Flyers
Flyers: Briere’s Midseason Presser Leaves More Questions Than Answers

Before the Flyers completed their third straight win on Tuesday night against the Detroit Red Wings in overtime, GM Danny Briere met with the media that morning for his midseason press conference.
The Flyers, while still in a rebuild, are equally caught in the middle of the NHL standings, a very murky picture at the moment. Ahead of Thursday night’s games, seven teams in the Eastern Conference were separated by just three points.
It creates a great debate that Briere has to navigate. How do the Flyers approach the immediate future?
“Nothing has changed. It’s still the same for us,” Briere said. “If there’s something that makes sense for the future, we’re going to look into it. I’ve had a lot of different conversations. Around the league, I think everybody is in the same spot. They’re looking at what the options are, and they’re preparing for the deadline.
“There’s many reasons for that, why it seems that it always happens closer to the deadline. I don’t expect anything different this year, but we’re in different conversations. I guess we’re setting things up for crunch time. That’s what happened last year also. We’re always listening, and if something makes too much sense for the future of this organization, we’re going to take it.”
So if you were looking for something more immediate, don’t hold your breath. Nothing appears imminent for the Flyers at this moment. The trade deadline could be a different story, but the names that are expected to come up are going to be familiar ones. Scott Laughton, Rasmus Ristolainen, Morgan Frost, the list goes on. You’ve heard them before. You’ll hear them again.
But one thing that makes the Flyers situation more unique is that they don’t have any unrestricted free agents that are expected to be on the market. Those players are commonly rentals to contending teams. Bringing more term into that picture gives the Flyers more to think about.
“Scott also still has another year on his contract. He’s not a rental,” Briere said. “Yeah, he’s important to the dressing room. And I think his play has really kicked in the last 20 games. I didn’t really love his start of the season, but I could go on because the team as a whole didn’t have a great start. It was tough to start out West. It took us a few weeks to really get going. And now part of that is a guy is a leader in the locker room and Scott Laughton has a lot to do with that. He’s critical to our culture.
“But again, if there’s something that makes too much sense, it’s our duty to listen and to do the right thing for this organization and team moving forward. I’ve been very clear with all the players. I tell them all the same thing. I’m not trying to get rid of a Risto or a Scott Laughton, but it’s our duty to listen and do the right thing for the organization.”
That last part is especially important. It’s the Flyers’ duty to listen and do what’s right for the organization. And as long as that is just words and not action, it will leave people with more questions than answers, wondering just how serious they are in building it the right way or in doing the right thing for the organization.
Patience is a key in this. It always has been. But it’s hard to be patient when, for the last two seasons, the playoffs are certainly within reach well beyond the halfway point of the season. It’s hard to be patient when your top prospect suddenly comes to North America two years ahead of schedule. It’s hard to be patient when you re-sign your top player to an eight-year extension, thus retaining your top trade chip during a critical year of the rebuild.
The signs are equally there that the Flyers could try to fast track the rebuild as they are actively within the doldrums of one. They have Matvei Michkov in his rookie season and Travis Konecny locked up for the foreseeable future. They also have three first-round picks and three second-round picks in the upcoming draft.
“I know it’s not easy to be patient,” Briere said. “And believe me, there’s days even for myself that I have to control myself because you get excited by some of the things you see from your players. The part that hasn’t changed is we don’t want to build a team that’s going to make the playoffs one year, then miss the playoffs, and then make the playoffs the following year. We’re trying to build a contender that’s going to have a chance to win down the road for many years to come. And not just try to make the playoffs but become a contender that has a chance to win a cup. That goal hasn’t changed.”
The challenge is that the path to achieving that is not one size fits all. There are many things that can change the course of a rebuild plan or the path to contention. But after an offseason of running it back, the patience is already starting to run thin. And as Briere leaves more questions than answers on what they will do to bridge the gap between themselves and the true contenders of the league, it makes it harder to decipher the plan.