With the Flyers putting a bow on their preseason run with a shootout win over the Devils at home on Saturday, the cases were rested for the players, and the big decision making time opened up for their management group. After a bit of deliberation, they’ve made their calls, and the 2025-26 opening night roster is here at last.
The final roster is as follows:
Forwards
Rodrigo Abols
Bobby Brink
Noah Cates
Sean Couturier
Nic Deslauriers
Christian Dvorak
Tyson Foerster
Nikita Grebenkin
Garnet Hathaway
Travis Konecny
Jett Luchanko
Matvei Michkov
Owen Tippett
Trevor Zegras
Defensemen
Jamie Drysdale
Dennis Gilbert
Adam Ginning
Noah Juulsen
Travis Sanheim
Nick Seeler
Egor Zamula
Goaltenders
Sam Ersson
Dan Vladar
Additionally, Cam York will begin the season on Injured Reserve, while Rasmus Ristolainen, Oliver Bonk, and Ethan Samson will begin the season designated Injured – Non-Reserve while they recover from injury — Ristolainen and York will remain with the Flyers while healthy, but Bonk and Samson will assigned to the Phantoms when they’re all recovered. And to top it off, newly-acquired forward Carl Grundstrom has cleared waivers and he’s been assigned to the Phantoms, bringing all of the pieces together for this final 23-man roster.
All in all, there aren’t really any surprises in this mix here — the absence of Rodrigo Abols on waivers yesterday afternoon tacitly confirmed that he had made the final roster despite some wavering favor from his new coaching staff as of last week, and general manager Danny Briere confirmed in his meeting with the media this morning that Jett Luchanko has also made the team. The one question mark is does shed some light on is Cam York’s status, as Briere also noted that while he’s officially day-to-day with a lower body injury, if it was something that was going to stretch a little longer and require him to start the season on IR, Dennis Gilbert would remain on the roster, and that’s just how this panned out.
This does also leave the Flyers with some extras on their roster, as they’re carrying both 14 healthy forwards and seven healthy defensemen, meaning that while players like Abols, Grebenkin, Ginning, and Juulsen managed to stick around an win out in the training camp battles, their spots in the opening night lineup aren’t a certainty, and they’ll have to continue to put in some good work in the upcoming practice settings to maintain their good standing, or perhaps even push out a more established, but still vulnerable to scratching player like an Egor Zamula or a Nic Deslauriers.
How this all shakes out, we’ll see when the Flyers’ regular season opens on Thursday down in Florida, but for now, the pieces to arrange are all in place.