A brief respite before getting it back to the Phillies and Eagles. ESPN ranked the NHL teams in a season preview column and the Flyers came in 29th:

Best case: Philadelphia is far from win-now mode. What qualifies as success is taking a step forward; simply being better than it was a year ago. The Flyers have exciting young players like Cam York who get much-needed experience against NHL talents and begin building confidence. Travis Konecny — still with the team despite constant rumors he’d be traded — ignites the Flyers’ offense early and that does eventually allow GM Danny Briere to flip him at the trade deadline for valuable assets in Philadelphia’s ongoing re-tool. The Flyers are fun, but don’t hurt their chances of grabbing another good spot in the draft lottery.

Worst case: The only downside for Philadelphia is being too good. The Flyers want to stock with the cupboards with another top prospect; that won’t happen if they rack up too many wins. Coach John Tortorella getting greedy and pushing his team too hard that it turns into points in the standings hurts their ultimate position in the drafting ones. Briere can’t find the right partners to engage with at the trade deadline and Philadelphia loses out there, too. The Flyers wind up picking too high at the draft in June and miss out on what might have been if they’d stumbled more in the regular season.

That’s via Ryan S. Clark and Kristen Shilton. They list key players added as Ryan Poehling, Garnet Hathaway, and Marc Staal, which tells you all you need to know about this Flyers team. It’s a rebuilding one.

But that’s a good thing, because the franchise is committed to this path. Everybody is on the same page. Fuck the aggressive retool. Danny B is here to clean house and bring the young talent through. Jonesy is gonna patch things up on the organizational front. And Torts… well, who knows? Common thought is that he’s not the type of guy to lead a rebuild, but maybe he does a good job this season, gets the kids their playing and developmental time, and loses enough games to ensure another high draft pick.

I’m more excited for this Flyers year than last year, and it’s not even close. There’s a plan in place and the future looks bright. Whether or not this is the near future or a more distant future remains to be determined.