The Florida Panthers are well on their way to winning the 2024 Stanley Cup, just one victory away from their first championship in franchise history. The series isn’t over, but they’d need a historic collapse to let a 3-0 series lead slip from their hands. As with all Stanley Cup winners, other teams will want to try to replicate what they’ve done—the Philadelphia Flyers should look at what made them so successful, too.
The Flyers won’t be able to create a one-for-one match of what Florida has, but they can apply some general themes from the Panthers’ roster. What are those exactly? How can Philadelphia bring themselves their first Stanley Cup since 1975?
Flyers Need a Top-End Two-Way Center
I have already touched on this point very recently, but let’s visit it a little bit more in-depth. The Panthers are the team that they are because of one player in particular: Aleksander Barkov. The winner of the Selke Trophy by a sizable margin in 2023-24, he received 85.1 percent of first-place votes—his teammate, Sam Reinhart, received another 6.2 percent of them.
The Panthers are not the first team to have a dominant two-way centerman for their Stanley Cup run. Since the salary cap era began in the 2005-06 season, Barkov can be the fifth center to win both the Stanley Cup and the Selke Trophy in the same campaign. He could join Rod Brind’Amour, Pavel Datsyuk, Jonathan Toews, and Ryan O’Reilly who have done so—this is becoming a fairly common occurrence.
The important thing to recognize about those names is that they all played a ton of ice time. All of the players we have just mentioned had first-line ice time when they won the Selke Trophy. If the Flyers want to be built like the Panthers, this is not something that they can take a shortcut on.
While great defensively, a third-line player like Noah Cates is not going to be enough for the Orange and Black. Sean Couturier, who won the Selke Trophy back in 2019-20, seems to be past those days of being a legitimate first-line center. While the Flyers desperately need offensive skill and creativity, the biggest thing that they lack might be a dominant two-way centerman—they will want to get on this as soon as possible.
All of the Selke Trophy centers listed were on pace for at least 70 points per 82 games when they won the award, making it apparent the Flyers should be chasing someone with offensive upside, as well. At his peak, Datsyuk was one of the most talented offensive and defensive forwards in the league. These players aren’t one-dimensional like Cates—they are great at everything.
As I have proposed in previous works, there is a chance that someone like 2024 NHL Draft prospect Konsta Helenius could be the solution to this. Not only is he one of the best defensive forwards in the class, but he put up the fourth-highest point total for an age-17 player in Liiga history, which is a professional league in Finland. The player who holds the all-time record is, ironically, Barkov.
Helenius has an incredibly high ceiling with how intelligent and skilled of a player he is, so the Flyers might not be able to land him with their 12th overall pick. If he does fall, however, the Orange and Black might be getting the solution to their dilemma. He probably won’t be as good as Barkov, but he fills one of the biggest organizational needs that Philadelphia has.
Flyers Could Use Another High-End Defenseman
The Panthers’ defensive core has allowed them to be one of the best teams in the NHL. With the Norris Trophy-caliber emergence of Gustav Forsling to the high-end play of Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour, Florida’s defense is one of the best in the league. The Flyers don’t need to have an exact replica, but they are going to want a top-end defender on their roster.
Arguing which defensemen are the best in the league is always a subjective topic, but there is always a general understanding of which players belong in that conversation and which ones do not. Without a doubt, Forsling was one of these for the Panthers—he put up elite shutdown results in 2023-24. Seeing as players like Victor Hedman and Cale Makar won the Stanley Cup from 2020-2022, the best of the best is usually what you’re striving for.
Cam York can be a very good defenseman when he reaches his ceiling, but he doesn’t appear to have the same trajectory as someone like Forsling. This doesn’t apply to other young players like Oliver Bonk, Emil Andrae, or Carter Sotheran, either. 22-year-old Jamie Drysdale has the most talent that the Orange and Black have seen out of a defender in quite some time, but he is still very raw and isn’t a sure-thing player. To have true confidence that the Flyers can have an elite defense, they might want to acquire one more defenseman with a high upside.
This isn’t an issue that the Flyers have to worry about immediately, as if Drysdale reaches his absolute ceiling then they should have one of the best defenses already—he could be a lower-end version of Makar if everything works out for him. If that doesn’t end up being the case but he is still a great player, Philadelphia can draft another defenseman, trade for one, or even sign one in free agency in hopes that they can round out their core.
For example, the 2023 Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup without a single player receiving a vote for the Norris Trophy on their roster. The Flyers don’t need to have the best defenseman in the league, but they will want to have a top-tier player like Forsling if they aim to replicate Florida’s style.
What the Flyers Already Have
The good news for the Flyers is that they already have a few things that could go a long way. For starters, prospect Matvei Michkov can make the lives of other players around him far easier. He has superstar habits and talent, which is something that Philadelphia has lacked since Claude Giroux’s reign in the 2010s. The Flyers will want to add some more talented players around their young prospect, but they will have plenty of opportunities to do that.
To emphasize how late in the building process that talent can be added, Florida added their best point-scorer over the last two seasons, Matthew Tkachuk, in the 2022 offseason—they won the Presidents’ Trophy just months prior to that move. They acquired their superstar two-way center first, then an elite defense, and then built from there. Talent is still eluding Philadelphia, but they have plenty of time to add. Owen Tippett and Tyson Foerster can be two valuable contributors on the scoring front for years to come, so it’s not like they’re starting from scratch.
Another vital piece to the Panthers’ success has been the goaltending play of former Flyer netminder Sergei Bobrovsky. At 35 years old, he has some of the best athleticism for any goaltender in the league. The good news for the Orange and Black is that 22-year-old goalie prospect Alexei Kolosov has some of the same traits—he is a fantastic athlete. If that’s not enough, they have Yegor Zavragin, Sam Ersson, and Carson Bjarnason who could all help take some pressure off of him or even take the starter job themselves.
The Flyers have not been the perfect team over the past few decades, but it seems like they are finally building something. A massively important offseason and draft are awaiting them—will they build their roster like the Panthers and many other champions in recent history, or will they go another route?
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