VOORHEES, N.J. -- The Philadelphia Flyers were one of the NHL's genuine surprises last season, making the playoffs for the first time since 2020 and advancing to the second round with a series win over the rival Pittsburgh Penguins.
General manager Danny Briere had overseen their rebuild since 2023. "Brick by brick," he said, sitting in his office at the team's practice facility. "Not trying to get ahead of ourselves. Trying to do it right."
But this offseason the Flyers put the meticulous bricklaying on hold and attempted to just buy someone else's furnished mansion. They signed Anaheim Ducks center Leo Carlsson, 21, to a five-year, $90 million offer sheet in a move that changed the financial landscape of player salaries and nearly shifted the competitive balance in the NHL with it.
The moment it was announced, Briere started hearing from his peers.
"The one that kept coming back the most was, 'You do what's right for your team.' We all have different things to deal with. There's nothing wrong with what you did. You played by the rules and it's there for anybody to use," he said.
New Jersey Devils GM Sunny Mehta always thought it was possible that a team would back up the truck for a restricted free agent the way the Flyers did.
"The only thing that you just aren't sure about is the taboo of the offer sheet. Will people actually do this?" he said. "You hear people talk about this every year. Doing it is a whole separate story. And someone actually did it."
Philadelphia center Trevor Zegras knew Carlsson from their days together in Anaheim and was excited by Briere's bold move -- even if the Flyers group chat was eerily quiet. "Maybe guys were just hoping that it would end up going through. Maybe they didn't want to jinx it," Zegras said.
Whether it was jinxed or not, the Ducks matched the offer sheet, depriving the Flyers of a potential franchise center. But Briere's move changed things. Carlsson's $18 million annual cap hit, the highest in the NHL this season, reset the bar for other's contracts. That included one the Ducks had to give their leading goal scorer Cutter Gauthier, who eventually signed for six years at a $13.5 million annual cap hit.
Gauthier was drafted by the Flyers at No. 5 in 2022 but was traded to Anaheim after telling Briere he didn't want to play for Philadelphia. One theory that emerged in the wake of the Carlsson offer sheet -- shared with ESPN by a player agent -- was that Flyers ownership greenlit the contract as the ultimate long-term vengeance with Anaheim after the Gauthier saga.
"They probably want to say, 'Hey, Philly's a good spot to be in. Don't [mess] with us,'" the agent said.
Briere denied that the Flyers had targeted the Ducks.
"My job's a lot more important than trying to get back at people. Look, we're all competitive. We're all trying to win. That scenario was what we felt was the right one for us," he said. "It wasn't my goal to put Anaheim in that position or [Ducks GM] Pat Verbeek in that position. We had a great relationship with them. We just felt we had a chance to improve our team, not give up any of our roster players. It just made sense for us at that moment. It was nothing more than that."
The offer sheet's ancillary benefit was as an endorsement of the Flyers' progress.
"It was cool. Any time your general manager tries to do something to better the team, it feels good. Love the direction that we're headed," Zegras said.
"I hope they're rejuvenated by it, even though it didn't work," Briere said. "We believe in our team. They took a big step last year and we wanted to show them that it didn't go unnoticed."
But the general manager also hopes his young team doesn't get tripped up during that leap forward.
THEIR FIRST STEP into this season was an embarrassing stumble for the Flyers. The Penguins walked out of Philadelphia having drubbed their hosts 7-0 on Wednesday night, the largest margin of defeat in a season opener in Flyers' history.
"I honestly don't have an answer. I don't think we won a battle tonight. They did everything better than us," Tocchet said. "There are alarming things out there. I don't know if guys are reading their press clippings, but it wasn't good."
The word regression is used a lot in the NHL, whether it's a player trying to sustain a high shooting percentage or a team trying to build on an expected playoff berth. There are all sorts of reasons the Flyers could drop from their 98-point total from last season -- injuries, bad puck luck, a downtick in their goaltending performance -- but the one Briere is watching closely is overconfidence.
"The part that keeps me up at night is having some of your players feel complacent, feel like they've made it," he said. "I'm worried that coming back, they'll think it's a little easier than they realize. If that happens, we could have a setback."
He has used winger Matvei Michkov as a cautionary tale. He scored 26 goals in 80 games as a rookie before having what the team felt was an underwhelming follow-up, which included a callout about his conditioning from new coach Rick Tocchet. Briere said he hoped young forwards such as Denver Barkey and Calder Trophy candidate Porter Martone didn't fall into the same trap.
"We talk to them. We address it with them and that's all part of our development team to getting them ready, using examples and trying to prepare them for what to expect this year," he said.
Michkov, for his part, showed up to camp in great shape and with "pep in his step," according to Briere. "I think we saw him mature as the season went on last year. Everybody has a different path. You all wish that guys were like Sidney Crosby and were a total pro at 16 years old, but the reality is those [players] are really rare," he said.
Another player on a different path last season was Zegras, the 25-year-old center they acquired from Anaheim in June 2025. Both Briere and Tocchet challenged him to level up his game with the Flyers, and Zegras reignited his star in the NHL: Scoring 26 goals and 41 assists in 81 games, and earning a four-year, $36.5 million contract extension.
Briere isn't concerned about Zegras falling into old habits now that he has signed an extension.
"We've had many talks about facing the pressure, playing in big games, not afraid of big moments. I was really, really impressed with how he handled it, how he played hard, because that was a little bit of a knock on him early in his career," Briere said. "I think he's matured a lot, took a big step forward last year. He started understanding better. He never played in a playoff game before, and that experience was huge for him."
To that end, the worst thing that happened to the Flyers last season might end up being the best thing for them: getting mauled by the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes in a second-round sweep.
"They were good. They were experienced. They knew how to handle it and they did a better job," Briere said. "But that experience for us was I think amazing."
That also goes for the Flyers' journey to a playoff berth, winning huge games down the stretch, and their first-round win over the Penguins, in which Philadelphia jumped out to a 3-0 series lead before holding off Pittsburgh's rally to win in six games.
"Last year was such a different experience," Flyers winger Travis Konecny said. "Coming back, we're still talking about it. So that tells me guys have had it in the back of their head all summer. They're hungry. They want more."
Briere won't make any grand proclamations about the Flyers this season.
"You're not going to like my answer. I know it's boring. But we're still a young team," he said. "We expect it to be harder. For me, it's exciting, because we're at a time now where you want to see how your guys handle the hard. We're not going to creep up on anyone this year."
Briere hoped Carlsson might be part of that group for the Flyers, but he's wearing a different shade of orange and black this season. If the opportunity presents itself again, Briere said he won't hesitate to aggressively augment an already promising roster.
"We were a bad team for way too long to just throw away the cap space that we've built and the freedom that we're able to have. We're not going to be reckless about it," he said. "If something comes up that makes sense, we won't be afraid to take a swing again."
