General manager Danny Briere explains why Flyers let go of Zeev Buium

The Philadelphia Flyers put themselves at the center of an online controversy during the first round of the 2024 NHL Draft, and now they’re explaining their reasoning just hours later.

With the Flyers holding the 12th overall pick, players began to be selected one by one and fans began to worry. Players who were supposed to go much higher started to lose ground — as happens every year — and it suddenly became possible that the Flyers would select a player who should have been selected much earlier. This is what happened with Matvei Michkov and we saw how it turned out.

So when University of Denver defenseman Zeev Buium suddenly found himself 12th overall and the Flyers had a chance to take him – a player some had ranked third or fourth overall general on their list and that almost certainly seemed to be a lock. being selected in the top 10 picks – we all felt a sudden surge of excitement at the prospect of a draft pick.

Instead, the Flyers chose to move down one spot, in a trade with the Minnesota Wild for 13th overall, and got a 2025 third-round pick to move down. The Wild quickly scrambled to select Buium, and then the Flyers selected speedy pivot Jett Luchanko — a player most had late in the first round.

In a vacuum, this is a disappointing series of events for a very online fan. Buium was touted as potentially the best defenseman to come out of this draft class and a future winner, and the Flyers immediately decided not to draft him and selected center Luchanko instead.

But once the dust settled, Flyers general manager Danny Briere was able to explain the team’s decision to go with Luchanko over Buium. When asked if size was an issue, since the defenseman is only 6 feet tall, Briere essentially confirmed that it was.

“Well, when you look at our defense, you’re right. I think Zeev Buium is going to be a big player, and he’s someone we’ve considered heavily. But with Cam York, Jamie Drysdale, Emil Andrae, at some point it becomes hard to pick the smaller player. But he’s a fantastic player,” Briere said, via PHLY’s Charlie O’Connor.

That’s certainly what everyone was told up until Friday. The Flyers wanted to have a bigger blue line, since the long-term pieces Briere mentioned – York, Drysdale, Andrae – are all smaller. If they added Buium to the mix, they would almost be handcuffing themselves to have a group of strong but smaller defenders and that’s not something they wanted to do.

Instead, they got a center who is one of the youngest players in the draft class — he has more room to grow — and who is making plays at an incredibly high rate. There is a lot to like about Luchanko on the ice and given the balance between it being a position where they desperately need help and the preference not to draft another high-end, undersized defenseman, the decision was made definitively.

Brière also commented on how Luchanko’s position was handled.

“There were other good players in that area that we were looking at as well,” Briere said via PHLY’s Charlie O’Connor, “but there wasn’t a big enough difference to go in a different direction. Taking a pivot was an important element for us. »

The tie goes to the center. From what we can tell, the Flyers preferred to take a center and they clearly saw that Luchanko’s ceiling and potential and what he can be in the NHL, is not that far from Buium , or potentially a winger they were thinking about with that. take.

Obviously time will tell, but the reason for the decision was at least clear and we’re not left wondering here what they were thinking.