really start working with him to clean up the rougher edges of his technique, because they know he has so many skills that coaches can’t teach.

@Evan__Evans: With the Flyers knowing Torts wasn’t really a permanent solve, any chance Briere can trade him in an upcoming season if the timing for a transition is right?

I have long believed that unless the Tortorella tenure ends with an internal blowup, Torts is destined for a senior advisor role when he decides he no longer wants to coach full time. The idea of getting Torts for a few years and then flipping him is pretty wild, and doesn’t fit at all with that assumption.

The only (highly unlikely) scenario where that would even be an option is if Tortorella began to clash with Briere and/or Keith Jones in spite of the team’s continued on-ice success, and everyone involved believed that it was time for a change of scenery. But by all accounts, the relationship between the triumvirate is strong at the moment. Tortorella isn’t getting traded.