Philadelphia Flyers 2025 Top 25 Under 25, No. 7: Jamie Drysdale

Welcome to Broad Street Hockey’s Summer 2025 Top Under 25! The series is back and with the Philadelphia Flyers focusing so much on the future, it’s more important than ever. Join us as we rank the 25 best players under the age of 25 for the next few weeks.

No. 7: Jamie Drysdale

2024-25 Primary League/Team: Philadelphia Flyers (NHL)
2024-25 Statistics: 7 G, 13 A in 70 GP
Age as of 9/15/2025: 23 (04/08/2002)
Acquired Via: Trade with the Anaheim Ducks

Coming in at Lucky No. 7 on our list, we have the oft-maligned Jamie Drysdale. This was Drysdale’s first full season with the Philadelphia Flyers, and the 70 games he played were the second most in a single season of his career. Drysdale missed about a month of playing time in the fall, failing to beat the injury prone accusations right out the gate, but the difference between Drysdale’s play before the injury and after was night and day.

How did Drysdale’s 2024-25 season go? Is his stock trending up or down from where it was entering the year?

This might be the rare occasion where a player’s stock is steady–neither up nor down enough to offer a clear picture of his entire season that features a rough start and positive finish.

Drysdale’s box scores are underwhelming for a defenseman who’s expected to run a first-unit NHL power play, and then-head coach John Tortorella took him off special teams quite early on. Drysdale went on to miss time due to injury again, which has been a major story in his career so far. Seven goals, 20 points, an ugly minus-32, and often unable to beat out players like Egor Zamula and Rasmus Ristolainen for power play time? Easy to say his stock went down.

Returning from injury, however, Drysdale changed the narrative–and in the middle of the season, we wrote about how he was on track for a tale of two seasons sort of finish. Folks will point to Drysdale’s strong second half but, in reality, Drysdale started to flip the script when he returned in December; that’s 55 of his 70 games played, or the vast majority of his season–not just a second-half surge. The problem is that his first 15 games before injury were so bad (40.89 CF% and 38.22 xGF% at 5-on-5, per Natural Stat Trick) that it dragged down every one of his metrics; of the Flyers’ seven regular defensemen, Drysdale’s full season 51.02 xGF% was better than only Nick Seeler’s 49.29 xGF%.

We can’t overlook Drysdale’s abysmal start to the year, and that dinged his stock significantly. However, after returning from injury (and having his ice time cut back for a while), he put together good games more and more often–essentially putting himself right back where he started. If we’re forced to give a binary answer of “stock up or stock down,” we’re going–cautiously–with “stock up,” in hopes that he improves upon his post-injury play from 2024-25.

What are we expecting from Drysdale this season? What should we be looking for from him?

It’s a contract year for Drysdale, who will be an arbitration-eligible restricted free agent next summer. Having a good season won’t just impact his future with the Flyers, but his next paycheck, too–he needs to take a major step and show that the flashes we’ve seen over the years can be a core part of his play, and not just sporadic moments that make us say, “Oh wow.”

To do that, we’re looking for Drysdale to do two things: First, consistently grade out positively in top-four 5-on-5 minutes; second, run the first unit power play. He’s already on track to succeed the first part of our expectations after finishing with the third-most 5-on-5 minutes among Flyers blueliners last season, and if his improvements last season were anything to go by, so that should be a check mark by season’s end. Running the power play may be a bigger ask but, after the Flyers added his buddy Trevor Zegras during the offseason, maybe the two of them can rekindle some of the spark they had together in Anaheim. It’s not like the Flyers have other defensemen banging the door down for time on PP1, so Drysdale has an opportunity to make the unit his own.

The new coaching staff will be a determining factor in a lot of this. While firing John Tortorella was the appropriate decision, part of the collateral damage was losing assistant coach Brad Shaw. Shaw worked wonders with this blue line group during his tenure with the Flyers, turning Rasmus Ristolainen into an effective defenseman and slowly but surely rebuilding Drysdale’s game from the ground up, among other successes. There’s a chance Drysdale regresses without the influence of Shaw on the coaching staff.

However, we’re not concerned about how Rick Tocchet will handle an undersized, offense-oriented defenseman–he seems to have a pretty good track record with those guys. Drysdale should be put into a position to excel next season, and we expect big things–so long as he stays healthy.

How does Drysdale fit in the Flyers’ rebuild? Is it likely he’s going to be part of the next good Flyers team?

The Flyers need good defensemen, specifically ones that can score. While Drysdale’s numbers with the Flyers haven’t been great, he’s one of the only players in the system with the potential to put up points from the backend. Given how the roster is currently constructed and the defenseman prospects that are in the pipeline not having the same natural talent as the 23-year-old Flyer, there’s a clear role for Drysdale with the Flyers. Whether he’s here or not isn’t as clear.

If this season is another dud, whether due to injury or regression, the Flyers are in a tough spot: Drysdale’s owed a new contract, and other defense prospects could be pushing for ice time. There’s the obvious wrinkle, as well, that Drysdale was the core return for Cutter Gauthier, and the Flyers are in a position where they need to make lemonade out of that lemon of a situation. The Flyers’ brass invested a lot to bring Drysdale into the fold, and him not panning out would mar their track record.

Were we betting folk, we’d put our money on “yes, Jamie Drysdale will be part of the next great Flyers team,” but we wouldn’t be going all-in. Drysdale will be given a lot of leash given how he became a Flyer, but that doesn’t mean he’s safely in the fold forever.

What do we think Drysdale’s ultimate NHL upside is, and how likely is it that he gets to something approaching that?

If we’re dreaming big, Drysdale could become a smooth-skating, offense-driving, top-pair defenseman– but we run into problems when answering the question of likelihood. At 23 years old, Drysdale’s still pretty young, especially for defensemen, and we have to consider how rushing him to the NHL due to Covid negatively impacted his development. That excuse won’t hold water forever, though, and we’re quickly approaching a time where we can’t reflexively point to botched development as what’s holding Drysdale back. Eventually, he has to make good on the promise of his draft pedigree and skillset.

The more likely outcome for Drysdale is something like an offense-first second-pair defenseman–a useful player, but not a star by any stretch of the imagination. We (well, most of us), believe there’s a path to Drysdale becoming, at least, a top-four regular defenseman. However, he really needs to prove it this season.

Previously in Philadelphia Flyers Summer 2025 Top 25 Under 25:

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