The Flyers’ current need at center isn’t fixed yet, but the path to potentially, eventually fulfilling it does look a little better than it did after Friday night.
They picked up the 6’5″ Windsor prospect Jack Nesbitt at 12th overall in the NHL Draft after general manager Danny Brière struck a deal with the rival Pittsburgh Penguins to jump up the board at the cost of the 22nd and 31st overall picks, adding the 18-year-old to a pipeline down the middle that now consists of himself, last summer’s first-rounder Jett Luchanko, Jack Berglund over in Sweden, and Heikki Ruohonen out of Finland (and on his way to Harvard).
The thing is, none of those names are fully NHL-ready just yet. The Flyers still have to wait.
“I wish they were ready to play now and feel a little better,” Brière quipped to the local press from the Flyers’ draft HQ in Atlantic City after Friday night’s first round wrapped. “I wish we had a center that we didn’t have to wait for.”
But it’s another glaring reminder that the road the Flyers are on is still very much a rebuild.
“The reality is they’re very rarely available,” Brière continued, reiterating a line he’s said numerous times now about finding high-end centers. “Top-six centers, especially, even a top-nine is tough to find these days.”
They’re trying, though, and sticking to their method of trying to develop from within – even that still has a long, long time to go.
This week’s trade with Anaheim for Trevor Zegras is a low-risk, high-reward dice roll on finding a sudden spring of top-six talent, and Noah Cates’ path into becoming a dependable two-way checker can help bridge the gap with his recent signing of a four-year extension. They still have Sean Couturier, too, but the problem there is he isn’t exactly getting any younger.
“In the short term, it doesn’t really fix our problem,” Brière said. “But in three, four, five years from now, I think we will be in a much better position.”
“Don’t forget that guys like Berglund and Ruohonen who we drafted as well are kind of on their way, too, and we’ll see how they develop,” Brière made a point to add. “We hope that they’re going to be in the mix as well.”
Eventually, but just not now. Until then, the Flyers will still have a pretty significant hole in their roster construction.
But, again, it does look just a bit better than it did before.
Nesbitt’s size, his willingness to go to work in the dirty areas of the ice, how he picked up down the stretch of Windsor’s OHL season in juniors, and his overall upside were all aspects that Brière was very high on and what he believes will all, at some point, come together to help at the pro level – maybe, hopefully, alongside Porter Martone, the right wing prospect who the Flyers also picked up on Friday night at sixth overall.
“We’re pretty confident that he’s just touching the tip of the iceberg in his development,” Brière said of Nesbitt. “It’s not gonna happen overnight, but we’re ecstatic to have had the chance to draft those two guys.
“You know, I was trying to get some sleep last night, and it wasn’t easy. I tried to sleep this afternoon, and I didn’t. I wasn’t able to get a minute of sleep. If I would have known those are the two guys we’d end up with, I would have slept a lot better last night and this afternoon.”
And maybe every fan across the Delaware Valley will start sleeping better once Nesbitt, Martone, and all those other prospects are finally out flying across the rink in orange and black – if all goes according to plan, that is.
That’s just not today yet. Eventually, though.
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
