When Daniel Briere was named General Manager of the Flyers two years ago, his position was not to put a set timeline on the team’s rebuild plans; rather, the idea was the timeframe would depend on how the team’s young players developed.
One of the reasons for optimism of that timeline re-upped on Thursday when Tyson Foerster signed a two-year contract extension worth $3.75 million annually. It is a quintessential bridge deal that gives Foerster a solid raise now while permitting both sides additional time to consider the ingredients of a longer extension.
Essentially, Foerster’s development could not have come at a better time for the Flyers, who enter the 2025-26 offseason looking to transition to adding to the lineup. Briere is looking for offensive pieces the team can start to add to the roster in anticipation of being able to make even bigger moves in the summer of 2026. Foerster’s growth is poised to make him that type of addition – just coming from within, instead of from elsewhere.
Foerster earned this contract with a big step forward in the 2024-25 season, particularly down the stretch. His 25 goals, and Matvei Michkov’s 26, established the pair as the first to have 25 goals or more in the same season at age 23 or younger since Mike Richards and Jeff Carter did it in 2007-08.
From March 22 onward, Foerster found another gear. He recorded nine goals and four assists for 13 points over the final 12 games of the campaign.
This particular step forward was another in what’s been a consistently linear progression for Foerster, which isn’t always what happens with young players – especially ones who developed during the pandemic. His first season with Barrie of the Ontario Hockey League, a 23-point campaign, was followed by a tremendous jump to 36 goals and 44 assists for 80 points in his draft year of 2020 that was slightly shortened by the COVID-19 stoppage.
Foerster was among a group of 2020 draftees who received special dispensation to spend the 2020-21 season in the American Hockey League, as the OHL did not operate that year. Although it was a shortened season of just 24 games, Foerster played against grown men and veteran pros while recording 10 goals and seven assists for 17 points. It was an experience that helped all the more when he sustained a shoulder injury in November of 2021 that knocked him out of action until April.
But once he returned, Foerster established exactly the kind of season the Flyers wanted to see out of him in what essentially was his first full, normal pro campaign in 2022-23. That was a 20-goal, 48-point season over 66 games with the Phantoms, along with an eight-game taste of the NHL where Foerster impressed with seven points.
2023-24 was spent learning the NHL ropes as a rookie, but Foerster still reached 20 goals over 77 games. Then early in the 2024-25 season, he found himself on a line with Bobby Brink and Noah Cates that essentially stayed together for the rest of the year. His 43 points in 81 games would have been improvement enough, but it was Foerster’s improvement in the defensive side of his game that was perhaps most exciting in that it rounded out his overall play.
As the Flyers look to take a step forward as a team in 2025-26, Foerster will look to do the same as he begins to find his niche in the lineup for what is hopefully going to be an exciting next several years.
