The Philadelphia Flyers have not had the best track record draft-wise, and that was especially the case throughout the 2010s. We often hear the claim that we don’t know what a player is until they make the NHL so we shouldn’t judge the Flyers’ recent drafts until years in the future, but that claim is generally false. We can see that when we look at their current team as an example.
For our players, we’ll look at the Flyers’ top five point-scorers from their 2023-24 season, examining how they progressed from their draft year through the present—we will look at their point production to do this. As you might be able to tell, these players all showed their potential very early in the development process.
Travis Konecny
Travis Konecny went into the 2015 NHL Draft season as one of the top prospects available. Posting 70 points in 63 games in 2013-14 in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), there was serious top-five pick potential out of him. However, his 2014-15 campaign didn’t live up to the hype.
He scored 68 points in 60 games, which was still sixth in points per game (P/G) among 17-year-old OHL players, but his previous season implied he could be closer to 90 or even 100 points in his draft year. Because of that and the fact that he’s a smaller player, he was available at 24th overall. The Flyers traded up from 29th to snag him, and it was a good thing that they were so aggressive.
Konecny immediately rewarded the Flyers for their aggressiveness in 2015-16. He scored 101 points in 60 games, tied for fourth in the OHL with Alex DeBrincat in P/G. At that point, it became pretty apparent that Konecny was a great prospect—he had a full-time role with the Flyers in 2016-17.
Konecny scored 28 points in 70 games in his first NHL season, getting progressively better from there. He truly broke out at age 22 in 2019-20, scoring 61 points in 66 games and representing the Flyers at the All-Star Game. Last season, he scored 68 points in 76 contests—he led the team in points and has never scored more.
Owen Tippett
Owen Tippett, another OHL forward, was great in his draft year when he went 10th overall to the Florida Panthers in 2017. He was second in P/G among age-17 players, finishing with 75 in 60 contests. Interestingly, the five best scorers on that list (Nick Suzuki, Tippett, Gabe Vilardi, Jason Robertson, and Robert Thomas) are all very good NHL players today—each of them is a very strong top-six forward at the very least.
Tippett continued his strong trajectory in 2017-18, scoring 75 points in 51 games and finishing just shy of Thomas’ fourth-best P/G rate. He scored 74 points in 54 games in 2018-19, which was a slight step back, but at that point, it became clear that he was ready for professional hockey.
In the American Hockey League (AHL) during his 2019-20 season, Tippett was impressive with 40 points in 46 games. That should have been his ticket to a long-term stint in the NHL, but he couldn’t get consistent playing time with the Panthers and struggled in his minutes. He was traded to Philadelphia at the 2022 trade deadline, and that’s when he turned a corner.
Tippett became the player we know today in his 2022-23 season, scoring 49 points in 77 games. He ever-so-slightly upgraded that total to 53 points in 78 games, but perhaps a breakout is coming in his age-25 campaign. Considering the strides that the Flyers and he himself took in 2023-24, there should be hope for this upcoming season.
Joel Farabee
Playing for the U.S. National Team Development Program (USNTDP) in 2017-18, Joel Farabee shined with one of the best programs at producing NHL talent. Scoring 76 points in 62 games, he was fourth on the U18 club in P/G. As a result, the Flyers took him with the 14th overall pick in the 2018 NHL Draft—they landed a pretty good player.
With Boston University in 2018-19, Farabee was immediately productive with 36 points in 37 games. Ranking first in P/G among age-18 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) players and surpassing standout U18 teammate Oliver Wahlstrom (who some use as a cautionary tale of buying into USNTDP production), Farabee established himself as a star prospect.
Farabee was ready for the NHL by 2019-20, and he was pretty impressive in his age-19 campaign with 21 points in 52 games. He had 38 points in 55 games in 2020-21, which led to a six-year contract extension worth $5 million each season but he did not live up to that right away. Disc replacement surgery in the 2022 offseason hurt his 2022-23 production, but he was right back to where he left off in 2023-24 with 50 points in 82 games.
Related: Flyers’ Joel Farabee in the Midst of Resurgence
He only averaged 16:11 of ice time with those 50 points, which is important to note. If he had the same ice time as Konecny, for example, he would have been on pace for 61 points. Doing that with positive defensive results unlike his aforementioned teammate, it would be unwise to sleep on the 24-year-old—he has lived up to what he was hyped to be.
Travis Sanheim
Generally, defensemen are a little bit harder to examine based on points alone. However, even defensive defensemen should be able to score at a high rate in junior leagues if they are truly ready for the NHL. While that isn’t Travis Sanheim’s style, he showed point progression from year to year.
Sanheim was taken 17th overall in the 2014 NHL Draft by the Flyers, which took place at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Scoring 29 points in 62 Western Hockey League (WHL) games, he was just 11th in P/G among age-17 defensemen. Then, he had a spark and never looked back.
In 2014-15, Sanheim put up 65 points in 67 games, which ranked second in P/G among age-18 defensemen in the WHL. In 2015-16, he outright dominated the WHL scene with 68 points in 52 games as a defenseman—this was by far the most among age-19 defenders.
Sanheim played in the AHL in 2016-17, and he scored 37 points in 76 games. From that point forward, he has exclusively been in the NHL minus an 18-game stint in the AHL in 2017-18 where he scored 16 points. He finished with 44 points in 81 games for the Flyers last season and has been a solid offensively-minded defender for a while now.
Morgan Frost
Morgan Frost was taken with the 27th overall pick in the same class as Tippett, and they also both played in the OHL. Frost had 62 points in 67 games in 2016-17, finishing eighth in points per game among OHLers—this was notably a decent bit behind Robertson, who is now one of the best players in the NHL but was still on the board for the Flyers to take.
Frost caught up in his production in 2017-18, scoring a massive 112 points in 67 games—this ranked second in OHL P/G among age-18 players. He was only slightly better in 2018-19, finishing with 109 points in 58 games.
Just like with Tippett, it took Frost some time to find his way in the NHL. He didn’t emerge as a legit top-six player until 2022-23, but he has been similarly productive as his teammate since that time with 87 total points over 152 games. There’s a sizable amount of talent here, so a breakout could happen—just don’t expect him to be an elite first-line player.
The big takeaway here is that, generally, we can sort of figure out which players are going to be good NHLers pretty early—they don’t just randomly burst onto the scene after their teenage years. Points aren’t a perfect science, but top-tier prospects tend to score a lot of them. The top-end NHL players, something that Matvei Michkov projects to be, also show their dominance quickly but tend to be significantly more dynamic and productive than the five players on this list. Nothing is absolute, but the first season after a player is drafted is a great indicator of what that player might become. The Flyers athletes selected in the 2024 NHL Draft should be on everyone’s radar as they enter their first season as members of the organization.