The Flyers have two first-round picks in tonight’s 2024 NHL draft. Here’s everything you need to know.

The Flyers are in a rebuild, and like constructing a house, the work starts from the ground up.

How critical is this draft? Of the 34 players who played at least one game the Flyers in the 2023-24 season, 19 were drafted by the club. And of those 19, eight were selected in the first round, including Travis Konecny, Sean Couturier, Scott Laughton, and Joel Farabee.

While a first-rounder is certainly flashy, pay attention to the later-round prospects, too. Flyers goalies Sam Ersson and Ivan Fedotov were selected in the fifth and seventh rounds, respectively. Nick Seeler, a Minnesota Wild draft selection, was a fifth-rounder, and Cam Atkinson was a steal in the sixth round for the Columbus Blue Jackets. As assistant general manager Brent Flahr, who runs the draft for the Flyers, said to The Inquirer: “We tell the kids right away, once development camp starts, where you’re drafted doesn’t matter. It’s all what you do from here.”

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So who will the Flyers select as they keep their eyes focused on the future — and with Matvei Michkov’s arrival inches from the doorstep? The club has a plethora of picks for the second straight year and is “open for business.” Will the team move up or down? Are the Flyers the team to make a splash at this year’s festivities?

Here’s everything you need to know about the 2024 NHL draft.

The draft runs over two days as 225 players will hear their names called to realize their dream of joining an NHL organization. Held in Las Vegas, it will be the first live broadcast event at Sphere.

Round 1 begins Friday at 7 p.m. (ESPN, ESPN+).

Rounds 2-7 begin Saturday at 11:30 a.m. (NHL Network, ESPN+).

The Flyers will have at least nine picks and could have as many as 10. For the second year in a row, they’ll have two in the opening round, one of their own — currently at No. 12 — and the other from the Florida Panthers via the Claude Giroux trade in 2022, No. 32 overall.

The team will potentially have two second-round picks. Despite trading their own second-rounder, the Flyers received a compensatory pick for not re-signing 2018 first-rounder Jay O’Brien. The Flyers also have a conditional second-round pick from Columbus from the Ivan Provorov three-team deal, but the Blue Jackets could defer it to 2025. They can wait until the end of the first round — when the Flyers pick at No. 32 — to make a decision.

The Flyers do not have a fourth-rounder, after sending that pick to the Buffalo Sabres at the 2024 trade deadline for defenseman Erik Johnson. Their own fifth-round pick was also part of the Giroux trade.

This year’s draft marks the first time the Flyers will select at No. 12 and No. 32 in an entry draft. Of the 10 picks, they have only been in three spots in past years.

In 2016, the team drafted Pascal Laberge with the 36th pick; he never played for the Flyers but played parts of four seasons for Lehigh Valley. Last year, the Flyers nabbed highly touted goalie Carson Bjarnason with the 51st overall pick, and in 2018 they selected center Marcus Westfält 205th overall, though he has spent most of his career in Sweden.

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Boston University’s Macklin Celebrini has long been considered the top pick in the draft. At 17, he became the youngest player to win the Hobey Baker Award as the top player in men’s college hockey after 32 goals and 32 assists in 38 games.

Celebrini is expected to be selected by the San Jose Sharks; his dad is the director of sports medicine and performance for the area’s Golden State Warriors. After Celebrini, it can be a toss-up. Draft experts have identified quite a few possibilities, including Artyom Levshunov, a defenseman at Michigan State; defenseman Anton Silayev, who is 6-foot-7, and was the top-ranked international skater but is signed with Torpedo of the Kontinental Hockey League through the 2025-26 season; Russian right wing Ivan Demidov, who is considered to be one of the most skilled players available; and 6-3 center Cayden Lindstrom, a pure shooter. with Medicine Hat in the Western Hockey League.

This is considered to be draft top-heavy in defensemen with Levshunov; Silayev; Zeev Buium, Flyers prospect Massimo Rizzo’s teammate at the University of Denver; Sam Dickinson, who skates with Oliver Bonk and Denver Barkey in London in the Ontario Hockey League; the Canadian Hockey League’s top blueliner, Zayne Parekh; and Carter Yakemchuk, who patrols the Calgary Hitmen’s blue line like Travis Sanheim and Egor Zamula once did.

One can pore over mock draft after mock draft and, aside from maybe the top three picks, there is no consensus on how the draft will unfold. The Flyers could move up. They could move back. They could stay put. Regardless of what they do, The Inquirer has eight prospects who are in the Flyers’ wheelhouse, with center Berkly Catton of the WHL’s Spokane Chiefs — a player who could complement Michkov quite nicely — being their choice.

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