2026 NHL Draft

As NHL draft approaches, will Flyers try to bolster their defense?

William Håkansson is a left-shot defenseman who would fill a need for Philadelphia. Nick Wosika / Getty Images

VOORHEES, N.J. — The Philadelphia Flyers have had their hits and misses in the early 20s of the NHL draft over the past couple of decades.

Tyson Foerster (23rd overall, 2020), Travis Konecny (24th overall, 2015), Scott Laughton (20th overall, 2012), and Claude Giroux (22nd overall, 2006) are all evidence that finding high-end NHL players doesn’t always require a lottery pick.

The challenge for general manager Daniel Briere and assistant general manager Brent Flahr headed into Friday’s first round, in which they own the 21st selection (assuming they don’t trade the pick), will be to find the next Foerster or Giroux — while steering clear of the next German Rubtsov (22nd overall, 2016) or Jay O’Brien (19th overall, 2018).

Considering the Flyers seem to be on an upward trajectory, they’re going to have to hit on a few more players in that range if they’re going to achieve the kind of sustained success they so crave. Finding talent beyond the top 10 is still probably the most difficult task for any team’s front office.

“Anytime you’re drafting in the 20s,” Flahr said last Tuesday, “you’re not getting the perfect player that’s completely polished and finished. … There are certain traits we’re going to be looking for in a player in the 20s. Some of them take a little bit longer than others.”

Unsurprisingly, Briere suggested the Flyers will simply select the best player available on their list when their turn comes to make a selection from their headquarters at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., where they are setting up shop for the second straight year since the draft became decentralized. That’s how they approached it last year, selecting winger Porter Martone sixth overall rather than center James Hagens, who went seventh to the Boston Bruins.

“Right now you might have some needs, but in four, five years, that might be different,” Briere said. “Especially in the first round, I think we try to be careful (and) try to go with the best player, in this case. Keep developing. We have a pretty decent pool of prospects coming, so it’s not like we’re depleted. We still have some really good ones at almost every position.”

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Still, there does seem to be one distinct area of need. Defense. More specifically, a left-shot defenseman.

While the Flyers have selected 19 players combined in the first four rounds over the past four years, only three of them are defensemen: Oliver Bonk (first round, 2023), Spencer Gill (second round, 2024) and Carter Amico (second round, 2025). While Briere has made trades for other young blueliners like Jamie Drysdale and David Jiricek, and they have a few who made their NHL debuts last season and are now knocking on the door in Ty Murchison and Hunter McDonald, the Flyers do seem a tad thin on their back end in terms of the prospect pool. On Scott Wheeler’s rundown of the team’s system in April, Bonk (third) and Jiricek (sixth) were the only defensemen listed among the team’s top 10 prospects.

Flahr also pointed out that Bonk, Jiricek, Gill and Amico are all right-handed shots, which isn’t ideal.

“Somehow we manage to keep drafting right-shot defensemen, which is never usually available,” he said. “We’re aware that our left side, especially, is a little thin, which is usually easier to find. We’ll certainly have to address it at some point. Not necessarily in the first round, but we’ll see how it falls.”

The two most recent defensemen they’ve taken high — Gill and Amico — remain projects. Both have endured some injuries, too. Gill broke his ankle in 2024-25 playing for Rimouski (QMJHL), and missed months with an upper body injury this past season for Blainville-Boisbriand, while Amico just completed his first season since a major knee injury in 2024-25, which required multiple surgeries and rehab. He split the season between Boston University and Muskegon of the USHL.

Flahr touched on them both.

“Amico is going to take some time. Gilly is going to turn pro this year, so he’s going to need some time. Both those guys bring some size and (are) different types of defensemen,” said Flahr, before adding that he was encouraged with how both of them finished the season.

If the Flyers are leaning towards drafting a defenseman in the first round, this could be a decent year to take one.

While the Flyers won’t be in the mix for top-of-the-class talents like Chase Reid, Carson Carels, Keaton Verhoeff or Alberts Šmits, there is a decent group underneath those guys from which to choose. According to The Athletic’s Max Bultman, “the collection of blueliners is the strength of this draft class.”

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Among the defensemen that could be available if the Flyers use the 21st pick are Malte Gustafsson, Ryan Lin, Tommy Bleyl, Xavier Villenueve and William Håkansson (Gustafsson, Villenueve and Håkansson are left shots).

In his latest mock draft, Corey Pronman landed on the six-foot-four, 207-pound Håkansson for the Flyers, as the club currently “lacks that player type” in their system. In Wheeler’s mock draft on June 9, he had the Flyers selecting an even bigger blueliner — the six-foot-seven, 240-pound Maksim Sokolovskii, a Russian native who skated last season for the OHL’s London Knights and who is headed to the University of Maine in the fall. The Flyers have drafted some Knights in the recent past, including Bonk and Denver Barkey, so there is precedent there.

If it’s a left-shot puck mover the Flyers are seeking, Villenueve is an intriguing prospect, although at just 5-foot-10 and 164 pounds, he’s a risk. Same with Lin (5-11, 178) and Bleyl (5-11, 165),

“If you’re drafting a small defenseman, they need to be dynamic,” Flahr said. “There are a couple that are going to go in the mid-to-later first round this year. They are in the mix, but…those guys are typically going to take 3-4 years to get there, too.”

Of course, there’s a chance the Flyers won’t be all that enthralled with the players that are still around at 21. Flahr labeled the “top 10 or 11 a real good grouping, and then there’s another layer, and you could argue how long that goes.” He acknowledged that “maybe there is value to trading back and getting a similar caliber player in the same layer.”

After dealing their third-round pick to Toronto in the deal for goalie Joseph Woll last week, the Flyers have just four picks in this year’s draft — their first-round pick, a second-round pick (53), and not again until the sixth and seventh rounds (181 and 213 overall). Perhaps they’ll want to add another in the middle rounds, if they can.

“It’s not ideal, we’d love to have 15 picks in every draft, but it’s not realistic,” Briere said. “We still have the first and the second right now that are key, I would think.”

Jun 23, 2026

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