Danny Brière has deftly rebuilt the Flyers into a playoff team in three years. Are even better days ahead?

Danny Brière often sounds like Axl Rose when delivering a message to the Flyers faithful.

“Patience, patience again,” Brière told The Inquirer in September.

It’s a word he has used often in the three years since taking the job, first as an interim in March 2023, and then officially that May, because there was a lot of work to be done to reestablish the Flyers as a perennial Stanley Cup contender.

Although they’re not there yet, the Flyers find themselves in the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in six seasons, largely due to the patience shown in letting younger players grow and develop their games.

The Flyers have fielded one of the youngest teams in the Stanley Cup playoffs in their three wins over the rival Pittsburgh Penguins, with 10 players making their debuts in Saturday’s Game 1; Rasmus Ristolainen, 31, was the only one older than 27 among that group.

» READ MORE: Dan Vladař, Flyers take commanding 2-0 series lead behind their first shutout of the season

Eight skaters were 25 or younger, with 19-year-old Porter Martone scoring the game-winner. In all, 11 of the 20 players that dressed in Game 1, including wingers Matvei Michkov and Tyson Foerster, center Noah Cates, and defenseman Cam York, were drafted by the organization.

“It’s a testament to the behind-the-scenes work that’s put in, whether it’s young guys, players, coaching staff, getting their message across,” forward Garnet Hathaway said of the speed at which things have progressed.

It was what was lurking beneath the surface, the young talent percolating, that led players like Hathaway — a veteran winger, who signed a two-year extension on July 1, 2024, with a year left on his deal, and after only one year in Philly under his belt — to stick around.

He believes it’s just the beginning.

“Would you say our rebuild is out of the water? Is our rebuild done because of other teams losing and us making the playoffs?” he said, mentioning Columbus’ collapse and Washington and Detroit losing games down the stretch. ...

“You could change the phrasing, but it’s not going to change the behind-the-scenes. ... Our goal was to make the playoffs before the year. We made it.

“The work’s not done either way.”

While the Flyers’ “work’s not done,” the foundation has certainly been laid.

When Brière stepped into the role, the rookie GM had years of his predecessor, Chuck Fletcher’s missteps to wade through and clean up. It wasn’t an overnight task. There was no snapping of the fingers or wiggling of the nose to cast a spell and make it happen.

“He’s done a great job at being patient and accumulating assets to build a contending team. I think he’s done a great job on that level,” captain Sean Couturier said recently of Brière.

“What impresses me, by me knowing him [as a player], is he’s kind of stayed the same person, respectful, true, professional at what he does, and [I’m] happy for his success.”

Brière was a player who stepped up in the biggest moments on the ice. Off the ice, he has become a shrewd wheeler and dealer, sticking to his convictions and remaining patient to ensure he gets what he wants.

He wasn’t satisfied with the offers for Ristolainen at this year’s trade deadline and held out for a first-rounder. As a result, the rugged defenseman is not only still here but thriving on the Flyers’ top pair.

» READ MORE: Some wanted to change Trevor Zegras. The Flyers let ‘Z be Z.’ Now, he’s got his ‘swagger back.’

“My job is to bring the most value to the organization,” the GM said in March during a Q&A with The Inquirer. “I’m not going to try to make trades just to please people. I have to make trades that make sense for the team and where we’re at at the moment.”

Brière also waited for the right time to pull the trigger and acquire longtime target Trevor Zegras, who finished second on the team with 67 points, and previously held firm until landing first-round picks for veterans Sean Walker and Scott Laughton at consecutive NHL trade deadlines. The Flyers flipped Walker, a salary dump in a June 2023 deal for Ivan Provorov that also netted Philly a first-round pick and two seconds, after just 63 games.

This past March, needing to clear space on the wing with Martone’s time nearing, he traded Bobby Brink for David Jiříček, a talented 22-year-old defenseman the Flyers were high on at the 2023 draft. And, with an assist from Torey Krug, he ultimately didn’t trade top defenseman Travis Sanheim just months into his tenure.

The 48-year-old Brière, who ventured to business school and completed a two-year general management program at Penn’s prestigious Wharton School of Business after retiring, also inherited a dire salary cap situation.

The Flyers have since navigated through years of dead money, which will clear up in a few months with the retention money on Kevin Hayes and Laughton’s contracts and Cam Atkinson’s buyout dollars all coming off the books.

Last season, Brière freed up what would have been an additional $9 million per year by packaging pending restricted free agent Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee, who had three-plus years remaining on his deal. Injured Ryan Ellis’ cap hit is no longer part of the equation either after his contract was shipped to San Jose in October.

And a large part of the process was changing the culture in the room. Quickly gone were guys like Provorov and Hayes via trades, and Tony DeAngelo, who was bought out.

In came forwards Hathaway and Ryan Poehling, and defensemen Marc Staal, and later Erik Johnson and Noah Juulsen, to provide veteran voices and serve as sounding boards for a young defensive corps. And then six weeks ago, Luke Glendening was smartly lifted off the waiver wire in early March to bring a playoff-tested game and give the team’s fourth line a jolt. And there is no discounting what the addition of Rick Tocchet as coach has brought, especially with his ability to be humble and make changes to his systems when things aren’t working.

It was — stealing from this year’s Flyers marketing slogan — laying foundational bricks for the future.

And as the walls kept rising, disgruntled and uncommunicative forward Cutter Gauthier was swapped for Jamie Drysdale, who has become a key component on the blue line this year, and scored the opening goal in Game 1 after recently being voted as the Flyers’ most improved player by his teammates.

Owen Tippett was given an eight-year extension in late January 2024 and has blossomed into one of the game’s emerging power forwards. Shot-blocking defenseman Nick Seeler had a big 2023-24 season and signed a four-year extension that March. And alternate captain Travis Konecny locked in his own lucrative eight-year, $70 million deal that summer.

» READ MORE: Is the Flyers' rebuild working? Here's a timeline of Danny Brière's time in charge

“I just wanted to get this over with and make sure that there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to be a Flyer for life, and what we had been working toward and what I believed that this team can be, this is where I wanted to be,” Konecny said on a Zoom call after signing the deal.

“So, yeah, it was pretty easy for me to make the decision that I was going to stay here as long as possible.”

Belief is something that this team has always had. It was that, along with the culture and how the Flyers treat their players, that drew in free agents.

Those two elements, along with an opportunity for growth, helped lure center Christian Dvorak and goalie Dan Vladař, a career backup, to sign in Philadelphia on July 1. Dvorak smashed his previous career high with 51 points, while Vladař has been a revelation in the crease and may wind up being a finalist for the Vezina Trophy.

Those two could see the tide was turning in Philly, and the former has already been extended, and the latter you’d expect will soon be too.

“For me, I just had an opportunity to play, and I knew the team was really good,” Vladař said on Sunday after 15 saves on 17 shots in Game 1 before shutting out the Penguins two nights later. “So, for me, it was a no-brainer coming in here. ... They just got fresh young legs and lots of young guys in a perfect age when they are just only going to grow. So that’s what I saw. And obviously, I’m happy I got the job here.”

Last but certainly not least, the Flyers made a concerted effort, led by their amateur scouting staff, spearheaded by assistant general manager Brent Flahr and Brière — the GM travels often, even in between Flyers games during this condensed schedule, to watch potential picks — to rebuild the organization’s prospect pool.

Others have taken notice, as the organization rose 10 places in The Athletic’s prospect pool rankings, going from No. 18 in 2025 to eighth in the NHL in early April.

It felt like the tide turned when the Flyers snagged a potential cornerstone in Matvei Michkov, who fell to No. 7 in the 2023 draft. His skill level and vision instantly upgraded the roster’s outlook, and the Flyers landed his current linemate, Denver Barkey, who had a role in two goals in Game 1, in the third round that year.

» READ MORE: Matvei Michkov is 5,100 miles away from his home in Russia. But in Philly, ‘life has become easier.’

Last June, instead of prioritizing position and addressing the team’s well-publicized void down the middle, they drafted Martone, who they viewed as the best available player, with the sixth overall pick. At 19, he has not only stepped seamlessly into the NHL alongside Konecny and Dvorak, but scored the game-winners in Games 1 and 2, continuing his point-per-game pace since joining the team three weeks ago.

And while there has been much criticism of the Flyers’ drafting before they turned around their season after February’s Olympic break, since arriving in Dec. 2018, Flahr and his staff are responsible for selecting seven players who contributed down the stretch for this year’s playoff team. More prospects are coming too, led by 2023 first-rounder Oliver Bonk, 2024 picks Jett Luchanko (first round) and Jack Berglund (second round), and a 2025 draft class that includes Martone, fellow first-rounder Jack Nesbitt, and seven others.

Martone, Barkey, 20, and Alex Bump, 22, have formed a tight-knit trio with the first two playing critical minutes so far during the playoffs, and Bump, a player Tocchet continually says he wants to find a place for in the lineup.

“When they came up, we were like, ‘Hey, these guys are good players.’ And then they stayed up,” Tocchet said recently of Martone, Barkey, and Bump in particular. “ So I think we always had a plan for them to have a game or two [in the NHL]. But I didn’t think all these guys were going to stick. No. I wouldn’t have said that. No.”

The process is, well, a process, and the Flyers’ faithful will assuredly need “some more patience.” But as Axl Rose also sang, “Was a time when I wasn’t sure, but you set my mind at ease.”

The ease is a short-lived one because no one should think this is the end of the rebuild just because a playoff spot has been snatched a bit earlier than expected and the Flyers are on the verge of advancing to the second round. As Brière and president Keith Jones have long said, they don’t want one-and-dones for the postseason; they want long-term success.

And because of that, this lineup could look quite different come September, when Tocchet begins his second season as the bench boss.

Part of it is that the Flyers will need to make room for Bonk, who scored his first NHL goal in his debut in Game 82, and Jiříček, who will no longer be waiver-exempt, and potentially centers Luchanko and Berglund.

Then there will be free agents who will want to come to Philly now. Although the market looks thin, Brière and his staff have shown a keen eye for adding affordable talent and helping those players, some of whom may not have worked out at previous stops, maximize their abilities. The Flyers also have the cap space and assets to make a trade for a star if they so wish.

And as one high-profile agent told The Inquirer two years ago when asked what would attract big names to Philadelphia, they responded with one word: winning.

The bricks have been laid. The vision is coming into focus.

Maybe, after all, they really did just need a little patience because by taking it slow, things, for now, seem to be working itself out just fine.