At the start of this decade, the Philadelphia Flyers were a model of consistency when it came to making the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Other than a five-year skid from 1990-94, the Flyers never missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons and reached the Final about once a decade. Though a third championship remained out of grasp after their back-to-back titles in 1974 and 1975, it felt like the Flyers were within striking distance for a long time.
However, their ceiling began to slip after their most recent Finals run in 2010. It was followed by two straight second-round losses, the first of which started a decade-long streak of alternating between playoff makes and misses. In only one of their four playoff trips since 2014 did the team advance to the second round, and that was in the 2020 Bubble Playoffs at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The last half-decade has also seen the floor of that success eliminated. The Flyers are in a second stretch of five straight playoff misses, and there’s no guarantee this malaise doesn’t last longer. However, they’re trending in the right direction, at least in the short term. Moneypuck.com’s playoff odds model has seen their chances nearly double since the start of the season, improving from 18.7% to 33.4%. Only the Hurricanes and Detroit Red Wings have a better points percentage than them in the Eastern Conference.
If the Flyers do clinch an unexpected playoff berth, that will obviously be a celebratory occasion. But some fans may be concerned that short-term success could come at the expense of long-term planning.
After all, the team is still lacking high-end talent on the NHL roster. The Athletic‘s Corey Pronman ranked their prospect pool seventh in the league after the 2025 Draft (from ‘NHL prospect pool rankings 2025: Scott Wheeler evaluates all 32 farm systems,’ The Athletic, Aug 25, 2025). That’s a solid mark, but perhaps not truly elite.
However, there could be future benefits from even (if not especially) a short playoff run. And with any hopes of bottoming out to a third bottom-five finish in the last four seasons all but gone, all fans should shift their focus toward returning to hockey’s big stage.
The Pros
Before the season began, Flyers management said that making the playoffs wouldn’t be viewed as the team’s ultimate bar for success in the 2025-26 season. But pursuing that was still important.
“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 that steady growth,” said team governor Dan Hilferty back in September.
So far, the Flyers have definitely met that mandate. There was a path for the team to flounder in the standings. Their offseason additions could have been busts, injuries could’ve ravaged the roster, and the returning players could’ve completely failed to adjust to the new coaching staff’s systems.
There have been hiccups. Tyson Foerster‘s injury is a sizable blow, and Rasmus Ristolainen has only just returned. Sam Ersson remains one of the league’s worst goaltenders by save percentage. The power play has largely faded after a solid start, although a two-goal performance on Saturday offers some reassurance.
At this point, The Athletic‘s Dom Lusczyszyn’s model gives the Flyers only a three percent chance of landing the first overall pick (from ‘NHL 2025-26 Stanley Cup playoff chances and projected standing’, The Athletic, Dec. 19, 2025). While that is still tied for the eighth-highest chance league-wide, there are already six teams at least nine points behind them in the standings. There’s very little chance the Flyers would land a high pick unless they got insanely lucky in the lottery, which isn’t a viable strategy to count on.
A team’s first trip to the playoffs after a long drought rarely lasts very long. There have been eight teams that have snapped a playoff drought of at least seven seasons during the salary cap era. Only two advanced past the first round in their first time back. Additionally, every Stanley Cup Finalist since 2017 has made the playoffs at least twice in the previous four seasons (except the 2018 Vegas Golden Knights, who are an outlier as an expansion team).
Just getting to the playoffs doesn’t guarantee a permanent step in the right direction. But rarely does an NHL team learn to run before it walks. The Flyers will likely need to become a first-round fodder-type team before they become a contender.
Getting the former out of the way sooner doesn’t necessarily expedite the latter, but it can advance the timeline in the right circumstances. The Flyers will need their players to perform at a high level over their final 50 games if they’re going to make it, which is helpful for their development and perhaps even their trade value for certain players who may not be long-term fits.
Refuting the Cons
There are two obvious downsides to a rebuilding team making the playoffs. The first — the missed opportunity to further supplement their prospect pool — was touched on briefly above. That can come from either a lower first-round pick or not trading players for additional picks and/or prospects.
There’s only one notable unrestricted free agent who would net anything more than a late-round pick: center Christian Dvorak. However, Kevin Kurz reported the Flyers don’t intend to trade Dvorak during the season, all the way back in October (from ‘Christian Dvorak playing key role for Flyers early. But will he remain for the season?,’ The Athletic, Oct. 11, 2025). You can disagree with that decision, but if it’s already been made, then it doesn’t really matter what a hypothetical deadline sell would look like.
But the more concerning way a playoff appearance could negatively affect the team is by making them think they are closer to contending than they already are. For example, the team Rick Tocchet used to coach, the Vancouver Canucks, have only made the playoffs twice since 2015. After a second-round exit in 2020, the Canucks made an ill-fated trade for an overpaid Oliver Ekman-Larsson. The Canucks bought him out after two seasons and will pay a cap penalty for doing so through the 2030-31 season.
After qualifying for the playoffs in 2024 (their lone time doing so in two-and-a-half seasons under Tocchet), things have taken a turn for the worse. Trading a first-round pick for Marcus Pettersson and re-signing Brock Boeser until his age-32 season aren’t decisions that fit with a team that’s now in the basement.
It’s possible something similar could happen to Philadelphia if they make it in 2026, but there are two reasons to believe it won’t. First, it’s unlikely the Flyers can hang with the high-end team they’re likely to face in the first round. They collected fewer than 45% of the expected goals in their three meetings with the Hurricanes. Their lone showdown with the Tampa Bay Lightning ended in a shutout. They’ve yet to face the Washington Capitals, who have beaten the Flyers in six straight meetings since March 2024.
Facing any of those teams, or a full-strength New Jersey Devils team that just got Jack Hughes back, would almost certainly mean an early exit. That would result in little fool’s gold for general manager Daniel Brière to be mystified by. And Brière does sound intent on not letting what success the team achieves this season get to his head.
“The exciting part is, yeah, a lot of the guys in their 20s have taken a step. That’s a big part of what we wanted to see, and that gets us excited,” Brière said in an exclusive interview with PHLY Sports’ Charlie O’Connor last week.
“But at the same time, we’re trying to not get ahead of ourselves, and be careful. We’ve won a lot of games in overtime, shootout. We have to be careful” (From ‘Sitting down with Flyers GM Daniel Briere: Where the rebuild stands, the Quinn Hughes pursuit, Matvei Michkov’s usage, and Trevor Zegras’ position,’ PHLY Sports, Dec. 18, 2025).
Pursuing the Playoffs
The last two games have served as a reminder that this Flyers team still has lots of growing pains to deal with. A 2-1 lead late in the second period against the lowly Buffalo Sabres and a two-goal third period against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden, where the Rangers have struggled to score all season, should net more than just one point. The team’s early shootout prowess seems to be fading, with five straight wins followed by three consecutive losses in the skills contest after Saturday.
Related: Flyers News & Rumors: Barkey, Ersson, & Dvorak Debate
And remember, the Flyers still have plenty of young talent on the way. Denver Barkey had a dazzling NHL debut at the Garden. Porter Martone is lighting it up at Michigan State. Philadelphia also has an extra first-round pick in 2027 from the struggling Toronto Maple Leafs. There’s no guarantee Toronto is still reeling in a year and a half, and the pick is top-10 protected if they still are (although it would then become an unprotected first-rounder in 2028).
The Flyers may not have enough high-end talent between their pipeline and current roster. That’s a very legitimate concern and one the front office has to address. However, the days of them being in a position to do so by finishing near the basement appear over. If that’s indeed the case, there should be nothing holding fans back from rooting for the return of playoff hockey to the City of Brotherly Love for the first time since 2018.
