David Jiricek keeps flashing the same problem, and the Flyers are already feeling it.
The former Minnesota Wild defenseman has only been in Philadelphia for four games, but the early returns haven’t done much to change the story around him. He’s already been scratched twice, and on Monday night he delivered the kind of mistake that sticks in everyone’s mind: a turnover in the defensive zone, then a missed recovery as the play spun into an Ilya Mikheyev goal late in a 4-1 loss.
That sequence was ugly enough on its own. Jiricek raced back for a loose puck, then blindly sent it up ice, hoping to find a teammate.
Instead, it went straight to Lightning forward Pontus Holmberg, who took off the other way. Jiricek tried to recover, but overskated Holmberg, and the chain ended with Mikheyev wrapping around the net and scoring with three minutes left.
For a player trying to prove he belongs, that kind of blunder can drown out everything else.
And that’s the bind with Jiricek. The tools are obvious.
He has size, and he can push offense when things are going well. But the production hasn’t matched the upside: just two goals and 13 points across five years split between the Blue Jackets, Wild and Flyers.
He’s shown more in the AHL, including a 2023-24 run with the Cleveland Monsters when he scored seven goals and finished with 19 points in 29 games.
The problem is that the good stretches haven’t come often enough, and the skating remains a real issue. NHL Edge has him below the 50th percentile in maximum skating speed at 19.22 mph, and he spends most of his time between 18 and 20 mph. That matters on both ends, but especially when the game turns chaotic in his own zone.
Before the season, Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet was clear about what Jiricek needed to improve.
“When there’s chaos and a lot of small battles, that’s where he’s got to be a little bit better,” Tocchet told reporters during training camp. “I think that’s what he worked on in the minors: being able to shut down plays in the corner, being able to read a play, basically to shut things down.
That’s things we asked him to do. …He’s got some good awareness, but it’s the boxing out and being able to win a battle boxing out; those are the things, you know, he has to find that part in his game.”
That hasn’t shown up enough yet, and Monday was another reminder of why. It’s also why Jiricek owns a minus-8 rating in 87 NHL games.
Even so, the game wasn’t all bad for him. Thomas Williams of Broad Street Hockey noted that Jiricek helped Philadelphia win the shot attempt battle 14-12 and posted a 63.25 percent expected goals share at even strength while he was on the ice. The problem is that one loud mistake can still wipe out a night’s worth of decent work.
“The thing is, we knew this was going to happen,” Thomas Williams of Broad Street Hockey wrote. “Jiricek’s whole thing is that his mistakes are going to be loud and brash and make you want to write a blog specifically about a mistake he made because it makes you baffled as soon as it happens.
We knew this. The hope was just that he had enough of an offensive impact that it would outweigh these deafening mistakes and blunders on the other end of the ice.”
For Minnesota, the larger picture is already clear. The Wild can’t claim they won the original Jiricek deal, not with the draft capital they sent to Columbus - a 2025 first-round pick, 2026 third- and fourth-round picks and a 2027 second-round pick - but they did get out before the situation got worse.
Jiricek had slipped behind in the Wild’s pecking order, even falling behind Daemon Hunt, who was part of the initial deal before being claimed off waivers at the beginning of last year. There’s also the question of whether he would have gotten a longer look in Minnesota after Brock Faber’s skull fracture, but even that opportunity might have come with a short leash.
The trade the Wild made with the Flyers for Bobby Brink also looks better now. Brink started quietly in Minnesota, but he’s opened this season with a pair of assists, and he had a third erased by a goaltender interference call in the season-opening win against the Nashville Predators.
Minnesota still needs more forward depth, and Brink has given them something useful. Philadelphia, meanwhile, has a defenseman who keeps running into the same problem: the upside is there, but the mistakes are loud, and patience is already thinning.
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Tyler Pitlick was recalled from Iowa to help fill the gap, giving the Wild another experienced option who has spent time in both the NHL and AHL. Now in his second year with Minnesota, Pitlick gives the coaching staff a familiar plug-in as it waits to see how long Foligno is unavailable. [Read more 🡒]