Philadelphia Flyers
Why Did the Flyers Pass on Zeev Buium in the 2024 NHL Draft?
At first, it seemed like the Philadelphia Flyers were getting a shrewd piece of business done, acquiring a 2025 third-round pick from the Minnesota Wild just to move down one spot, from 12 to 13, in the first round of the 2024 NHL Draft.
After the Wild and the Flyers picked their players, that perception changed rather fast.
University of Denver defenseman Zeev Buium was scooped up by Minnesota while the Flyers passed up on the highly-regarded Konsta Helenius in favor of Guelph speedster Jett Luchanko. And although Helenius made the most sense for the Flyers as a cerebral, experienced center, Buium was considered the can’t-miss, high-end defense prospect that every NHL team needs more of.
That is, unless you’re the Flyers. Danny Briere and Co. apparently had this decision made before it came down to it.
“Well, when you look at our defense, you have it right. I think Zeev Buium is going to be a great player, and he’s someone we considered strongly,” Briere said after the conclusion of Round 1 on Friday night. “But with Cam York, Jamie Drysdale, Emil Andrae… at some point, it gets tough to go with the smaller guy. But he’s a fantastic player.”
Buium isn’t necessarily small — he stands at 6-foot, 185 pounds — but he’s noticeably smaller than other players the Flyers drafted, like 6-foot-4 defensemen Spencer Gill and Austin Moline. The Flyers also have Travis Sanheim signed long term, and the Flyers really like what Adam Ginning and Egor Zamula bring to the table for them.
Plus, it’s not like the Flyers passed on Buium for a bigger defenseman, like an Anton Silayev or a Sam Dickinson. They simply bypassed the best available player entirely, instead pivoting to their highest-rated center in Luchanko.
Additionally, Andrae hasn’t made the NHL yet, and Drysdale has a lengthy injury in his short time in the NHL, including yet another surgery at the end of this past season.
Overall talent seems to contribute to NHL success more than size does, but the Flyers have a different plan right now. In time, we’ll see if this gamble pays off.
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Is Buium considered a lock to play this year? Is he really a generational talent on D? No & no. Two words…Ivan Provorov. Maybe Briere didn’t want a repeat of that disaster. Since they have paid scouts who get to watch these kids for a year, sometimes more, I think it best to defer to their opinions for the draft. This was an average draft class by most analyses this year, so I think it’s OK to have that “C” grade, as you put it. Patience, grasshopper!
Well most other NHL team disagree. Enough to trade in front of us and take him. But you know better than them too huh? 🤦🏻♂️🤡🤡🤡
Minnesota’s really tearing up the league, eh? Your comment serves only to demonstrate you’re probably better at your day job. Keep your hopium level up, junior. 😆🤣😆
Give Danny credit for that statement on smallish d-men…smallish d-men are great on the PP because of puck handling and mobility, …..but in 5-on-5 can be burned deep in their end by the bigger forwards, especially when the season turns to crunch time around March every year, they wear down-saw it first hand in Ghost…….York and Drysdale are the two to keep…Emil should be packaged….Attard and Ginning can do the job as 3rd pairing guys or reserves..
Also, the last two Stanley Cup winners would not be there without a big trade….Vegas with Eichel, and then the Panthers with both Tkachuk and Rinehart….Danny needs to considered that alternative route to future success.
Danny is LOST and this is absolute 🤡💩. Another fake retool of a rebuild that WILL FAIL AGAIN! Almost GAURANTEED!!!
AND They SURELY AREN’T building ANY KIND OF DYNASTY? They LIED TO ALL OF US AGAIN!!! Face the facts!
Listened to all you kool-aid drinkers through Hextall, then Fletcher, and now we’re doing it ALL OVER AGAIN!
No playoffs. No top5 picks. IN 5 YEARS NOW!!! Trading Gauthier for Drysdale a BUST who hasn’t played in 2 years.
This is the joke of the NHL now. TRULY. Just read other teams articles. THEY are LAUGHING AT US! 🤦🏻♂️🤡🤡🤡
No one is begging you to remain a fan! Root for someone else
Fletcher was there to clear house and bring it down to foundation . Briere is there to rebuild the house . Two totally different things.
hextall bombed it out
Agree with your assessment about D-men. We need some guys who can clear the front of the net & actually battle behind the net & in the corners; not get pushed out of the way, run over or just give the puck away. The biggest roadblock for Briere is the salary cap, with little or no room to maneuver. A big trade for top end talent would be great but there isn’t anyone on this current roster to entice a big trade & thankfully, Briere isn’t willing to throw in any top round picks that it would take. Patience is hard, but it is necessary.
Agree with you mostly . Drysdale as the #1. York and sanheim the offense on next two pairs . 3 defensive guys past that with size past that
On your eichel and tkachuk. I do agree will need a break . I was thinking if Edmonton wins cup maybe we can get Draisaitl as a FA.
will need a break like that for sure
agree with most of what u say
Smallish d-men. Old Danny Boy is the guy that took Emil Andrae in the 2nd round!!! And how many 5′ 9″ defenders are there in the NHL? Jared Spurgeon and Tory Krug. TWO! Why waste a pick on a probability like that? Why draft that kid and then say they can’t take a 6′ 0″ stud? I’m at a loss on the logic. He’s unfit to run the show.
Yes Konecny needs to go , not signed to contract they are looking for, he is a good 2nd line player. That’s it , he’s not elite and in 2,3 years when he’s a 3rd line player , we will be trying to get out of his bad contract , that will be hurting us. Laughton is great team player, but he’s 4th liner and we say you want to rebuild ? If you are offered a 1st, 2nd round pick for a grinding 30 year old 4th line player you take it . York is another guy he is 2nd ,3rd pairing , good player but is he #1 material? Take chances guys this roster of nice guys is that good!
Not that good
3rd line player on a Cup Winning team. 🤷♂️
Draft was a c- to a D , bad enough but no shakeup of mediocre roster. A player traded this weekend would have been a worthwhile gamble , Alex Texier from Columbus . Blues got him for mid round pick, has some size and decent stats for a woeful Blue Jackets and a C, would have been nice try at third line center. Laughton should be long gone, value never be higher and while a great team guy, he isn’t part of what they claim they’re trying to do
D- to F
Texier just turned 24 and even 4th line to replace Laughton would have been worth it
Absolute 🤡💩
I thought we fired Hextall? Why are these
🤡s doing the same failing 💩 the past 2 GMs FAILED MISERABLY DOING for thr past 10+ years? I’m personally DISGUSTED with this B.S. retool of a “rebuild” AGAIN.
Depending on overrated injury riddled Veterans who ARE NOT ELITE!
Meanwhile OTHER rebuilding teams are drafting Elite talent to build around. GET THESE 🤡CLOWNS🤡 OUT OF PHILADELPHIA!!!
No Rebuild?
Then No Game tickets!
No Subscription to Watch The Flyers!
No shirts! No hats! NO MONEY FROM ME!!!
THIS IS B.S.
WHY IS MCGROARTY NOT A FLYER?!
Where is Zegras? Where is Pinto? Or Necas? Or Catton? Or Lindstrom?
Unless your signing Draisetl Briere, YOU Screwed Us AGAIN!!!
So if Couturier gets injured….
Michkov plays with Frost or Poehling?
This is a JOKE!
Now they’ll pay Konecny and give him a contract and pretend he’s Marchand (eho doesn’t make that much) or Tkachuk.
This is just SAD. I’m honestly repulsed at this management’s moves.
Flyers haven’t made a significant trade in a decade!!!
No playoffs. AGAIN.
No top 5 picks. AGAIN.
No future 1C.
No future 1D.
No future 2C.
No star goaltender.
No future 100 point potential prospects other than Michkov. And spending more in CAP than 31 other teams.
Someone fire these clowns and start an ACTUAL REBUILD around Michkov!!! The ONLY peice worth building around that we have in Philadelphia!
So if we have no 1C/2C prospect, then where do you slot Luchanko? Cause I’m reading that’s his future. Plus we are really set for next year’s draft.
Do you know how many players put up 100 points this year? 9, and only 2 teams had more than 1 player hit that. Most teams, including those with good chances to win the cup, don’t have multiple 100 points players/prospects.
Our cap situation, we have 7 million in penalty from bad contracts the previous GM acquired and another 10 in LTIR if we chose to use it. Management hasn’t screwed us with their spending.
Stop ranting if you don’t actually know what you’re talking about.
Go get McGroarty, Zegras, Pinto, Necas, or SOMEONE HALF COMPETENT as a top line 1C. This is RIDICULOUS!!!🤦🏻♂️🤡
And paying Konecny ANYMORE than a 7m aav is insane!!!
For instance, only 17 players in the NHL have a cap hit of $10 million or greater, and 12 of them are forwards. Those players are, from greatest cap hit to least, Auston Matthews, Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid, Artemi Panarin, Elias Pettersson, William Nylander, David Pastrnak, John Tavares, Mitchell Marner, Jonathan Huberdeau, Sasha Barkov, and Jack Eichel.
And then there’s Konecny, who’s yet to score 40 goals or 70 points in a single season with the Flyers. With all due respect, $10 million is just a bad look, and more and more people are starting to agree.
9:50 مه
85%
“For a year, two years,” opined analyst and longtime NHLer Dave Reid. “Like, you start stretching those numbers out with term… that’s the issue with going term with a high number for some players. A 10 seems a lot, but that’s negotiating part of it. Again, it’s not just ‘Yeah, we got three really good years left’, what of the three to eight? Where’s that going to take us? AAV doesn’t get lower.”
With his last point, in particular, Reid was spot-on. If Konecny and the Flyers were agree to the max term of eight years, the two-time NHL All-Star would be 36 years old at the end of the contract. Six of those eight years will take place in Konecny’s 30s, and that is, more than likely, not a good spot to be in if you’re the Flyers. And Hradek agrees.
“That’s my fear with a player like Konecny. I love watching that guy play, but the guy
punches above his weight,” Hradek explained. “That’s great, while you can. Those types of players, their shelf life is really limited because, inevitably, they get dinged up. They get beat up, and they’re just not the same player.
“I’d have a hard time going that kind of term with that kind of money for Konecny, as much as I love him as a player.”
Konecny’s BEST season was a 70 point ceiling and he has 1goal in 22 playoff games.
Is Konecmy on drugs asking for 10m aav? Or better guess he wants a massive overpay to stay in Philadelphia.
NOT WORTH IT!
TRADE HIM!!!🤦🏻♂️🤡
Rebuild it RIGHT!!!
To people who are still anti tank/rebuild Why?
Since the 2008-2009 season
9/14 cup winners were teams that had high end talent from either intentionally tanking to get a high pick and or rebuilding to the point where it ended up getting them a top pick
Penguins 3x
Blackhawks 3x
Lightning 2x
Avalanche 1x
Of the remaining 5
Blues 1x
Capitals 1x
Kings 2x
Bruins 1x
The capitals can absolutely be put into the category alongside the Avalanche Lightning Penguins and Blackhawks but I like to play devils advocate.
The kings got a tad bit lucky with taking advantage of the Carter-Richards debacle as well.
The Blues(2019) and Bruins (2011) are the two examples that I often see the people who don’t want to tank use as examples.
The Blues (2019) and Bruins (2011) are the two examples that I often see the people who don’t want to tank use as examples but they got pretty lucky in their advancements to the Stanley Cup.
Other teams that I hear given as examples to not tank are
The Oilers: although they have failed to succeed in a cup, they are far more likely to do so then we are in the next decade and I would be willing to bet they succeed even with their incompetence management wise.
The Sabres: Yea. Fair enough
The Devils: Currently 14-3 still with high end prospects and young players
The Leafs: Cursed. But again far more likely than we are to win a cup this decade
From the past 15 years of data we can either hope to hit massively on late round picks, like the bruins, or have a fluky run with a goalie getting hot at the right time, like the blues.
OR
We can blow it up and sell any player outside of Hart and players under 25 or so(even though they should be available for the right place) intentionally tank for 5 ish years and get the talent we need to win a Stanley Cup
This draft would be an amazing starting point as really any of the top 5 picks should be franchise changing players.
P.S for the love of god fire Danny Briere and Keith Jones. They are LOST and above their heads repeatedly making the same mistakes Hextall and Fletcher JUST made while talking out of both sides of their mouth about a “Rebuild”.
This is RIDICULOUS!!!
THIS TEAM WILL WIN NOTHING UNTIL THEY GET ELITE TALENTS TO BUILD AROUND.
Couturier, Konecny, and Sanheim are NOWHERE NEAR elite players you build around to win a Cup. They are the expendable depth peices.
What game is management playing pretending they don’t know this?
Just making as much money as they can while putting mediocre 🤡💩 on the ice season after season.
I’m repulsed by this organization after the past 20+ years.
But yahl keep drinking the kool-aid like we didn’t just see a decade of failure from GMs moving in this manner. How appalling and deceitful can Flyers management be?
If your not getting an ELITE 1C in the top5 of the draft then GO GET MCGROARTY, ZEGRAS, OR AT LEAST A PINTO!!! 🤦🏻♂️🤡 I am so TIRED of no Elite draft picks. No playoffs. Running back the SAME mediocrity year after year and hoping for a draft MIRACLE!!! It’s a JOKE!!!
What a joke Briere has become already. 🤦🏻♂️🤡
Why do they treat fans like they don’t know what’s going on. Two faced gaslighting liars! “New Era of Orange” What a crock of….
“Rebuild” my …………..
Flyers would be 3-5 years from Relevance IF they were making the right moves.
This is appalling. I’m speechless after all thr lies and B.S. that came oit of these guys mouths. They are 🤡🤡🤡s.
And they treat Flyers fans like we’re stupid enough to believe this 🤡💩.
Danny B and all of management took a hit this weekend. They like operating on the hush, but , talked leading in to draft like something was on horizon. Then on top of not producing, they hand us an underwhelming , putting it mildly, draft full of 3/4 line hopeful and 3rd pairing d man plus maybe AHL players. Disappointment is warranted, but , maybe just maybe there’s something in the fire. They can’t be overly loyal to Laughton while he has value, and can’t pay an average 2nd liner Konecny big money . He definitely isn’t a difference maker in the standings , we need that , but it’s not him. Trading him is best approach to acquire a difference maker , more assets thru him plus assets we got in 2025 is ammunition we need. Take it on the chin this year and then show us the rebuild starting with next years draft.
Why TF ISN’T MCGROARTY A FLYER YET?!
We criticized Cutter , well deserved , pompous dick. But you’re willing to take another silver spooner who is Cutters buddy, and pulling off same crap. Inmate wanting to run the asylum , talented guy we need , but is price and trouble worth it? I’d say no , reeks of hypocrisy to me
Trends seem to be the ticket of the day…..latest trend in Stanley cup winners lately ……Vegas and Panthers….is the mere fact they would not have been where they were if not for big trades. Vegas getting Eichel and the Panthers getting both Rinehart and Tkachuk. Hope Danny B realizes that….the puzzle may have to be built with more than accumulating draft picks and hoping they all develop together at one time.
After all…Oilers will now be 10 years with the best in McDavid and Leon Draisaitl…..and now they are the latest winners in the game of horseshoes.
Today:
On Flyers players eligible for receiving qualifying offers, which must be done by 5:00 p.m. on June 30, Briere only said, “That’s exactly what we’ll be discussing tonight. We’re still talking to [the players’] agents, trying to make something happen. We’ll have a better answer on July 1.”
Are they seriously not going to make a qualifying offer to Carter Hart, and just let him walk without getting anything in return?
Didn’t Danny B say the league has to give him guidance on Hart and the situation he is facing.
The League did. They would not exempt the Flyers from having to give him a qualifying offer, but presumably what they paid him would not count towards the Flyers cap hit as long as he is on personal leave.
I’ve since read that the Flyers decided to part ways with Hart. That seems crazy to me when you 1) could have signed him and then traded his rights (prior to trial verdict) or 2). held on to him until the trial was over and then made a decision on whether to trade (for an even higher value) or keep him (assuming a favorable verdict).
Not giving him a qualifying offer makes him a UFA now and the Flyers get nothing. I’m willing to bet some NHL team will be willing to take a chance that the verdict is favorable and would be interested in signing him. I’m thinking of the Oilers (who obviously need a goalie) and the Devils (who just signed an older goalie) just to name two.
Do I want to watch the Flyers lose to the Hart and the Devils four times a year? Heck no! This seems like another major blunder from Briere and the front office.
Drysdale is the #1. Needs to be a star in Adam fox territory . We have sanheim and york on the next two pairs for the offense . There’s no room unless you move sanheim or york .
I think flyers were looking at depth center whole time . We have snipers now too with tippett, forester and michkov .
we desperately need a power wing . Think Tim Kerr, John leclair, Scott hartnell type next to net on top line with michkov
Tim Kerr and Leclair wouldn’t that be nice to get a clone of one or both of them??? Lol