As the Philadelphia Flyers approach the end of their offseason and the beginning of the 2024-25 campaign, let’s scout the competition in the Metropolitan Division. Where do they stand?
Carolina Hurricanes
In a way, the Flyers played a lot like the juggernaut Carolina Hurricanes last season. Both the talent and overall execution belong to the latter, but these two teams are similar in the way they play the game. We can thank head coaches John Tortorella and Rod Brind’Amour for that.
Under Brind’Amour’s guidance, the Hurricanes overwhelm their opponents with shots but play tight defensively when necessary. Their goaltenders, Pytor Kochetkov and Frederik Andersen, are arguably the best duo in the league—big saves are routine. Carolina has one of the best defensive cores in the league, elite offensive depth, and a great first line, as well. The only real weakness here is their second line—aside from Martin Necas, it’s certainly not the best.
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Even with their lacking second line, the Hurricanes are unequivocally a better hockey team than the Flyers. I did say that they play similarly, but Carolina just does it way better. They dominate puck possession, routinely get big saves, and have the talent to score quite often—Philadelphia only has that first part down. The win goes to the former here.
Columbus Blue Jackets
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the rebuilding Columbus Blue Jackets. Unlike the Hurricanes, they were one of the worst teams in the league in terms of puck possession. Consistently dominated at every turn, their 2023-24 campaign was yet another one to forget for them—they have 39 more regulation losses than total wins since 2022-23.
The Blue Jackets have been one of the league’s worst teams over the last two seasons, but it would be unfair to pretend like there isn’t an upside with them. For starters, their defense is better than it gets credit for. It could shake out in a few different ways, but a top-four defense consisting of Zach Werenski, Damon Severson, Ivan Provorov, and youngster David Jiricek has a nice look to it. If Denton Mateychuk makes the team, he could be a decent fit with Erik Gudbranson—the former is offensively-minded, while the latter tends to focus more on defense.
The youth on the Blue Jackets’ offense is both a blessing and a curse. Their growth will dig the team out of their rebuild eventually, but there’s way too much faith being put into a bunch of players in their early 20s who haven’t broken out yet. Coupled with an underwhelming goaltending duo that has shown little to no upside in recent years, Columbus seems poised for the bottom of the division for the third season in a row. They should improve from their last outing, but the Flyers seem to have this battle won by a decent margin. Philadelphia controls play while Columbus is the team that gets controlled.
New Jersey Devils
In what was a surprise to almost everyone, the Flyers finished ahead of the New Jersey Devils in the standings last season even though the Devils had a 37-point advantage over Philadelphia in 2022-23. The reasoning for the regression here was everything going wrong for New Jersey in 2023-24—we can be confident that their luck improves.
There was really no team that suffered as much from injury as the Devils did. Losing over 10 games of Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier, Timo Meier, Ondrej Palat, and almost the entire season of Dougie Hamilton, some struggles were inevitable. On top of that, their goaltending was some of the worst in the league—the Devils were lucky to be just somewhat competitive throughout the season.
Now that they have both Jacob Markstrom and Jake Allen, goaltending doesn’t seem like much of an issue. They were a very good team at generating scoring chances much like the Flyers were, so their health and play between the pipes improving probably puts them over the top here. New Jersey is comfortably ahead of the Orange and Black, in my eyes.
New York Islanders
The New York Islanders are a team that made the playoffs last season and could potentially see some internal improvement, but their upside doesn’t seem to be all that high. They have some star pieces with forward Mathew Barzal, defenseman Noah Dobson, and goaltender Ilya Sorokin leading the way. There are quite a few other solid players in there, as well, but the catch is that New York has basically run back the same team for the past few seasons—they haven’t been on pace for at least 95 points per 82 games since 2020-21.
The Islanders seem like a good bet to be in the wildcard race, but it’s important to note that the Flyers were ahead of them in the standings for a decent portion of the 2023-24 season. If anything, the upside between these two teams is in favor of the Orange and Black—nobody truly knows what incoming 19-year-old prospect Matvei Michkov can provide, while New York didn’t make major changes.
It’s more or less a toss-up between these two clubs, but the Flyers were the better team last season until the finish line and had one of the biggest additions in the offseason with Michkov. For the sake of the argument, we’ll say Philadelphia edges out New York by a hair.
New York Rangers
On the other hand, the New York Rangers are one of the top contenders in the Eastern Conference. Not only have they finished ahead of the Orange and Black in the standings for each of the past four seasons, but they also won the Presidents’ Trophy as the NHL’s best regular season team in 2023-24. They have as good of a chance as anyone to win the Stanley Cup next June.
There’s a lot of elite talent on the Rangers’ roster, and they have such a formidable offensive attack that most teams simply can’t keep up. With Igor Shesterkin between the pipes, arguably the best goaltender in the NHL, it’s no wonder why New York has reached the Eastern Conference Final in two of their past three seasons.
For all of the reasons above, the Rangers are in a different class than the Flyers are. Even when Philadelphia is a finished product and they are ready to contend, they may never construct a roster as good as New York’s—it’s a hard comparison to live up to.
Pittsburgh Penguins
In the early history of these two Pennsylvanian franchises, the Flyers were a far superior club to the Pittsburgh Penguins. That changed when Mario Lemieux hit his stride around the late 1980s, shifted back in Philadelphia’s favor briefly, then went back to Pittsburgh when they drafted Sidney Crosby in 2005. Finally—by no fault of Crosby, mind you—the Penguins appear to be fading once again. They’re not a team to be taken lightly, as they should be in the hunt for the postseason, but their present roster is about average and their prospect pool is poor.
The Penguins, much like the Islanders, were a team that was behind the Flyers in the standings for most of the season but pulled ahead late (albeit by just one point). For the first time since 2006-07, Pittsburgh is entering a campaign coming off of back-to-back playoff misses—it’s been a noticeable decline for them. While the team still is competitive, players like Crosby and Erik Karlsson are doing most of the heavy lifting. Bryan Rust, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Marcus Pettersson, and Tristan Jarry shouldn’t be underestimated, but the roster is very poor aside from those seven names. If anything, Pittsburgh’s depth is some of the worst in the league.
The Penguins didn’t make much of a push to improve their team in the 2024 offseason, which is pretty telling. Even with the Flyers’ youth and the fact that Crosby is one of the best players in the game at 37 years of age, the Orange and Black seem to have a slight advantage in this matchup.
Washington Capitals
Finally, we have the Washington Capitals. The Flyers essentially gifted this team a playoff appearance in 2023-24, emptying their net with a few minutes left in a tied April 16 game when Washington needed a victory in said game to qualify for the postseason.
The Capitals only finished four points ahead of the Flyers, so the two teams seem rather close. Washington added Pierre-Luc Dubois, Andrew Mangiapane, Matt Roy, Jakob Chychrun, and Logan Thompson to their roster in the offseason whilst only really losing parts of their fourth line and defenseman Nick Jensen, so it’s hard to deny that they got better. But there are some things to consider with this team.
Most importantly, Washington seems like a possible regression candidate due to the unsustainable nature of their playoff appearance. Not only did they have just 91 points, but they did that with a minus-37 rating—this made them one of the most outscored postseason teams in history. The reason why they won so much had to do with their incredible record in one-goal affairs. Sitting at 20-2-11 in such contests, it seems rather unlikely that the Capitals can replicate this.
Washington was one of the worst teams in the NHL at even strength but managed to put everything together when it mattered most. They should see some improvement in terms of how they play, but that doesn’t automatically mean they’ll win more games. All of this is to say that the Capitals appear to be in a similar tier as the Flyers, but that four-point differential could definitely be one that the Orange and Black overcome. My guess is that Philadelphia will be the better team in 2024-25.
With these rankings all considered, this would place the Flyers fourth in the Metropolitan Division. But the tight matchups between the Islanders, Penguins, and Capitals make a playoff appearance for the Orange and Black far from a guarantee—they’ll have to prove their worth and then some.
Stats courtesy of Natural Stat Trick
