Flyers See Risk of Owen Tippett’s Contract Extension After Down 2024-25 Season

A nasty hit on Jan. 29 by the New Jersey Devils’ Brenden Dillon further derailed the situation. Tippett missed five games and went nearly a month between action as he got extra rest during the 4 Nations Face-Off. He came out of the break hot, scoring four goals in three games to end February. But that was his final heater of the season, as he managed just two goals in 22 games to end the season, seeing his ice time fall from 16:42 before the break to 14:31 after.

It wasn’t as if this was a case of Tippett being purely snake-bitten, either. His shots per 60 dropped from 12.56 a season ago, which was easily a career-high, to 9.09, his lowest in three seasons as a Flyer. That was caused by a struggle to create high-danger looks. Tippett’s individual expected goals per 60 fell from 0.97 to 0.72, the second-lowest total of his career behind his seven-game trial as an 18-year-old in 2017-18. Per NHL Edge, Tippett went from 55 high-danger shots to 40 and 94 mid-range shots to 68. Fewer shots plus lower-quality shots generally lead to fewer goals, and that’s exactly what happened to Tippett this season.

Reasons or Excuses?

Any time a player suffers an injury, especially one as scary in the moment as Tippett’s in late January, it can have a long-lasting effect. Tippett all but confirmed he would have missed more games if not for the 4 Nations Face-Off break and that it contributed to his scoring struggles down the stretch.

“Quite frankly, it ended up being worse than we thought it was originally, so I think the break came at a good time. Still lingering a little bit with certain things,” Tippett said when asked about the injury at his season-ending media availability on April 18. “Like I said earlier, anytime you miss that kind of time, it’s gonna be tough coming back.”

However, other factors worked against Tippett’s success this season. Tippett would certainly be a 30-goal scorer by now if he played for a team that had a competent power play, as he somehow failed to manage a single goal on the man advantage this season. While he deserves some blame for that, especially since similar talents like Travis Konecny and Michkov at least tallied there on occasion, Tippett stands to benefit as much as anyone from the end of the Rocky Thompson era. He finished the season with about two-and-a-half expected goals on the power play, so there was some bad luck involved as well.

Like Konecny, Tippett’s offense dipped following the departures of Joel Farabee and, more importantly, Morgan Frost. While not a perfect player, Frost was probably Philadelphia’s most talented playmaking center and a natural fit next to the trigger-happy Tippett. About 57% of Tippett’s 5-on-5 play was spent with Frost before the trade, and Tippett was drastically better with Frost (55.36% expected goals share, outscored opponents 20-13) than without (51.72% xGF, outscored by opponents 7-19), per Natural Stat Trick.

“[The trade of] Frosty and Beezer was a really tough one for me. Those are two guys I knew before I even got traded here, and just the shock factor of it all was tough for me,” Tippett said.

While some may harbor concern that he misses the net too much to be an effective sniper, it’s worth noting Tippett’s shooting percentage increased in 2024-25, up 0.9 percent from the previous season. That was still below his high-water mark (11.7% in 2022-23). However, he established a career-best shooting percentage at 5-on-5 at 11.84%, more than two percent better than his previous best from two seasons ago.

By goals per 60 and raw totals, Tippett’s 5-on-5 goal-scoring was nearly identical from last season to this. Corey Sznajder’s manual tracking data on All Three Zones showed that many of Tippett’s microstats declined from last season, but there is some inconsistency. Tippett’s offensive production off the cycle dropped dramatically as his ability to recover dump-ins fell, but he was even better off the rush. Meanwhile, he failed to exit the defensive zone more often despite significantly improving his failed exit percentage. It all makes it tricky to figure out how much of a step back Tippett took last season, or if he even did at all.

The Fit for Tippett

Toward the end of his final media availability of the season, Tippett delivered a line with a bit of a laugh, but was still particularly insightful.

“I think with everything that happened with, you know, moves or whatever, I think it kind of caused me to realize I might be a little bit older than I feel,” Tippett said.

Part of that could be Tippett’s role in the Flyers’ locker room, which has more space for different voices to be heard after Brière’s in-season moves, particularly the trades of veteran leaders Scott Laughton and Erik Johnson. But it’s also a commentary on where Tippett is in his NHL career. He cleared the 300 games mark earlier this season, and during that frequently mentioned 4 Nations Face-Off rest, he celebrated his 26th birthday. Tippett may not be as seasoned as an elder statesman of the league, like Johnson, but he’s also no longer a kid.

That makes it harder to reconcile the role he can play in getting the Flyers back to the league’s upper echelon. The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn recently published a deep dive into the aging curves of NHL players in anticipation of free agency (from “As NHL free agency nears, how will players age on their new contracts?”, The Athletic, June 5). One of the studies he cited is a 2014 SB Nation article on the topic by a writer whose byline lists the name of Eric T. The “T” stands for Tulsky, as in current Carolina Hurricanes general manager Eric Tulsky. Analytics may not be perfect, but we’re talking about research from one of only 32 people in the world who run an NHL team’s roster. That’s someone worth listening to.

Both Tulsky and Luszczyszyn’s work shows that forwards tend to peak around age 25, followed by a steady period and then an eventual decline. That doesn’t bode well for the team’s previously stated hopes of Tippett continuing to improve and be more than a fringe 30-goal scorer.

Now, to quote British statistician George Box, “All models are wrong, some are useful.” In other words, those age curves project the most likely outcome for a player; they aren’t a blanket statement on what actually will happen. Some players do bloom late, although many of them who did (Carter Verhaeghe, Jonathan Marchessault, Michael Bunting) hadn’t played as large of a role in the NHL as Tippett already has.

In a vacuum, Tippett’s drop in production from 2023-24 to 2024-25 is somewhat easily explained, and there are some positives if you look closely enough. His 5-on-5 goal-scoring held steady despite not getting as many shots or high-quality looks as before. He remains one of the league’s fastest players, which will always make him an exciting player to watch. And his $6.2 million cap hit will look more palatable by the year.

That contract doesn’t contain any trade protection, however. So, if this is what Tippett is — a 30-goal, 50-point winger who provides some defensive value but is probably never going to be a significant penalty killer — the Flyers will have to decide if that’s good enough. After all, Michkov will be eligible for an extension next summer, and he should easily dwarf Tippett’s average annual value, even if it’s just a bridge deal. Great teams are rarely built around wingers, and the Flyers are looking at a roster where three of their top four players are natural right wingers (Konecny mostly played the left this season).

There are some areas in which Tippett differentiates himself from those two, namely his shot-heavy tendencies and his work on offensive zone entries. He’s also one of the team’s more physical players; among regular forwards under club control next season, only Nic Deslauriers and Garnet Hathaway had more hits per 60 minutes than Tippett (5.6). When he signed the extension, Brière referred to Tippett not as a sniper but as a power forward, which he said is a hard type of player to find.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the extension was seemingly signed with the expectation that Tippett would take another step. A functional power play and the hopeful emergence of help at center should increase his production. But neither of those things would necessarily make Tippett a better hockey player than he is now. Tulsky’s research found that production drops off steeply after age 29, which is another indicator that Tippett isn’t quite as young as he felt just a season or two ago.

Looking Ahead

To be clear, Tippett will almost certainly be back with the Flyers next season. And given that Brière said at the end of the season that “I think we’re at a stage now where we’re going to shift a little bit from subtracting from the roster into trying to start to add and help the team,” Flyers management seems to believe in everyone remaining, Tippett included.

Eventually, though, the Flyers hope to reach a stage where they will be a playoff team that needs to refine their roster. The current version of Tippett can help the Flyers achieve their goals, but Philadelphia needs players who can truly drive them to that next level. The Flyers hope that Tippett can become that player, but another season where that didn’t happen makes it more likely they’ll have to accept what he is, rather than dream about what he could be, and go from there.