The Flyers are still preaching patience, but are shooting to be better this year

Keith Jones and Dan Hilferty sat down with the local media Wednesday in Voorhees to discuss the state of the Flyers and where they're headed next.

But as the two spoke in the conference room upstairs at the Flyers Training Center, a growing number of notable players – such as Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, and Cam York – skated out onto the practice rink down below.

The Philadelphia Flyers' aim is to be better this coming season, Jones and Hilferty both emphasized throughout their half-hour press conference. To what extent, at least standings-wise, will have to be seen, but the organization wants to take a step forward.

And if they're going to do that, they need those guys to take a step, too.

They need Konecny to continue on as the leading winger. They need York to rebound from last year's struggles and re-establish himself as a core part of their blue line. They need Tyson Foerster, Noah Cates, and Bobby Brink to keep on building as relentless two-way checkers. And at the forefront of all of it, they need Matvei Michkov to ascend into NHL stardom.

The past two years for the Flyers, since Danny Brière became the full-time general manager, Jones the president of hockey operations, and Hilferty as governor at the top, have been about drafting, developing, freeing up cash, and building for the future. They took however good, or bad, they were at the NHL level as it came.

Year 3, though, is shifting more toward seeing tangible improvement on the ice from night to night.

"I think we owed that to our players who are here," Jones said. "They've done everything that we've asked of them. We've moved out a lot of their friends, we've taken away players at a time when other teams are building to try to make a playoff run. We've continued to accumulate assets to try to help us in the future, and a lot of our top players have been patient with that, so I do think that played into it.

"Really, we're just in a better position to be able to move forward."

Slowly but surely.

Again, better is the goal, and with that comes a bit of a different mindset. Off the top of his head, Jones mentioned that he expects the trade deadline to go differently for the Flyers this time around. He doesn't see the team being so quick to sell parts off for the sake of hauling in as many future assets as it can anymore, "Unless there was something crazy that happened," he acknowledged. "But that's the plan as we sit here today."

However, so is staying patient.

As much as Jones and Hilferty want to see the team improve this season, they were sure to stress, too, that the organization is remaining patient and staying on its plan.

It's been five years since the Flyers have made the playoffs, and that drought can wear on fans. It already has in a lot of ways. Hilfery carries that frustration, too, but maintained his stance on Wednesday that he wants to see the Flyers build themselves back up correctly, not quickly.

Making the playoffs immediately isn't the endgame, and not necessarily their true mark of progress just yet either.

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"We agree, Keith agrees, Danny agrees that we're gonna just take our time and do this the right way," Hilfery said. "Point being, there's no pressure from me in my role, or from an ownership perspective beyond me, to say we need to do something drastic, dramatic, because we need to have a better shot at the playoffs. This is about steady growth, building the number of young players that are coming up through the system, making sure positionally we're doing the right things, bringing the coaching staff in, starting with [Rick Tocchet], that we think can really continue to develop these players…We're gonna wait this out."

"Now, I'm not getting any younger," Hilferty continued. "But we're gonna do this at a pace that, what I like to say and I said this to the players the other day, we want to build a culture of sustainable, sustainable excellence, not just a shot next year and then it falls off after.

"There's fan time pressure. But there's no pressure from the perspective of it's got to be this year or next year. When we do it, you'll see it."

But they do want this season to start showing clear signs that this will work.

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