How did Olivia Dean’s ‘Man I Need’ become the Flyers’ victory anthem? It starts with Trevor Zegras and DJ Owen Tippett.
The Phillies had “Dancing on my Own.” The Flyers have their own pop song to celebrate wins — and they’re sticking with it as they enter the playoffs.
Back in the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2020, the Flyers are hoping to celebrate some postseason victories with this season’s win song — “Man I Need” by Olivia Dean.
Owen Tippett took over as the Flyers’ designated DJ this year, and has put careful thought into the team’s music, but the inclusion of Dean’s track after a win came as a suggestion by fellow forward Trevor Zegras earlier this season.
“[Zegras] sits right beside me, and I just said, ‘Hey, what do you want to hear?’” Tippett said. “It was when it was popular, and he threw it up there, and I let it stick.”
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The groovy pop track has become an unlikely anthem in the Flyers’ locker room. Tippett said it isn’t always the first song to come on after a win — on the team’s March road trip to California, Tippett played Jon Pardi’s “Hey California” after wins in Anaheim, Los Angeles and San Jose — but “Man I Need” is always within the first three or four.
“Man I Need” has become a double-platinum record for Dean in the U.S. The song and the album it appears on, The Art of Loving, helped the English singer-songwriter break out as a star in America and win Best New Artist at the 2026 Grammy Awards.
Dean’s music has already been involved in a Philly sports moment this year, as former Sixers guard Jared McCain sang “A Couple Minutes,” a breakup ballad from The Art of Loving, on TikTok as a tribute to Sixers fans when the team traded him to the Oklahoma City Thunder in February.
Originally released as a single in August 2025, “Man I Need” gained traction on TikTok, with 2.2 million videos using the song. It peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in January, meaning many of the Flyers already knew the tune when it came on for the first time in the locker room.
“Enough guys kind of knew about it, or knew of it,” Tippett said. “Once I played it a couple times, it was a hit, and guys enjoyed it, so I just kept going.”
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The song itself is far from a stereotypical locker room jam. An automated mix of the country artist Cody Johnson was queued up at the Flyers’ training facility on Friday morning, and Tippett’s curated warm-up playlist features rap, classic rock and some EDM. But that has not stopped the Flyers from embracing Dean’s upbeat single as a win song.
“I think everyone thinks it’s a catchy song,” said Alex Bump, a forward who joined the Flyers as a rookie in March. “It’s a catchy tune. You can sing along with it.”
Winning games helped the song stick, too. The Flyers won 43 games this season, the best win total for a Flyers team since 2011-12.
“It doesn’t really matter what song it is, once you associate it with winning and everyone’s in the locker room after having a good time,” forward Noah Cates said. “You remember every win song that you’ve had in your career, and when they play it you just remember it and have those good memories. It’s just one of those songs where it’s catchy, and now it just stuck, I guess.”
Other Philly teams have rallied around similar songs before. The Phillies adopted Tiësto’s remix of Calum Scott’s “Dancing On My Own,” a cover of Robyn’s era-defining electropop song, as part of their celebrations during a run to the 2022 World Series.
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The Flyers have their own history with win songs. During a 47-win season in 2011-12, the Flyers bumped Pittsburgh native Mac Miller’s “Knock Knock” after victories, including after beating the Penguins, 4-2, in an Eastern Conference first round series. The team brought the song back for the 2018 season to honor Miller after the rapper’s death.
“Dancing On My Own” stuck as an anthem for the Phillies after their surprise run to the World Series in 2022. Could “Man I Need” become a Flyers anthem through a deep postseason run?
“It could be, you never know,” Tippett said. “I think so. It took a while for it to get out there, but now that it’s out there, I think we’ve got to stick with it.”
The Flyers are hoping to hear some more of the song during their Eastern Conference first-round series against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Game 1 of the series will be at PPG Paints Arena on Saturday (8 p.m., NBC Sports Philadelphia, ESPN).
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Game 1: Flyers at Penguins, 8 p.m. Saturday, NBCSP/ESPN
Game 2: Flyers at Penguins, 7 p.m. Monday, NBCSP/ESPN
Game 3: Penguins at Flyers, 7 p.m. Wednesday, NBCSP/TNT/truTV/HBO MAX
Game 4: Penguins at Flyers, 8 p.m. April 25, NBCSP/TBS/truTV/HBO MAX
*Game 5: Flyers at Penguins, April 27 (Time TBD)
*Game 6: Penguins at Flyers, April 29 (Time TBD)
*Game 7: Flyers at Penguins, May 2 (Time TBD)
*if necessary