On Friday, Briere and Tortorella reaffirmed Flyers' commitment to rebuild

Did you think that the Philadelphia Flyers’ performance this season, including a surprise playoff push that came up just short, would lead the front office to expedite their planned rebuild timeline?

The answer on Friday from general manager Daniel Briere and head coach John Tortorella was the same as the brain trust’s articulated overarching approach: not so fast.

“I still am not quite there as far as saying that we’re a contender,” Briere noted in his final interview of the 2023-24 season. “I don’t believe we’re at the point where it’s time to let some young assets go to try to get better, quicker. We’re not there yet.”

The Flyers certainly could have used this as an opportunity to pivot. They missed the playoffs by just four points, after all, and made it all the way to Game 82 with a chance to secure a spot. It wouldn’t be especially difficult to sell to title-starved Flyers fans that after such a painful miss, the organization would make it up to them in the form of reinforcements and a full-fledged shift to a win-now approach to ensure that the playoff drought (now four years) comes to an end in 2024-25.

But that’s not the route that Briere took on the final day of exit interviews, this one set aside for the GM and the head coach to meet with the media one final time before the start of the offseason.

“We’re still going to respect that timeline that we’ve put in place. That hasn’t changed,” he said.

If anything, he threw cold water on the idea of the team being destined to take another big step forward next season.

“I know the expectation next year will be that, ‘Oh, we’ve got to get in the playoffs,’” he continued. “I don’t even know that we’re there yet. It was a great year. But there’s still a long ways to go.”

So for the coming offseason, what does that mean?

No big pursuits of high-priced UFAs. No trading young players for talented but aging vets.

Sure, the situation isn’t quite as black and white as it was last summer, Briere acknowledged, when the team was coming off its second straight completely noncompetitive season and clearly needed to start fresh. But it’s still fairly black and white, at least in Briere’s eyes.

Surprising season notwithstanding, this is still very much a rebuild.

“We’re not at the point where we’re going to trade young assets for older veterans that are going to get us over the board,” Briere said. “I still don’t think we’re a Stanley Cup contender.”

And don’t think for a second that Tortorella isn’t onboard with the long-game approach.

“I’ll tell you: we are a ways away. We have so much work to do with this team,” he added.

Tortorella even forcefully defended the Sean Walker trade, which kneecapped the blueline corps even while every single one of the team’s other projected starters at the position were battling injury, and was undeniably a major contributing factor to why the Flyers missed the playoffs. It was still the right move, Tortorella argued, and Briere agreed.

“That’s an example of trying to be not just short-sighted and trying to do everything possible to get in the playoffs, but thinking long-term, how is it going to help us long-term?” he explained.

As for the plan for the looming offseason?

“It’s going to be the same approach,” Briere affirmed.

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What was truly striking about Briere and Tortorella’s respective press conferences was the distinct lack of urgency on the part of both. Tortorella made it clear that he does not — as some speculated over the past few weeks — have eyes for a move to the front office and out of the coach’s chair, despite the fact that he turns 66 in June. And Briere didn’t betray a trace of impatience in a single one of his answers regarding team-building and future plans.

Take the team’s goaltending situation, for example.

It would be easy to argue that the goalies were right up there as the biggest reason for the March/April collapse. Over that final month and a half, the team’s netminders combined to stop just 84.96 percent of the shots they faced — easily a league-worst mark over that span. A team with designs on immediate playoff contention would not so easily look to “run it back” with the two netminders who delivered those late season results.

But that’s exactly what Briere stated on Friday was the plan: to roll with Sam Ersson and Ivan Fedotov (yet unsigned) as the primary NHL duo in 2024-25.

It’s a real risk. Ersson was run into the ground over the final 2.5 months of the season, yes, which almost certainly had a negative effect on his play. But he still finished the season with an ugly 0.890 save percentage. And Fedotov’s ability to adapt to the NHL game remains unknown — it’s been two years since he’s been at his best, due to the Russian political machinations that stalled out his career. It’s not at all difficult to imagine a scenario where the goalie situation drags next year’s team down.

But it’s only a “risk” if the organization’s primary goal is the playoffs. If the goal is instead development and determining who fits the long-term plan, then testing out two of their three primary “starter of the future” options over a large sample makes perfect sense.

It’s the move of a rebuilding team.

“That’s what we’re planning on, would be Ersson and Fedotov next season,” Briere confirmed. “Something could change, especially with the history of this organization with goaltending. It seems there’s always some drama there. But it would be nice to get away from the drama.”

So they’ll use next year to attempt to find the long-term solution that could end the drama at long last, rather than grabbing a band-aid option like Anthony Stolarz on the open market to ensure that the team’s standings trajectory remains up.

The same lack of urgency emerged in Briere and Tortorella’s responses to the Flyers’ anemic power play.

For the second straight year, it ranked dead last in the NHL by efficiency. For as much ink that was spilled breaking down the team’s eight-game losing streak, the power play’s season-long ineptitude contributed just as much — and probably more — to the team’s inability to make the playoffs.

An organization laser-focused on grabbing one of the eight available Eastern Conference playoff spots in 2024-25 would likely embark on a major PP shakeup. Go after a power play weapon or two, for starters — and definitely cut ties with the coach who ran the unit the past two seasons.

But the Flyers aren’t going to sack Rocky Thompson, both Briere and Tortorella confirmed, nor move him off PP management duties. It’s not that they don’t want to fix the power play. They’re just not going to throw Thompson — who both Briere and Tortorella view very highly — overboard to squeeze some extra percentage points out of the power play. Instead, they’re planning a collaborative internal solution that could include everyone from special advisor Patrick Sharp to scout Dany Heatley being enlisted to try and crack the PP code.

“I think we’ve got some pretty bright offensive people within our organization that played in the league,” Tortorella said. “I think we need to have discussion on our power play. But Rocky Thompson is one hell of a coach. He’s so frustrated, as the players are, as we all are with our power play. And I got a general manager that was one of the best power play guys in the game. So we’re gonna sit as an organization with those people, and just discuss it this summer.”

Might this approach take longer to improve the power play than hiring a new coach with a new system, boosted by a few outside adds? Of course, and Briere appears fine with that.

“I don’t know that we can fix it that fast. It might take a little bit of time,” Briere said. “Obviously, it’s not good enough. And it’s going to be an area that we’re going to focus on. I don’t know if it’s going to be done from the outside. It might have to be done with what we have.”

So rather than make the big move that most fans wanted — firing Thompson — they’re going a different route, a more patient route. They’ll work on further developing their young players to be more effective PP weapons. They’ll work on further developing Thompson as well, in a sense, with the help of former players like Sharp, Heatley, John LeClair, and maybe even Briere himself.

They think that will succeed. And they’re willing to wait it out in order to give it time to succeed.

“I’m not saying that we’re going to go from around 12 percent, we’re not gonna go and double that and get to around 25 percent,” Briere acknowledged. “We have to be realistic here. It’s going to be small steps.”

As will be their overarching team-building approach.

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None of this means that Briere will sit on his hands this offseason. He notably declared that the Flyers would be “open for business,” and that he plans to actively explore player-for-player “hockey trades,” likely with the aim of adding a fresh wave of early-to-mid 20s talent to the organization.

But Briere and the Flyers’ plan needs to be viewed through the lens of a continued commitment to their rebuild, and the internal belief that urgency isn’t necessary right now. They’re in a position, they believe, where they can be patient and wait for the right opportunities to emerge.

So will there be another round of eye-catching subtractions from the roster this summer, like last year when all of Ivan Provorov, Kevin Hayes, and Tony DeAngelo were jettisoned. Nah — both Briere and Tortorella now love the locker room culture, unlike in 2023. Marc Staal and Denis Gurianov likely won’t be back, Briere confirmed, but beyond that? Briere didn’t even fully close the door on a Cam Atkinson return.

Might Briere trade a high-profile young player on the roster because he failed to step up in meaningful games down the stretch, like Joel Farabee or Morgan Frost? Not necessarily, Tortorella responded. If they move out an under-25 player, it won’t be driven by frustration at late-season struggles.

“We don’t make a decision based on two or three games that they didn’t play well,” the head coach asserted.

What about free agent adds? Briere didn’t rule out dipping his toes into the UFA pool, but noted that any additions would likely be along the lines of the Garnet Hathaway and Ryan Poehling signings from last season — not big splashes.

Another big step forward to match the leap taken in 2023-24, he explained, will come from within.

“I think it’s going to be probably done a little bit more internally with the Flyers roster. We’re going to need some guys to keep taking a step forward for us to keep advancing,” Briere said.

These are the actions — or, to be more precise, nonactions — of an organization that views the playoffs in 2024 as a nice bonus, rather than the primary measurement of success. Just as they did this season.

“I still think we’re at a stage where we need to think about the future,” Briere added. “We need to build the right way to give us the best chance to be serious contenders for years to come, and not just for a year or two.”

They’re the actions of a rebuilding organization — one that even after a year of exceeding expectations, isn’t changing course. Not yet.

“We’re staying with the process, or it turns into a team just spinning its wheels in the mud again,” Tortorella said. “And no, that is not the philosophy. (Those are) not the discussions that we’ve had. We are sticking with this and it is going to take some time.”