Keith Jones and Dan Hilferty say the Flyers are ‘moving forward’ but won’t commit to making the playoffs

What do the Flyers need to achieve in 2025-26 for the season to be considered a success?

Keith Jones and Dan Hilferty don’t necessarily believe it needs to be a playoff berth.

“Continued growth, for sure,” Jones, the team’s president of hockey operations, said Wednesday, a week before the Flyers open training camp. “Players continuing to advance, our team being better. I feel very confident that we will be. I’m really excited to see the group of players that we have. I’m excited about our young players who continue to push. There’s going to be a lot more competition in camp than there’s been previously.”

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The Flyers saw drastically different results over the last two seasons, but the team’s strategy remained the same: trade away players who didn’t fit and compile draft picks and prospects for the future in return. In 2023-24, the Flyers were in contention for a playoff berth until the final week of the season, but they still sold off players at the trade deadline. They did the same in 2024-25, when the team spent most of the season at the bottom of the Metropolitan Division.

But this year, the Flyers are going to add at the trade deadline, barring “something crazy” happening. They started making those additions in the offseason, trading for Trevor Zegras and bringing in external goaltending and center help in Dan Vladař and Christian Dvorak.

“We owed that to our players that are here,” Jones said. “They’ve done everything that we’ve asked of them. We’ve moved out a lot of their friends. We’ve taken away players at a time when other teams are building to try to make a playoff run. We’ve continued to accumulate assets to try to help us in the future, and a lot of our top players have been patient with that, so I do think that played into it, and really we’re just in a better position to be able to move forward.”

Now, three drafts into Danny Brière’s tenure as general manager, Jones feels better about the “accumulation of talent, not just assets” the Flyers have in the organization. Jones sees Matvei Michkov and 2025 top draft pick Porter Martone, who will play for Michigan State this year, as future superstar-caliber players who are already helping to regenerate fan excitement for the Flyers.

But still, the Flyers organization is staring at a potential six-year playoff drought, which would be the longest in franchise history. Hilferty, the Flyers’ governor, and Jones emphasized that they want to create “sustainable success,” and ensure that the team doesn’t just have a one-year competitive window but can be a contender for years to come. As a result, they said they won’t make short-sighted moves that work against that plan.

Despite that, even though the organization doesn’t see making the playoffs as a necessary step for progress this year, the team cannot take another step backward and perform the way it did last year.

“That would be disappointing,” Jones said. “We definitely want to continue to take steps forward. I believe that we will, and I think we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that that happens. In the previous two years, we would be quick to make changes in order to get better for the future. Now, it would be about staying on course, which is advancing. It’s not about moving back.”

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Winger Tyson Foerster suffered an elbow injury competing for Team Canada at the World Championships in May, and Brière revealed in July that the injury had become infected and that he might miss time to begin the season. Foerster was not on the ice in Voorhees with the large group of Flyers at an informal skate on Wednesday, but Jones said he expects to see Foerster on the ice for training camp.

“I know he’s doing well, so that’s the great news there, but I’ll leave that for Danny when he talks,” Jones said. “I think he’ll talk next week, but, yeah, Tyson’s on pace to be there for us when the season starts.”

Although Carter Hart was found not guilty in the Hockey Canada sexual assault case, the NHL has still not cleared him or any of the other four defendants to return to play in 2025-26.

Hilferty and Jones would not comment on whether the team is interested in a reunion or if they had contacted the goaltender about a return to the Flyers.

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“The NHL has made it clear they’ll speak first, but right now, we’re not prepared to comment at all about the Carter Hart situation,” Hilferty said. “The NHL has told us they are running the show.”

Despite the difficult adjustment to the NHL and conflicting reports over whether Aleksei Kolosov would return to the Kontinental Hockey League this season, Jones said he expects to see Kolosov and Ivan Fedotov at training camp, where they will get the opportunity to show what they are capable of.

“I think we thought their ability to adjust would occur quicker than it did,” Jones said. “I wouldn’t write off either guy, Fedotov or Kolosov. Kolosov is obviously younger and is an extremely athletic goaltender. If he can put all the pieces together in the future, he can turn into a very good goaltender.”