Danny Brière’s patience is the best thing the Flyers have going for them in their rebuild

By the standards of how the Flyers used to think and act, Danny Brière committed an unforgivable error on March 6, the day of the NHL trade deadline.

He sent Sean Walker, one of the team’s better defensemen, to the Colorado Avalanche, and the fact that he received a conditional first-round pick back in the deal still wouldn’t have been enough compensation to justify what he had done.

For too long, there was never much looking ahead for the Flyers. There was only the here and now, and a general manager who sabotaged the team’s playoff chances — and Brière acknowledged Friday that he pretty much did that by trading Walker — would have been considered at best a heretic and at worst an incompetent fool.

» READ MORE: ‘We’re building something special’: The Flyers view this year’s disappointment as a step to brighter days ahead

It was the most revealing move of what was a revealing Flyers season, one in which they exceeded expectations right up to the moment they crashed down the stretch, losing eight straight games and missing the postseason. That big fade was a clarifying development for the entire organization, reaffirming what Brière believed to be true before the season even began: This team has yet a long way to go.

“I’m still not quite there as far as saying we’re a contender,” he said Friday at the team’s practice center in Voorhees. “I don’t believe we’re at the point where it’s time to let some young assets go to try to get better quicker. We’re not there yet.

“But there are certainly a lot of players who have brought some optimism as far as believing we’re going in the right direction. I know the expectation next year will be, ‘We’ve got to get into the playoffs.’ I don’t know that we’re there yet. We have to be very careful with that going into next year.

“I still don’t think we’re a Stanley Cup contender.”

Yes, revealing. And — if you’re invested in the Flyers’ attempt to reestablish themselves as an elite franchise — reassuring. At least to a point. From the top down, from Dan Hilferty and Keith Jones to Brière and John Tortorella, to the locker room throughout the organization’s infrastructure, the Flyers appear to understand that this rebuild was never going to be quick, whether they qualified for the playoffs this season or not.

That collapse hurt them, no doubt, because it cost them a valuable chance to evaluate their players, to determine who could handle the heat of the NHL playoffs and who couldn’t.

But for Brière and his player-personnel staff, the greater challenge still remains. Both he and Tortorella reaffirmed the obvious: The Flyers need more skill, more talent, more scoring. Barring a big trade or a miracle in the draft lottery, though, they won’t have a top-10 pick this year, and Brière said Friday that he isn’t optimistic that Matvei Michkov, their top prospect, will get out his KHL contract before it expires in two years. So how do they acquire that talent?

“There’s no clear path,” Brière said after his group media availability ended. “Look, we’re the Flyers. We’re not going to tank to get the first pick every year. That’s not fair to our fans. So it’s our job to find a way to rebuild while giving fans a product they deserve.”

» READ MORE: John Tortorella accepts some blame for the Flyers’ collapse, says he’s ‘totally in’ on seeing the rebuild all the way through

That’s why, someone said to him, the Cutter Gauthier situation hurt them so badly. Here was a player who was a high draft pick, who was supposed to be one of the franchise’s future centerpieces, and he didn’t want to be here, and now he’s gone, traded to Anaheim. Losing him hurt, didn’t it?

Brière winced at that suggestion.

No?

“If we thought that,” Brière said, “I don’t think we would have moved him. We spent a lot of time watching him. Time will tell. I think he’s going to be a really good player, score a lot of points.”

He stopped there, but the implication was obvious: that the Flyers — at least their current leadership group, which wasn’t responsible for drafting Gauthier — had concerns about his character. Maybe that’s a convenient explanation or excuse now that Gauthier isn’t around anymore, but it didn’t change reality: The Flyers had the fifth pick in the 2022 draft, a big swing, and they’re counting on a young defenseman, Jamie Drysdale, to pan out so that selecting Gauthier doesn’t go down as a strikeout.

It was and should be a reminder of how fraught and difficult a rebuild like this one can be. Fortunately for the Flyers, their GM doesn’t need the reminder. He proved as much on March 6, the day their season died, the day Danny Brière demonstrated that he has the right approach to bring this franchise back to life.