The Flyers have had three drafts since Danny Brière and Keith Jones took over the front office, all with a slow and steady rebuild in mind, and are headed for their fourth at the end of next month, this time with the 21st overall pick and the status of a breakout playoff team.

The priority, for a while, was on restocking the prospect cupboard and gradual player development, but with this past season, that work finally started carrying over to the NHL team, as several high-profile up-and-comers filled out the nightly lineup and helped to push Philadelphia back into the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in almost six years.

More youth is expected to be on the way, too.

Porter Martone, Denver Barkey, Alex Bump, and Matvei Michkov (hungry to bounce back from a sophomore slump) are the key internal pieces who are already here and beginning to make their marks as pros.

Then underneath, in the AHL, college, juniors, and overseas ranks, are more promising names who are either knocking on the NHL door, steadily working their way up to the step of it, or more specifically in net, hoping to fill out the long-term goaltending picture.

So there have been definite hits from the past several drafts, with more shaping up – the Flyers hope – though with some clear missteps along the way, too.

Here's a look at all of them through the past four Philadelphia draft boards from 2022 (former GM Chuck Fletcher's last) up to 2025 last summer (Brière's third at the wheel) as a means to see how well the Flyers have been drafting, along with some notes and an estimation on when fans might see the next prospects in line. 

For clarity before getting into it: Any prospect's ETA isn't concrete. For now, it's an educated guess based on what's been seen so far out of their development and where the Flyers could have space at a skater's respective position. So some might have conservative timelines, while others get more aggressive ones. Then there are the ones who missed their window. They've been marked with an "X" to signal that they won't be seen in a Flyers uniform.

Now that those rules are set, the Flyers' recent draft history...

2025

• The Flyers were given a fastball right down the middle with Martone at sixth overall and crushed it. He arrived at the end of March, after an excellent freshman year at Michigan State, and helped complete the playoff push, looking like every bit of the future star he's been projected as. Now the 19-year-old winger can use that as a launching point into his first full season as a Flyer.

• Nesbitt recently committed to playing college hockey at Michigan for next season, and as a tall but pretty lanky 19-year-old center whose size advantage factors into how he controls the puck, that should be a huge opportunity for him to put on muscle while learning how to play against older and stronger competition – Martone, for example, credited that approach while he was at Michigan State as a major reason for why he was immediately ready to make an impact in the NHL when he came over.

• Vansaghi is a strong winger with skill and a mean streak in the mold of Washington Capitals star Tom Wilson, who definitely has the tools and a work ethic that can work in the NHL right now, but it's probably best for him to get one more year in at Michigan State and then some AHL minutes with the Phantoms later next year.

• Murtagh flashed some nice skill with the puck in his freshman year at Boston, and skates aggressively down the wall, but he's probably going to stick around in college a year or two before he makes a move into the pros, likely with the Phantoms first when he does.

• Amico is a big right-handed defenseman, but he was drafted as he was recovering from a knee injury, then didn't stick with Boston U and took a step back into the USHL with Muskegon. That's not a great development sign, but his size, shot, and defensive commitment are still promising enough to wait things out.

Flyers Prospect Checks
Part 1 | Part 2 | Goalies

2024

• Luchanko had an underwhelming junior season between Guelph and Brantford, but was kept in the NHL fold and played in the Flyers' last playoff game. He has good skating, and good playmaking anticipation, but he has to get more willing to shoot the puck. He'll be 20 this season and able to join the Phantoms full-time. It's a crucial year ahead for him.

• Berglund's stock has kept going up as a center prospect and he was able to get to the Phantoms by the end of the year. He'll probably need a full season in the AHL to adapt his game to North America, but he could be looking at a late-season call-up in 2027 and then a shot at a spot next training camp if he keeps trending upward.

• Gill is also turning 20 ahead of next season, which will allow him to play for the Phantoms. He's a right-shot defenseman at a massive 6'4" and 214 pounds, with smooth enough skating that the Flyers should be eager to really get developing at the minor-league level. He could be a key defensive piece with a couple more years' work.

2023

• Michkov had a down Year 2, but "down" still meant 20 goals and 51 points, while head coach Rick Tocchet still committed to playing him through 81 games, even though he did finally scratch him in the playoffs. It's a good bet that Michkov will be fine, and that ultimately, this past season's struggles will only be looked back on as bumps in the road.

• Bonk had a late start to his first pro year due to injury, but by the end of it, he was skating well for the Phantoms and carried that over to the Flyers when they skated him in Game 82 against Montreal and then in that last Game 4 of the second round against Carolina. He's close and will have a shot at cracking the opening night roster at camp later this summer.

• Bjarnason is with the Phantoms now, but is still a very young and raw goalie prospect. He needs time and reps.

• Zavragin is the big mystery goalie prospect out of Russia, who keeps producing eye-popping numbers over there. The big focus with him is when can the Flyers get him to North America? (Read more about the goalie pipeline HERE)

• Barkey came up midway through the year and was supposed to go back to the Phantoms but never did, and by the playoffs, there was even enough confidence in him to start sending him out as a center. Right now, he's looking like he could end up one of the 2023 draft class' biggest steals.

• Knuble signed his entry-level deal and joined the Phantoms out of Notre Dame before the season's end. He's become a nice center prospect to monitor with the way he pursues the puck and drives through the middle of the ice, but he might be limited at a bottom-six center at a point when the Flyers won't really have an opening there for the foreseeable future.

• Sotheran, MacPherson, and Mann were late-round picks who never made any significant waves as prospects. The organization seems to have mostly moved on.

2022

• This draft, Fletcher's last as the Flyers' GM with Brière as an assistant to him, is always going to carry a weird ripple effect. Gauthier was an absolute hit at fifth overall, it's just as a 40-goal scorer for the Anaheim Ducks now after he cut contact with the organization (for still unknown reasons), which forced the trade a year and a half ago that still yielded Jamie Drysdale as a now key defenseman. 

• They also got a hit with Bump in the fifth round, who went on to be a collegiate star for a National Champion Western Michigan team last year, and now doesn't figure to be leaving the Flyers' roster anytime soon after he settled into the lineup with a shoot-first mentality that they very much needed late in the season.

• Then they got McDonald in the back half of this, too, who has developed into a physical, stay-at-home style of defenseman who seems to just be waiting on his call now after he held up well in that last regular season game against the Canadiens also.

Remember, too, that the Flyers landed on these two guys late in a draft where, at the time, Fletcher thought it was a great idea to trade three picks over three years to Carolina for controversial defenseman Tony DeAngelo, who barely lasted a year in Philly.

It's an oddly salvageable draft haul – just wouldn't expect much from Kaplan at this rate, while Gendron is out of the picture and Sulku pretty much is, too (the Flyers have until June 1 to sign him and keep his rights. They probably won't.)

*RESOURCES: HockeyDB, Elite Prospects

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