The 2024 NHL Draft is getting closer than ever, starting on June 28 at Sphere in Las Vegas, Nevada. Picking 12th, again in the first round with either the 31st or 32nd pick, and some more throughout the class, the Philadelphia Flyers have some big decisions to make. Amid a rebuilding project, they should take the best player on the draft board without exception.
The Flyers seem somewhat opposed to this approach, but some of the best teams in the NHL live and die by the “best player available,” code. Next up, it should be the Orange and Black so they can potentially make the 2024 class one of their greatest.
Flyers Don’t Have Singular Position of Need
The Flyers might be compelled to draft based on their needs, but here’s the kicker—they don’t really have one. The reason why they’re in a rebuild in the first place is because the team and farm system alike are somewhat weak at every single position. Other than in the net, the Orange and Black need some serious help. With this in mind, the whole “positional need,” argument doesn’t make all that much sense.
Drafting based on positional needs makes a little bit of sense for teams that think they have everything all figured out. These needs change over time anyway, so even then the argument doesn’t exactly work in every instance. Still, the Flyers are nowhere close to knowing what they truly are—they are very early in the rebuilding process. Whether it be a forward, a defenseman, or even another goaltender, they should be drafting the best player on the board at all times. Opposing this might have negative consequences down the line and limit their upside.
Flyers’ 2023 NHL Draft Approach
Even as recently as the 2023 NHL Draft, the Flyers were doing the whole “positional need,” shtick—times have certainly not changed for the Orange and Black. General manager (GM) Danny Briere, in his first campaign, made the common-sense move by taking Matvei Michkov at seventh overall. They got an absolute gift from every team not named the Chicago Blackhawks, so there was no passing that up. After that pick, that’s when Philadelphia returned to their old ways for a little bit.
Needing a right-handed defenseman, the Flyers reached a bit at 22nd overall to take Ontario Hockey League (OHL) defenseman Oliver Bonk. It’s not that it was a particularly egregious pick, but Gabe Perreault, one of the finest that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has to offer, went right after to the New York Rangers. He was consistently ranked in the teens or even higher by scouts and had excellent production in his draft year, but he slipped extremely far. The Flyers had a chance to end the madness, yet went for positional need instead.
While Bonk does fill a need, getting a top-notch forward was a bigger one, especially with the departure of former top-end prospect Cutter Gauthier. If the Flyers were concerned about the connections that Perreault and Gauthier had, Andrew Cristall was another dominant player in his 2022-23 season that fell way further than projected. Going 40th overall to the Washington Capitals, that could bite the Orange and Black for a long time—he was tremendous in the Western Hockey League (WHL) in 2023-24.
With their next pick at 51st overall, the Flyers tried to strengthen their play between the pipes with goaltender Carson Bjarnason out of the WHL. Again, this was a fine pick just like Bonk that could very well end up being a good one, but there’s one problem—a first-round talent was still on the board. Center Riley Heidt, who is also ironically a positional need, fell from being projected as a mid-to-late first-round pick to going all the way down to the last pick of the second round. NHL Central Scouting had him ranked one spot behind Bonk, which speaks to the level of prospect he was seen as.
Related: Minnesota Wild Prospect Report: Pionk, Heidt, Novak, & More
Since being drafted, Heidt only exceeded expectations in his 2023-24 WHL season. Scoring 117 points, he finished third in scoring and first among players his age or younger. Bjarnason is a solid goaltender, but the Flyers would probably take the high-scoring center over the netminder—it’s what they should have done at the moment, too.
Flyers Cannot Afford Draft-Day Oversights
With the Flyers seemingly unwilling to sell off all of the veterans on their roster for a “tank,” season of sorts in 2024-25, probably the easiest way to get talent without doing that is through drafting well. While Bonk and Bjarnason are good players, Perreault and Heidt are great ones. Adding two forwards with high-end top-six potential isn’t an easy thing to do where they were drafting—there are only so many opportunities to acquire them.
The more opportunities like that the Flyers let slip through the cracks, the worse their chances of winning a Stanley Cup down the line. These are the same issues that plagued them in 2014 and 2017 respectively when they could have—and probably should have with the information they had—taken superstar forwards David Pastrnak and Jason Robertson. Instead, they opted for lower-end prospects and it bit them in the end. Repeating these actions could put Philadelphia back in a loop of mediocrity, more or less. Stars don’t grow on trees, so they need to take them when they are on the draft board.
By valuing things such as hockey IQ, offensive production, or any other high-end trait over addressing size or positional need, the Flyers can be fairly confident that they’ll look like bandits when all is said and done. Drafting great players is never a certainty, but Philadelphia can give themselves a way better shot if they never stray from taking the best player.