David Jiricek is staying with the Flyers when the season opens.
General manager Daniel Briere told reporters, including Kevin Kurz of The Athletic, that the defense prospect has earned a spot on Philadelphia’s opening night roster. The Flyers still need to make two cuts before Monday’s submission deadline, but there’s no immediate squeeze.
Briere also said forward Denver Barkey could miss a few games because of the lower-body injury that kept him out of last Tuesday’s preseason game against the Bruins. Third-string goalie Aleksei Kolosov remains on the roster and is waiver-exempt, so he can be sent to AHL Lehigh Valley whenever needed.
Rookie defender Helge Grans, who had a six-game look with Philly in 2024-25, could also land on the non-roster list after leaving Thursday’s preseason game against Boston with a lower-body injury.
The move isn’t a surprise, even if it still matters. Jiricek was the sixth overall pick just four years ago, and now he’s already on his third team.
He also lost his waiver-exempt status this offseason, which made it hard to imagine the Flyers trying to sneak him through waivers. Philadelphia has thinned out its blue line since summer began, letting Noah Juulsen walk to free agency and shipping Emil Andrae to the Maple Leafs, while bringing back veteran depth option Simon Benoit in that deal.
Andrae, who had 13 points and a plus-15 rating in 61 games last season, became the odd man out in part because the Flyers knew they needed to create a clear NHL lane for Jiricek, whom they acquired from the Wild for Bobby Brink at last season’s trade deadline.
Jiricek’s path has been anything but smooth. The Blue Jackets took him as the second defenseman in the 2022 draft and brought him straight to North America, where he logged a short NHL stint and made the AHL All-Star Game as a 19-year-old.
From there, the story got rough. He played 43 NHL games the next season, but his role was limited, with his ice time dipping below 15 minutes a night.
Early in 2024-25, after a run of healthy scratches, he was sent back to the AHL.
That demotion led to a trade to Minnesota, and the Wild paid heavily to get him, sending four draft picks and Daemon Hunt the other way. But Jiricek never really settled in there.
Over parts of two seasons with Minnesota, he managed only two points in 31 games while averaging 11:58 of ice time per game. Even in the minors, where the Wild’s system was offensively thin, the shot-first defender had trouble finding traction and confidence.
The late stretch of last season offered a better glimpse of what the Flyers are betting on. Jiricek got one NHL appearance after the move, but he spent most of his time with Lehigh Valley and looked much more like the productive offensive defender he was earlier in his career, putting up 13 points in 15 games on a 2-11-13 line. That scoring upside, which Philadelphia clearly views as higher than Andrae’s, is what pushed him into the mix.
Camp usage points to where he may begin. Jiricek has been lining up on the third pair at even strength, and he should also start as the quarterback of the second power-play unit. For a 6-foot-4 right-shot defenseman with clear defensive rough edges, that’s the cleanest way to ease him into the NHL while still giving him the puck-moving time he needs to settle in offensively.
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