Flyers’ Keith Jones and Dan Hilferty discuss the rebuilding timeline, Matvei Michkov, and more

The book has closed on the first year of the Flyers’ “New Era of Orange.”

Aside from their end-of-season collapse, the Flyers largely outperformed outside expectations during that year, keeping hopes alive for their first playoff berth since 2020 until late in Game 82. As the organization looks ahead to Year 2 under the leadership triumvirate of general manager Danny Brière, president Keith Jones, and team governor Dan Hilferty, that early progress puts the Flyers’ rebuilding plan in an interesting position.

Jones and Hilferty met with the media on Wednesday in what they anticipate will become an annual tradition to promote transparency under the new regime. Here are the main takeaways from their remarks:

Despite this season’s near miss, the Flyers’ brass is still seeking to manage expectations for a playoff run in the short term.

“I’m not going to worry [if] it’s got to be this coming year that we make the playoffs,” Hilferty said. “I just want to see continued progress, the development of the younger players.”

Jones said that he doesn’t think the late-season skid diminishes the season’s accomplishments, and that he hopes it will provide valuable lessons for the young players. He also reflected on the deadline trade that sent defenseman Sean Walker to the Colorado Avalanche, which came a few weeks before the Flyers’ collapse.

“I don’t think you ever want to send a message to guys that have fought so hard to get the position that we’re sitting in to say, ‘Hey, we’re not a playoff team,’” he said. “So I don’t think the messaging should be lost in the fact that we did trade a player for a first-round pick next year at a very important draft.

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“Had Sean Walker stayed with the team, is there three points in there for us? Yes. Then we’re in the playoffs. And we would have battled hard. We would have been a difficult opponent for everyone.”

For Jones, the rebuilding timeline is chiefly informed by the Flyers’ salary-cap situation. According to CapFriendly, the Flyers have $3.5 million in dead cap space from Kevin Hayes’ retained salary, lasting through the 2025-26 season. They also have $1.67 million remaining after buying out Tony DeAngelo last season.

“The money that we have tied up right now for players that aren’t playing for our team, a lot of that is going to start to come off the cap,” Jones said. “And I do think that if you’re looking further down the line, that is where we’re going to start to have some real key decisions to make. We have to get them right. There’s no room for error on whatever players we add to the mix in a couple of years.”

Speaking of adding players to the mix, the Flyers’ top-ranked prospect, Matvei Michkov, has generated chatter over the last few months about a potentially sooner-than-expected arrival in Philadelphia.

The seventh overall pick in last year’s draft, Michkov is under contract with the Kontinental Hockey League’s SKA St. Petersburg through 2025-26. However, last month Russian outlet Match TV posted an interview with Roman Rotenberg, the coach of SKA. Rotenberg suggested that SKA would be open to a buyout of Michkov’s contract, which would allow the center to play in the NHL sooner than anticipated.

According to Jones, the Flyers remain in the dark about the situation.

“We are listening, we’re reading … and kind of following along, but we have no update on it,” he said. “We would welcome him with open arms. We absolutely love what he is going to bring to the Flyers. If that timeline is sped up, that would be wonderful. But we don’t know.

“We’ll watch along closely. … And when he arrives, our fan base is going to be pretty excited about getting a highly talented player that is different than what we have right now.”

As far as prospects whose path to playing in a Flyers uniform might be a bit more straightforward, Jones pointed to Oliver Bonk and Hunter McDonald as two recent draft picks who have demonstrated progress.

Bonk, playing alongside fellow Flyers prospect Denver Barkey on the London Knights, lost in the Memorial Cup final on Sunday to the Saginaw Spirit. A defenseman, Bonk had 83 points in 78 games across the regular season and postseason.

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McDonald joined the Lehigh Valley Phantoms following the conclusion of his sophomore year at Northeastern, and the former sixth-round pick has been a pleasant surprise at the AHL level. Brière recently called the defenseman a “very exciting prospect.”

“Those types of players are going to help us as we continue to build the back end, which is critically important to us as we move into the future,” Jones said.

He also expressed excitement about the two first-round picks that the Flyers have in their arsenal as the draft approaches on June 28.

“Does having the 12th pick overall help us in this draft? It does,” Jones said. “Is it something that we were hoping for as our guys were battling for the playoffs? No, but we have to make good on it now.”