Danny Briere isn’t ready to let the Flyers’ young core get too comfortable.
Philadelphia is heading into the 2026-27 NHL season as one of the league’s youngest teams, fresh off its first playoff appearance in six years. That has naturally pushed Porter Martone, Matvei Michkov, Denver Barkey and Alex Bump to the front of the conversation. Each has already flashed enough to make the future look bright, and the idea of those four leading the Flyers’ forwards for the next decade is hard to miss.
But Briere wants the group thinking about the next step, not the last one.
In a recent exclusive interview with RG, the Flyers general manager said the danger now is that young players start believing the hard part is already behind them.
“My worry becomes that after the success that a guy like Porter had last year late in the season and into the playoffs -- and I could say the same about Barkey or Bump, those guys really gave us a jolt when they came up late in the year -- you worry that they think that they’ve made it or they think it’s going to be easy, but realistically, the hardest part of the work is is still ahead of them,” Briere said.
“I understand that the expectations are going upwards, but you worry about them kind of going through a similar transition that Matvei had to go through in his second season. You hope that it doesn’t happen, but you never know.”
That warning fits the way Martone, Barkey and Bump all arrived. Martone was one of the Flyers’ best forwards in the nine regular-season games he played before co-leading the team in playoff points.
Barkey’s call-up, originally supposed to last only about a week, stretched through the entire second half of the season in his first year of pro hockey. Bump also looked like a real scoring threat.
Briere’s concern is simple: that kind of early success can change the way young players see their own place in the league. If they stop pushing, it can take a year or two to get back to the level they reached so quickly. It’s the sort of scenario he clearly wants to avoid, and maybe one he understands from his own path as a player, since he didn’t fully become what he was until he was 24 years old and had more than 100 NHL games behind him.
He also addressed Michkov, who Briere said needs a “bounce-back season.”
“It’s pretty funny, when we talk about Matvei having a bounce-back season, he still had 20 goals and 50-plus points [in 2025-26]. But that’s how much he’s seen as a guy that can be a difference-maker, which is really exciting,” Briere said.
“He’s learned some lessons along the way. The second season is never easy.
I went through it myself; a lot of players have gone through it before. As long as you learn along the way, that’s how you’re going to keep climbing, that’s how you’re going to get better.”
For Briere, the message is clear: Michkov’s talent is obvious, but the next jump has to come from learning and building on what he’s already done. If that happens, the Flyers can keep leaning on him as the offensive centerpiece he’s expected to be.
Briere also weighed in on the summer’s biggest NHL talking point: the Leo Carlsson offer sheet.
He wanted to make one thing clear - Carlsson chose Philadelphia.
The record-breaking $18-million AAV helped, of course, but Briere said the player wanted to be a Flyer when he signed. And despite the reaction around the league, Briere pushed back on the idea that the offer sheet somehow reset the market.
“The way I see it is, to me, it didn’t change anything. That’s where it was going all along.
Obviously, there are people that like to take the easy approach and just blame the Flyers for that. That’s a very simplistic approach.
I don’t have a problem with it; we’re totally fine with that if that’s what they want to believe. But we all know, with the cap going up, what the agents work with now is the percentage of the cap,” Briere said.
“You can go back, and the percentages are very similar to what they were for years. It’s just that now, the cap has increased tremendously, and quickly, the last couple years.
Someone’s going to get that money somewhere. It was just a matter of time.
Honestly, I don’t think some of the players that signed the big tickets would have signed for less even without the offer sheet. So, no, I don’t believe it played much of a factor [in the market].”
Briere’s point is that the dollar figure looked wild, but the structure wasn’t out of line with major deals from the past. With the cap climbing, the money was going to land somewhere eventually. The Carlsson deal just happened to be the one that made everyone notice first.
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