Acquiring David Jiříček is the latest example of the Flyers’ unorthodox approach to rebuilding. It’s worth the risk.

With one trade Friday morning, the Flyers got more interesting. Not immediately. They’re still likely to miss the playoffs this season, which would be the sixth in a row that they’ve failed to qualify for the postseason. For all that time and longer, they’ve been the NHL’s version of late-career Martin Scorsese: Back in the day, they were great and fascinating, and now they’re one suspenseless snoozefest after another. (Seriously, has Killers of the Flower Moon ended yet?)

Their decision to send winger Bobby Brink to the Minnesota Wild for defenseman David Jiříček was an eyebrow-raiser, though. The move in and of itself wasn’t all that surprising, in that the Flyers have a surplus of wingers both on their roster and in their farm system. They were bound to say goodbye to one of them at this trade deadline, and Brink was a prime candidate: At 24, he’s a relatively promising player on a cap-friendly contract.

» READ MORE: Flyers trade Bobby Brink to Minnesota for 2022 Top 10 pick David Jiříček

No, the intrigue of the Brink trade comes from its context. It’s the latest thread in a larger pattern that general manager Danny Brière and team president Keith Jones have been weaving since they took control of the Flyers’ player-personnel department in 2023. Rather than having the team bottom out over a full season or two and ending up with a pick or picks that are at worst among the top five in their drafts, the Flyers are taking risks, some more calculated than others, by acquiring young players who were high draft picks for other clubs.

They did it with Jamie Drysdale, whom the Anaheim Ducks had picked sixth in 2020 before trading him to the Flyers for Cutter Gauthier in January of 2024. They did it with Trevor Zegras — another Ducks draftee, ninth overall in 2019 — when they got him last offseason for Ryan Poehling and two draft picks. They did something similar in 2023 when they drafted Matvei Michkov, who fell to them at No. 7 in part because of worries among NHL clubs that he wouldn’t be leaving Russia for three years, if he was able to leave at all.

Now they’ve done it with Jiříček. Drafted sixth overall in 2022 by the Columbus Blue Jackets, he reportedly was unhappy that the Blue Jackets thought he needed to spend time in the minors. They shipped him to Minnesota in November 2024; there, he bounced between the Wild and its farm team until Friday.

At first glance, that’s not an especially appealing player profile: a high draft pick who has been traded twice before his 23rd birthday, once because he was malcontented, once because he couldn’t stick on an NHL roster. And it’s generally acknowledged that Jiříček’s skating has to improve substantially. Still, he is just 22, and he is 6-foot-4 and rugged, and he has a booming slap shot. There are tools there, and there is still time for him to mature into the player he was projected to be.

The Flyers are attempting a daring bit of raindrop-dodging here. They haven’t tanked. They don’t want to tank. They believe it would be corrosive to the franchise as a whole and to the locker room in particular (and it certainly would be to their ticket-sales department). So they are banking — and a team source confirmed Friday that this element was part of their approach — that head coach Rick Tocchet, his staff, and the other power people in the organization can cultivate a strong enough culture that Drysdale, Zegras, Jiříček, and players like them can develop and thrive here even though they didn’t elsewhere.

Michkov is again an instructive example in this regard. After entering the season out of shape and seeing Tocchet limit his ice time, he has been a better player since the Olympic break. The fears within the fan base that Tocchet was angering or alienating him have quelled, and Tocchet’s strategy for handling the most important player on the roster seems to be working, for the time being anyway.

» READ MORE: Sielski: No wonder Flyers fans are irrational about Matvei Michkov. Have you looked at this team’s draft history?

Drysdale hasn’t been the same caliber of player that Gauthier has been — someday, someone will get the full story on why the relationship between the Flyers and Gauthier deteriorated to the point that they felt they had to trade him — but he has come a long way and is just 23. Zegras, 24, has been an excellent addition so far. The Flyers are in need of two major components of a Stanley Cup-contending team — a No. 1 center and a No. 1 defenseman — and Jiříček’s pedigree suggests that he can one day be a top-tier defenseman, assuming a team can figure out how to get the best out of him.

He may or may not become that kind of player. Whether he does or doesn’t isn’t really the point. The point is that the only way the Flyers are going to return to respectability again is by taking some chances and having those gambles pay off. They’re past playing it safe. They might end up exactly where they are now or in even worse shape, but at least they’ve stepped into the casino.