PHILADELPHIA, Pa – The Philadelphia Flyers end the 2018-19 season in the same way they ended it: Badly. The Flyers finished the season 22nd overall in the league standings and unless they can move up in the draft thanks to the draft lottery the Flyers will have the 10th overall pick in the draft. The Flyers have more questions going into next season than they did going into this season.
The team didn’t get better they got worse. There was some good things and a lot of bad things to say about this season. Next season starts on Tuesday when the NHL Draft Lottery will take placed but in the meantime we need to put a bow on this season for the orange and black. 
The positives: The Flyers were once again led on offense by their best players in Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier, Jakub Voracek, Travis Konecny, and James Van Riemsdyk. All five had 20 or more goals with Couturier setting a personal best with 33. The Flyers also had four players with 10 or more goals including rookie Oskar Lindblom with 17 goals playing just under 14 minutes per game on the team’s third line. Unfortunately the Flyers had 16 goals from Wayne Simmonds who is no longer with the team.
Rookie goaltender Carter Hart was called up from the AHL due to injuries to virtually every goaltender in the Flyers system. Without him the Flyers would have had one of its worst seasons in team history. He finished the season playing 31 games leading the team in wins with 16 and had a .917 save percentage. It’s been a long time since the Flyers had a future in net but it looks like there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
On defense there was some positives but not many. That said, Travis Sanheim was one of them. This was his first full season in the NHL after playing in 49 last season. Radko Gudas led the defense in plus/minus with a +6. The best part of the Flyers season was the fact that they led the league in face-offs winning 54.7 percent of the time.
The negatives: Wow, where do you start. The Flyers fired the General Manager after he fell on his proverbial sword for his handpicked Head Coach. After the GM was let go was eventually the Head Coach was gone as well. One of the major reasons for his demise is the fact the Flyers went through a league record 8 goalies.
The Flyers youth on defense reared its ugly head on many occasions but the most disturbing part was that the team fell behind 2-0 in games 33 times in the season. That’s almost half the season where the Flyers had to big themselves out of a whole from the start of the game. The Flyers scored less goals per game than they allowed the previous season. Both special team units were statistically worse as well.
The future: The burden falls on GM Chuck Fletcher to get the type of personnel that will get the Flyers back into the playoffs next season. One of the major ways of doing that will be because for former GM Ron Hextall’s ability to start getting the Flyers out of salary cap hell. The Flyers currently have over $8 million in salary cap space and the cap is expected to go up another $3-5 million. The Flyers will also be able to dump another $16 million of the books heading into next season.
The only fly in the ointment is that the Flyers have quite a few of their own restricted free agents to resign. Some of them will get hefty raises such as Travis Konecny, Ivan Provorov, and Travis Sanheim.
The biggest catch has to be a Head Coach. Based on some reporting it looks like if the Flyers want to make a play for Joel Quennville they better do it in a hurry. Reports are that Quennville might be closing in on a deal to go to the Florida Panthers but Quennville is still at the top of the Flyers hit list. The Flyers can’t afford to make a mistake on this hire especially considering how much youth will be coming into the Flyers lineup in the coming years.
Brian Jennings covers the Philadelphia Flyers for prohockeynews.com and can be found on twitter at @Flyersfan22.
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