Don’t look now, but the Philadelphia Flyers are getting no respect from the hockey community this preseason, as evidenced by their surprisingly low odds to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Advanced analytics website MoneyPuck, in particular, is very low on the Flyers.
According to MoneyPuck, the Flyers have the ninth-worst odds of qualifying for the playoffs this season, clocking in at just 24.7%. For the sake of comparison, only the Utah Hockey Club, Washington Capitals, Calgary Flames, Montreal Canadiens, Chicago Blackhawks, Anaheim Ducks, Columbus Blue Jackets, and San Jose Sharks have a worse chance of reaching the postseason.
Further to that point, the Flyers actually have the eighth-best odds of winning the draft lottery and acquiring the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, coming in at a meager 4.5%.
Unsurprisingly, the Sharks are the clear leaders of the pack in this regard, starting the preseason with a 14.5% chance of having the No. 1 pick for a second straight season.
Although Flyers fans would surely want to see that the Orange and Black earned more respect around the league after an impressive 2023-24 season, it is also easy to see why the hockey community and analytics sites are down on the team.
The last two months of the season were unforgiving, and rather quite punishing, for Philadelphia, whose goaltending and defense struggled considerably down the stretch amid injuries and fatigue.
Additionally, the main makeup of the team remains virtually unchanged.
Veteran defenseman Erik Johnson assumes the mentorship role of the recently retired Marc Staal, while Ivan Fedotov slides in as the full-time understudy to the talented but unproven Sam Ersson in goal.
The Flyers also made a swap at the forward position, buying out struggling veteran Cam Atkinson and replacing him with rookie sensation Matvei Michkov. While Michkov is undeniably an upgrade over the aging Atkinson, it’s too early to quantify how much of an upgrade he really is before he appears in some games at the NHL level.
Aside from those tweaks, the Flyers have not changed at all, while teams like the Capitals and the New Jersey Devils made a substantial number of offseason transactions in an effort to compete for the Stanley Cup immediately.
The St. Louis Blues (27%) and the Pittsburgh Penguins (33.6%) are the two teams immediately above the Flyers in terms of chances to make the playoffs.
