For this, I’ll work from the bottom to the top. Nicolas Deslauriers suited up more often than not last season (60 games played), but there doesn’t seem to be a path for him to make the opening night lineup. Even at the end of last season, he appeared in only one of the Flyers’ last 12 games—what does that say? If Tortorella wasn’t confident enough to use him when the games mattered more than ever, he probably won’t look his way this time barring an injury to someone else. It seems like he’ll be facing an uphill battle over the duration of 2024-25.

The Noah Cates, Ryan Poehling, and Garnet Hathaway trio were depended on heavily in the latter half of last season by Tortorella. They were getting as much as second-line minutes together, but they’d ideally be at the bottom of the lineup, playing more when the Flyers are trying to prevent goals and less when they’re trying to score. This is a low-event group but one that can come up clutch when asked. They look to be one of the best fourth lines in the NHL, holding a 71 expected goals percentage (xGF%) in 159 minutes of 5-on-5 play in 2023-24.

For our third line, Joel Farabee and Bobby Brink seem like a good fit. That’s where they slotted to start last season, and they developed a little bit of chemistry in the process. I have Scott Laughton centering them mainly because I believe in his potential to bounce back. His 2023-24 campaign was a rough one for him, but we have way more evidence to suggest that he is still a very capable third-line center versus what he showed in his most recent outing.

For this line to work, Laughton is the X-factor here. When Farabee and Brink were together and the veteran center was out of the equation, they held a very good 53.4 xGF% at 5-on-5 action over 238 minutes of ice time. If he can return to his old form, this third line could be a useful one.

There are a lot of avenues for the second line, but I chose to go with a trio that we saw be pretty successful toward the end of last season. Owen Tippett, Morgan Frost, and Travis Konecny held a 59.5 xGF% in 2023-24 with a plus-11 rating in 128 minutes at 5-on-5. Those results are pretty remarkable, so don’t be shocked if Tortorella tries that out again. This was a line that produced offense pretty consistently, which is exactly what a team that finished 27th in goals needed last season.

For our first line, I have Tyson Foerster, Sean Couturier, and the newcomer Matvei Michkov. It might be a bit ambitious to have a teenager like Michkov on the top line immediately, but I believe it makes the Flyers the best team possible.

Before we get into that, I want to argue against a point I have seen come up a few times. The general consensus is that Couturier doesn’t belong anywhere near a first line. While that might have been true at the end of last season, battling a sports hernia, it definitely wasn’t at the beginning when he was presumably healthier. Coming off a 22-month absence due to multiple back surgeries, he was actually as good as anyone could have ever imagined.

Included in a table are some advanced stats of the first 41 games of his 2023-24 season compared to his entire 2017-18 campaign when he was in his prime. For the stats in this comparison, I used the following: points per 60 (P/60), relative xGF% (xGF% Rel), relative Corsi percentage (CF% Rel), relative goals percentage (GF% Rel), and average time on ice (ATOI).

To put the numbers in better context, I compared where Couturier ranked among all forwards percentile-wise. Both last season and what some (myself included) consider his peak are closer than you might think:

While the 2023-24 section was only 55.4 percent of his actual season, there is clearly some good left in Couturier. In fact, it is directly comparable to his 2017-18 campaign. Even though he played 88.9 percent of his ice time at 5-on-5 with Claude Giroux that season, who scored 102 points, the results are still very similar. At full health (or relatively close to it), the 31-year-old center is capable of being on a first line. His durability is a legitimate concern, but his upside should not be.

Getting the Couturier tangent out of the way, he played some of his best minutes with Foerster. Sharing a 61.8 xGF% and a plus-3 rating in 347 minutes of ice time with one another, their results were terrific even when Couturier started his regression. What that duo really needed to be truly great was an offensive dynamo like Michkov. Well, now they’re in luck.

Both Couturier and Foerster were very good during in-zone sequences but didn’t have a superstar on their line to take advantage of that. Michkov might not be this kind of player immediately, but he has displayed the habits that imply he can be a dominant in-zone scorer. As a duo, Couturier and Foerster possessed the puck a lot but never really did anything with it—Michkov can change this. This has the potential to be an impressive line, but we won’t know for certain until we see the on-ice product.

Someone who just missed the cut for the lineup is Olle Lycksell. He got some looks with the Flyers at the end of the season, but I have him playing in the American Hockey League (AHL). Instead of being an extra forward—especially when Tortorella ran with seven defensemen per game on several occasions last season—he can play in the AHL and get top-line minutes instead. To me, that seems a lot more beneficial than the alternative of getting fourth-line playing time at the absolute best.

Flyers’ Defensive Lines

There’s much less creativity required for the defense, but there’s still a lot to talk about. Below are my pairings for 2024-25: