It’s been a slow trickle of news coming from the Flyers, of late, and they added on another bit of news affecting the farm team down in Lehigh Valley today. The Phantoms announced today that Ian Laperrière has been signed to a two-year contract extension, and will be remaining the Phantoms’ head coach and a piece of the Flyers organization for a while longer.
Laperrière has just completed his third season coaching this Phantoms team, and over his 220 games coached, has a 98-92-30 record. In 2021-22, the team finished eighth (last) in the Atlantic Division and missed the playoffs. In 2022-23, they improved to finish sixth and qualify for the playoffs, but were eliminated in the play-in round. And in 2023-24, they finished sixth again, but managed to win their play-in series against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, but lost to Hershey in the first round.
The results, while improving in the big picture year over year, haven’t been overwhelming, but clearly there’s something that management like about Laperrière’s approach to coaching and development. In fairness, each of Cam York, Morgan Frost, Tyson Foerster, Bobby Brink, Egor Zamula, Ronnie Attard, Adam Ginning, Olle Lycksell, Sam Ersson, and Felix Sandstrom spent time with the Flyers this season, have at least partially graduated to the NHL, after being under Laperrière’s tutelage down with the Phantoms. On the flip side, questions remain about how much that tutelage moved the needle for some of these players, as well as about the players that have struggled to develop outright under it, but that graduation rate is still a mark in Laperrière’s favor.
With the rebuild very much still in action for the Flyers, the developmental work that they’re doing down in the AHL with the Phantoms will be pretty paramount to the broader success of the NHL squad. High-end talent is hard to come by through trades, and the best way to get it is often to build it up internally. A lot of prospects have come up through the Phantoms and are already contributing at the NHL level, but still more are on the cusp, and even still more are on the way and will need to be coached up to take the necessary steps forward to reach their ceilings.
The Flyers are taking a bit of a gamble, sticking with their guy who, by all counts, has been just fine so far. Time will tell if it was the right one.
