Did you watch Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final? Talk about a banger. Edmonton went up 4-1 and the Florida Panthers sent wave after wave at the Oilers, cut the lead to one, and emptied the tank in an effort to send it to overtime.

Alas, Edmonton prevailed, and we’ve got ourselves a legitimate series going back to Canada for Game 6.

At some point in the first or second period, I thought to myself, “the Flyers don’t have top-end talent remotely close to these teams.” Cynical, yes, but true. You’re always watching these championship games in any sport and wondering what your team has to do to reach this point. The offensive skill and two-way quality was leaps and bounds ahead of anything that the Flyers ever showed on the ice this season.

So I had the thought to do a brief exercise, and combine the Edmonton, Florida, and Philly rosters. How far down the list would you have to go before the first Flyers player appears? It’s a simple exercise in showing how far the team has to go in terms of assembling the necessary talent to challenge for the first Stanley Cup since Gerald Ford was in office.

Not in any particular order, we crowd sourced a list of skaters that looks something like this:


  • Connor McDavid
  • Alex Barkov
  • Leon Draisaitl
  • Matthew Tkachuck
  • Zach Hyman
  • Carter Verhaege
  • Evan Bouchard
  • Sam Reinhart
  • Gustav Forsling
  • (a healthy Coots maybe somewhere in the 10 to 12 range)
  • (Travis Konecny on some sort of 2nd or 3rd tier here)
  • Anton Lundell
  • Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
  • Evan Rodrigues

If you wanted to add goalies to the list, Bob could legitimately be top 10, but Philly consensus was that a 100% Sean Couturier might hit around 10, while TK was in the 12-15 range.

E.J. also points this out:

“Point shares” is a formula calculating the estimated number of points a player contributes over the course of the season. It’s the hockey version of win shares, with a complicated explanation laid out on the site.

If you go down this year’s list, the highest ranking Flyer is Konecny, at 77th. He’s given a +8 point share number. Among the top 75, there are six Panthers and six Oilers. The second-highest Philly player is Travis Sanheim, ranked 144th with a +6.3 number, and then third is Owen Tippett, ranked 155th with a +6.

It’s not some secret, but the Flyers have a long way to go, and that’s evident to anyone watching this Panthers/Oilers series. They overachieved as a blue collar group of grinders in year one of the rebuild, but they need high-end talent, and a lot of it.