This is ongoing and though Briere is new, he's continued a frustrating pattern.
They do not develop players effectively or efficiently at either the AHL or NHL level, for a number of reasons. The Phantoms are coached by Ian Lapperriere—another played-out journeyman plug from decades past who played one season for the Flyers and earned their forever fealty by blocking a shot with his face, ending his career but fast-tracking him into the front office.
Lapperiere is...not a good coach. Meanwhile, the coaching turnover at the NHL level has jumbled that program even more, with the AHL team switching systems back and forth based on the NHL coach's desires. None of the guys in the AHL seem to improve season-over-season, and each new head coach the Flyers bring in has to do their "skeptical, hard look" at the young guys. So all their clocks keep restarting as they get older, with each new coach deferring to His Guys.
Morgan Frost is the purest example of this. Highly-skilled C, tore up juniors, decent two-way game, first rounder, made his NHL debut early in the 2019-20 season. He scored a couple goals immediately and went dry for a while and went back to the AHL. Didn't get a second sniff under Vigneault: They brought in more plugs (Derek Grant and Nate Thompson) and off they went.
Then AV gets fired and Frost has to go out there and prove to Mike Yeo that he can do whatever awesome hockey things Mike Yeo wants.
Then last year, he finally got sustained playing time with decent linemates last season—and had a great year! But last night he was a healthy scratch in the home opener, because John Tortorella still says he "doesn't know if he can trust him yet" to do whatever it is that John Tortorella wants him to do. He's 24 years old and he led the team in ES scoring last season.
It isn't a team of all kids I want: It's a team that actually commits to developing NHL players without stagnating them permanently or ruining their confidence. So, if there is no expectation to compete for a Cup right now, and the eye is to the future, they should be willing to play more than 2 rookies at any given time. They also need to let those rookies and other youngsters work through scoring droughts if they're doing everything else right.
The AHL development problem is something that Briere has acknowledged, by the way. The team hired about 5 additional skills and development coaches (mostly ex-Flyers and/or Dany Heatley) this summer and Briere mentioned in interviews that that was done because the organization didn't do it very well in the past. At the NHL level, though, they're still addicted to dinosaur coaches who default to playing journeyman scrubs rather than participating in player development.
