Flyers front office is ‘sick’ over struggles, says ‘everything is on the table’

It's probably a bit premature to be talking about the 2022 NHL Draft, to be held six months from now in July. After all, the All-Star break and trade deadline have yet to pass and the Flyers could look completely different when a few more weeks pass.

They could have a fire sale, sending everyone from Rasmus Ristolanian to Claude Giroux packing as they try and come up with a true rebuilding strategy. Or they could improbably (impossibly?) make a run at a playoff spot.

"Everything is on the table, we are going to try and aggressively re-tool," Flyers GM Chuck Fletcher told the media. "At the 43-game mark we are really focused on trying to win some games and get better. The math is daunting. If this continues, we are clearly going to do what we can at the trade deadline to improve this team going forward."

With 39 games to go, the Flyers have 34 points — which is more or less a 70 point pace. The last 82 game season in the NHL was ages ago — 2018-19 — but it saw a handful of teams make it to the playoffs with point totals in the low 90s. For the Flyers to reach that level they'd need to basically win three quarters of their remaining games. Possible but pretty unlikely. Fivethirtyeight.com projects Philly ends up with 74 points on the year and has less than a one percent chance of making the postseason.

"I don't want to sugarcoat it, we're in a terrible spot right now," Comcast Spectacor SEO (and Governor of the Flyers) Dave Scott said Wednesday. "We're sick of losing. We talk about this every day, we have to figure out how to right the ship."

In all honesty, they are looking a rebuild square in the face. A team record 13 game winless streak (not to mention another 10-game skid) paired with injuries to pretty much everyone so far this season will do that. Whether or not that process is led by GM Chuck Fletcher is anyone's guess right now, but the top pick in the draft is actually within striking distance. 

Here's a look at their first pick odds right now.

Unlike the NFL, the NBA-like draft lottery in the NHL will keep their draft slot up in the air until playoff time, when the lotto-winner is drawn. However, if they finish with one of the three worst records in the league (something they're not far from having) they'll be guaranteed a pick inside the top five. They have the sixth toughest remaining strength of schedule of all 32 teams, so falling further into the lottery landscape is not out of the question at all. And that's a big deal, as we'll get to in just a second.

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As is their luck recently, the incoming draft class is "below average" according to several experts, including The Athletic's Corey Pronman. Of the entire field of young hockey players likely to enter the draft this summer, just five project as being top-of-the-lineup players.

Early indicators are that 2022 looks like a below-average draft class. This is the opinion shared among most NHL personnel as well. A lot of the top prospects have come out of the gates with slow starts. Shane Wright is still the odds-on favorite to be the first pick, although based on polls around the league I wouldn’t call it a foregone conclusion that he goes No. 1 in July. While neither are No. 2 on my personal list, USNTDP center Logan Cooley and TPS winger Juraj Slafkovsky are the players most often mentioned as challengers to Wright by league personnel.

It is a forward-heavy group, and thus it is expected the consensus top two defensemen in scouting circles, David Jiricek and Simon Nemec, would go very fast if the draft was held today.  [The Athletic]

What does all that mean? Well, the top pick, Shane Wright is getting Nolan Patrick comparisons so do with that take what you will. He's clearly the prize and the only player with All-Star talent buzz right now. With no clear-cut blue chip guy at No. 2 or beyond, the Flyers will be relying once again on their scouting department to make the best of what should be a top five pick. Whether they should target offense or defense is another unknowable contemplation right now.

"The easiest way to get top-end talent is through the draft, historically that's been proven year after year," Fletcher, who hired and then fired head coach Alain Vigneault during his tenure in Philly, said. "Bottoming out, I don't feel that's what we need to do. I do believe we have good pieces, realistically players like [Sean] Couturier and [Ryan] Ellis are going to come back at some point and when they come back we are a significantly better hockey team, but we have to look at the opportunity we have in the draft and to get better through trades."

The team has done a murky job of converting on first-round picks in recent years, with Cam York making his debut a few weeks ago. He represents the most recent of a group of first rounders that includes Patrick, Morgan Frost, German Rubtsov and Jay O'Brien over the last few years. Joel Farabee is arguably their biggest success since 2016.

York was the first first rounder taken under the Fletcher regime, which first controlled the draft room in 2019, to reach the NHL. The jury is still out on the rest of his choices dating back the last three years.

"I believe our scouts do a hell of a job," Fletcher said, also noting that he has doubled the size of the organization's player development staff. "I like the process we have in place and I believe we're going to be able to find good talent going forward."

In a similar way to how their neighbors across the street, the Eagles, are looking to cash in with some draft stock in a less than superior class, the Flyers — depending on how aggressively they shop their players at the trade deadline in March — could find themselves as major players with some real capital in this upcoming draft.

Which is reason to be optimistic — if you have faith in the front office to target the right talent.

"I don't see this as being a three-, four-, five-year rebuild," Scott said. "The core is good, we just have to get healthy. My job is to make sure Chuck has all the resources he needs to get better. Everything is on the table.

"We are going to get this thing right and hopefully we'll be back in it next year."

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