10 storylines to watch as the Flyers try to take a step forward in a new season

The Philadelphia Flyers are about to begin another season, still on a long-term mission, and still working to gain the city's interest back because of it. Slowly, but surely.

The past couple of years, the organization has taken whatever results and successes it got, but general manager Danny Brière and president of hockey operations Keith Jones held to a clear intention to evaluate, trim down, and collect future assets.

This summer, they wanted to start to pivot. They want the team to start showing that it is getting better, and that it can get way better.

There's still a ways to go. Anyone within the Flyers, and anyone who keeps up with the Flyers, has been well aware of that.

But there's a corner to turn coming up.

Under new head coach Rick Tocchet, the Flyers want to be ready to.

Here's how they can…

The next steps

This offseason, Brière was clear about what the Flyers were going to do next. They weren't going to be looking to strip parts away anymore, and unless something were to go horribly wrong this coming season, they didn't want to be selling at the deadline again.

The front office felt that the roster had gotten to a place where they could start looking to support it, add to it, give the emerging players a chance from night to night.

Their offseason, in the trade market and free agency, was measured, but it yielded Christian Dvorak as a center to add a bit of safe depth to the lineup, Dan Vladar as a calculated gamble to drive goaltending competition, and Trevor Zegras in a pre-draft trade with the Anaheim Ducks as a sort of reclamation project to see if a potential top-six center is still there.

The responsibility is still falling to the young and developing core – of Matvei Michkov, of Tyson Foerster, Noah Cates, Bobby Brink, and so on – but the moves the front office made flesh out the lineup just a bit more, and because they were done on short-term deals, they won't block any incoming prospects out either.

But they can help to steer things in the right direction.

They can start allowing these Flyers to learn how to win a bit.

David Kirouac/Imagn Images

New Flyers center Christian Dvorak played a key two-way role in the Canadiens' run to the playoffs last season.

Matvei on the main stage

At the center of all the Flyers' ambition is Matvei Michkov.

The highly acclaimed Russian prospect and the seventh overall pick from the 2023 draft arrived to North America several years ahead of schedule, to the joyous surprise of everyone, and proceeded to put up spectacular highlights and lead both the Flyers and the 2024-25 rookie class in goal scoring.

There were highs and lows, sure. That was always to be expected for a rookie with such high potential, and for a rookie with such offensive talent on a formerly John Tortorella-coached team.

But the younger winger had his moments, the ones that told Flyers fans that this was going to work, that they had their guy. He lived for it, too.

With every goal, with every sound of the horn, he gave the crowd a celebration, he played to their energy. He wants to be at center stage. He wants to be not just one of the best in the NHL, but the best in the NHL, and teammates like Travis Konecny saw that drive firsthand.

Michkov is a star, or on his way to it. Year 2 could accelerate him.

When he reported to camp at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees, he was noticeably talking to teammates a lot more. He was trying new moves out on the ice, too, particularly with Zegras, who knows a couple of good ones. And when speaking to the media, he still needed Slava Kuznetsov next to him as an interpreter, but he started mixing his own English in more.

This season could be a major breakout for Michkov as an on-ice talent and as a true face of the franchise.

All signs point to him being built for it.

A quieter step into stardom

Below is the NHL's commercial to hype up the start of the 2025-26 season. Pay attention to who stars in it for the Flyers:

Yup, that's Travis Sanheim, with the league's who's-who of Mitch Marner, Jack Eichel, Connor Bedard, Matt Boldy, and Sidney Crosby.

Sanheim made the cut for Team Canada in the 4 Nations Face-Off last February and caught the attention of Tocchet, who was on the Canadian staff and still coaching the Canucks.

The Flyers' leading defenseman was solid skating next to St. Louis' Colton Parayko, and could even be seen jumping up offensively on rushes next to the game's top star in Connor McDavid.

On a Canadian roster stacked with talent, Sanheim skated right along with them as they made their way to gold, and late into this past summer, he got an invite back from Canada to get a look for the Winter Olympics (alongside Flyers teammate Travis Konecny).

Sanheim has come a long way for the Flyers in the past few years, going from lost and nearly traded to their top blueliner from night to night, and the return of international best-on-best play has built up a glowing reputation of him across the league.

He might just push it even further this year.

"I mean, I'm telling you, I was behind that bench, and that's high-level stuff," Tocchet said about Sanheim's play at 4 Nations. "I had the best seat in the house, and to see him perform with the best defensemen in the league, that's a big plus. To get a front-line defenseman like that on your team is a plus for me."

Eric Bolte/Imagn Images

There are a lot more eyes on Travis Sanheim.

Couturier at the center of it

Sean Couturier was named the captain while John Tortorella was the Flyers' head coach.

Tortorella was fired late into last season, and afterward, Couturier was pretty open about not being much of a fan.

Couturier is still wearing the C on his chest, and isn't expected to be going anywhere anytime soon, so Tocchet coming in and establishing a much better relationship with his captain would be an immediate key to his tenure.

During exit interviews at the end of last season, Couturier talked about wanting to get back to playing more to his strengths. Always a defensive-minded shutdown center, he said he felt his play works best when he's hanging higher up in the offensive zone, trying to anticipate, and stepping in the way of the opponent's breakouts to turn a mistake quickly over the other way.

The tape can show it, too, going back to how he played during his Selke-winning season in 2020.

This can work. Even years later, and after a series of back issues that cost him time, Couturier can still be an impactful center and the kind of captain the Flyers need.

Tocchet wants to help see him to it.

"I want him to worry about his game," Tocchet said of Couturier back at the start of training camp. "The leadership, it'll come. I'll help him out on that. I want him to worry about his game. So we'll talk about that sort of stuff. He's already done it. There's been a couple of times where he's come up to me, asked me about, 'Hey, can we do this? Can we do that?' That's the relationship I wanna have.

"But I want him to worry about his game. Sometimes you put so much pressure on a captain that he's gotta worry about everything. Next thing you know, his game suffers from it."

Eric Hartline/Imagn Images

Sean Couturier is still an important part of the Flyers.

The Anaheim 3

Jamie Drysdale came over from the Anaheim Ducks in the notorious Cutter Gauthier trade from going on two years ago.

Trevor Zegras got to Philadelphia before the draft, in another trade with the Ducks, and after a derailed career and the thought that he was in need of a change of scenery.

Cam York got there before either of them, not from the Ducks, but as a native of Anaheim and the Flyers' 14th overall pick in the 2019 NHL Draft.

All three of them have something to prove this year.

For Drysdale, he broke in with the potential to be a smooth-skating and efficient puck-moving defenseman. Injuries and early-career struggles, though, prevented that in Anaheim. The Flyers wanted to take him on when they realized they had to pull the trigger on a Gauthier trade, not for the defenseman he was at that moment, but for the one he could become over the next five years, Brière explained that startling night.

Drysdale is 23. He's shown flashes of how talented he can be, but he's about to enter Year 3 in Philadelphia. He has to show something substantial.

Zegras is 24. Not too long ago, he looked like he was going to be a face of the league, pulling off Michigans and the kind of highlight reel goals you wouldn't have thought possible to score in an actual NHL game. But injury and a general lack of direction with him as a center in Anaheim sent Zegras off the rails, too. The Flyers have brought him here now on the low-risk, high-reward dice roll that he can still make it as a premium center in the pros.

And York, he's 24, too. He proved capable of skating on the top defensive pairing with Sanheim, and that he could take up a heavy 20-plus minutes every night, but went backwards last year from injury and wavering on Tortorella's coaching, as the rest of the team was near the end.

There's belief from the organization, though, that York can bounce back and with so much more to his game, and that Tocchet can help to unlock it.

It'll just be on a delay if he does. He's on Injured Reserve to start the year now.

Gary A. Vasquez/Imagn Images

The Flyers are hoping a change of scenery and a new shade of orange are part of the fix for Trevor Zegras.

Who's knocking on the door?

Before training camp started last month, Brière met with the media in Voorhees and said that no one gunning for a roster spot can be comfortable.

"They gotta keep getting better and better, and that includes all the veterans, because our young guys are starting to push and they want more," the GM explained. They're hungry for more."

And that's part of the plan.

The result of spending the past couple of years stocking up on prospects is that it would fuel competition from within. There would only ever be so many spots on the NHL roster, and not every prospect is going to turn out, so if a young hopeful truly wants to make it with the Flyers, they would have to push even harder to set themselves apart.

Now, Michkov isn't going anywhere, and neither are the trio of Foerster, Cates, and Brink. They've earned their keep, and by the looks of it from the preseason, they're all set to keep pushing after more.

But elsewhere in the pipeline, touted London Knights prospects Oliver Bonk and Denver Barkey both turned pro and are with the Phantoms this year. They're one step closer, and Adam Ginning, Brière admitted on Monday, went from out of the mix to surprisingly playing his way back in and on to the roster.

All the while, Emil Andrae didn't make the cut, Egor Zamula seems like he's just barely hanging on, and a raw but promising wing prospect for some time in Samu Tuomaala was sent back to the AHL among the first wave of cuts and doesn't even seem part of the picture anymore.

The system is moving along, nothing is guaranteed for anyone, and the internal field of competition could stay stocked up for a while…

And who's on their way?

Because Porter Martone and Shane Vansaghi are at Michigan State and on their way, looking to be the next key pieces to the Flyers' future.

Jett Luchanko made the team again out of camp to at least get another extended look in the NHL. He figures to be one of their key centers in the year to come, too.

The Flyers also have a lot of faith in Jack Nesbitt, the other center they picked up in the first round of the draft back in June, along with two very notable goalie prospects in Carson Bjarnason, who's now with the Phantoms, and Yegor Zavragin over in Russia.

The youth movement is still on. It's moving faster than maybe most realize, and more of that cavalry is coming.

Nick Tricome/PhillyVoice

Flyers sixth overall draft pick Porter Martone will play the coming season in college at Michigan State.

Tocchet's effect

Tocchet is going to have to maximize all of it, at one point or another.

To start at least, he's instilling his systems and concepts with the guys he has right now, and wasted no time jumping right into it once camp began.

It might take time for the Flyers to full grasp it, Tocchet admitted on Monday, but in theory, he's described a pretty ideal way to play.

He wants the Flyers to stay defensively responsible and only leave half the net for the goalie to actually worry about, but he wants them to overall control the puck more – as much as possible – which should especially play well to a rapidly rising offensive talent like Michkov.

"Obviously, we got some creative guys, you know?" Tocchet said earlier in camp. "When we have the puck, like I say, 'Go have a party, man. Do what you gotta do.' But when you don't have the puck, I expect guys to know what they're doing. I think that's a big thing for me, going into this year."

A new coach always brings optimism, but it'll have to be seen how the skaters take to his approach.

The ever eternal goalie question

You can't talk about the Philadelphia Flyers without ever asking about goaltending, the one position that just can't ever seem to stop plaguing this franchise.

Bjarnason is developing in the AHL this season, and Aleksei Kolosov is also after a lot of uncertainty surrounding him. Zavragin is still over in Russia, and at the NHL level, the Flyers are running with Sam Ersson and Vladar, at least to start.

The Flyers still have a lot of optimism that Ersson can be a dependable goaltender for them. He showed it two years ago when he had to step up as the No. 1, but couldn't quite sustain it last season through his own injury issues and general struggles.

The organization, though, still thinks he's much closer to what he was in 2023-24 than what he was in 2024-25.

Vladar serves as insurance in a way, but also as an added source of competition between the pipes as someone who also has more to prove at the NHL level.

It goes back to what Brière said: No one can be comfortable, and especially not the goalies, from the way it looks.

Eric Hartline/Imagn Images

Sam Ersson will be looking to round into more consistent form this coming season.

Better, but by how much?

The Flyers want to be better this season. That's their immediate goal on the way to the ultimate one of regular, sustained Stanley Cup contention that's still a long, long way down the road.

But how much better? Playoffs would be great, but the front office has been sure not to promise anything, and the roster, on paper, doesn't exactly scream postseason just yet.

But what if Michkov scores 40? What if Owen Tippett rebounds and breaks the 30-goal plane? What if Foerster goes above that, too? And what if Zegras finds his game again and posts around 60-ish points?

What if clear lines start to click? What if a Russian duo of Michkov and Nikita Grebenkin complements one another well?

What if they make a push again but just miss by Game 82?

Are those the signs? Are the little victories still going to be enough for now?

Thursday night in Florida will start to answer those questions.

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