The Philadelphia Flyers — like all NHL clubs — emphasize both in the lead-up to and in the midst of their yearly development camp that the week of on-ice activities isn’t about evaluating prospects. It’s about instructing and teaching them.
That said, there’s a reason why fans come out to the sessions every year, and why they flooded the Flyers’ practice facility on Thursday to watch a competitive scrimmage. It’s possible to get a read on the skill sets and progression of prospects by watching them compete with their peers in the middle of summer, even if such evaluations can only go so far in understanding which players are poised to make an impact at the NHL level in the near future.
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It’s the same reason why I attend every session each year, taking notes and filming videos in a cold ice rink in the middle of the summer heat.
With the Flyers officially entering a rebuild, the development of their prospects takes on even more importance. And while the two jewels of their prospect pool — top-10 picks Matvei Michkov and Cutter Gauthier — were absent from this year’s camp, there were still more than enough quality prospects to observe.
So which players stood out most across the four days? Let’s highlight 10 in particular, from former first-round picks to players closing in on NHL readiness.
Tyson Foerster
Foerster (2020 first round) is, in short, still Foerster. He still has the same vision and playmaking ability that allowed him to impress in his eight-game NHL stint last season. He still has his incredible shot, which was pretty clearly the best of any player at this camp, both in terms of velocity and consistent placement. Yet he’s still not even close to being a dynamic skater — his primary weakness.
That said, Foerster’s skating — while it’s never going to be great — did appear improved. In particular, his elusiveness in tight appears to have taken a step forward. Watch how he explodes from a stopped position here to evade Hunter McDonald and create a scoring chance.
And here, as he turns the corner on Helge Grans and splits the defense to attack the low slot with possession of the puck and create another chance.
Foerster isn’t ever going to be a burner. But he’s worked at his skating to the point where it’s not a glaring liability anymore. He has at least some suddenness now, and as he showed Grans, can’t be completely disregarded as a rush threat, which should open up just a bit more space for Foerster at the pro level.
Now wearing No. 71 — after Marc Staal nabbed his original new number of 18 earlier in the week — Foerster looks poised to grab an NHL roster spot come October. He’ll spend the rest of the summer in Voorhees training and preparing to achieve that very goal.
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Emil Andrae
Foerster looked NHL-ready at this camp, to the point where at times, you got an “OK, let’s get to the real camp” sense from him, particularly during the Thursday scrimmage.
But to my eyes, he wasn’t the most impressive player there. That honor went to Emil Andrae, the team’s 2020 second-round pick.
Andrae is simply relentless. Most players in drills take one shot at winning a puck battle or creating a shot or disrupting an opponent; Andrae would regularly be on his third or fourth effort by the time the whistle blew. Also, no player at the camp was more physical than the 5’9 Andrae, particularly on Wednesday, when he was hitting everything in sight. The health of Elliot Desnoyers was nearly a cost of Andrae’s aggressiveness, as he was helped off the ice on Wednesday after an awkward Andrae hit. Luckily, Desnoyers was fine the next day and even played in the next day’s scrimmage, letting Andrae’s competitiveness take center stage without a “yeah, but…” post-camp caveat.
But Andrae isn’t merely a try-hard defender. He showcased serious puck skills all week long, and it all culminated in the scrimmage, where he formed a dynamite partnership with Bobby Brink in terms of offense creation. Andrae was the quarterback and Brink was the wide receiver looking for quick slants or deep bombs — and Andrae regularly obliged.
It’s a perfectly placed pass that sends Brink flying into the offensive zone on a semi-breakaway, but also one that required patience and vision — Andrae waited for Brink to be in ideal position, and then hit him with an accurate strike.
This bank pass off the boards was even more impressive — not just because of the pass, but due to the defensive zone entry denial that preceded it. All of Andrae’s skills were on display here: aggressiveness, patience, creativity, vision, and touch.
Development camp is more of a teaching tool for the organization than a time to evaluate players. But it’s worth noting that Andrae was on the ice for seemingly every other shift in the scrimmage, and cycled between the left side (his natural side) and right side throughout drills all week. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Flyers’ coaches were testing his endurance and versatility just a bit — after all, the entire Flyers brain trust (Daniel Briere, John Tortorella, Keith Jones, even Comcast Spectacor CEO Dan Hilferty) took in the Thursday scrimmage on their perch.
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They must have come away impressed with Andrae, who both looked the part of a future top-four NHL defenseman and a player who could make a very strong push for the roster come main camp in the fall.
Bobby Brink
Brink (2019 second round) may not have scored in the scrimmage. But he was by far the most dynamic forward during it.
There’s a reason why Andrae was trying to find Brink whenever possible on Thursday. He was a scoring chance machine, and was all over the ice. (For reference, he’s No. 46 in orange in these clips.)
And that’s not even counting the one from above, where Brink was robbed of a goal by a fantastic sprawling save.
Brink’s skating stride remains choppy and awkward, yes. But he was the best pure passer at camp, and when the players entered the closest thing to a game situation they would see during the week, Brink thrived.
Now, he just needs to prove he can do it at the NHL level.
The 2023 draft class wasn’t especially well-represented at this year’s development camp. Michkov missed the camp, as his KHL club’s own development camp was this week as well. Denver Barkey was kept off the ice due to a lingering ankle sprain; Alex Ciernik tweaked his groin after the first two days; Cole Knuble only was able to attend the first half of camp.
Basically, it was only Bonk, goalie Carson Bjarnason (second round) and Ryan MacPherson (sixth round) who were able to participate in the whole of camp. And since I tend to avoid evaluating netminders at development camp due to my lack of technical knowledge regarding the position, it was Bonk who caught my eye the most. It wasn’t difficult to see why Flyers scouts were high enough on him for Briere to nab him at No. 22.
Bonk stood out in the defensive zone especially. He’s not a huge defenseman — listed at 6’2 — but he deployed his reach well, particularly in breaking up rushes.
He also proved adept at killing plays in defensive zone coverage, staying in pursuit of the puck even as it bounced to different targets. Bonk wasn’t quite as relentless as Andrae, but at times, he was in the same ballpark, with his active stick and knack for anticipating where the puck might end up and putting himself in between the shooter and the goalie.
Bonk’s game with the puck isn’t quite as developed, however. While he was adept at making the simple plays — specifically straightforward breakouts and D-to-D passes below the red line, even under forechecking pressure — he struggled at times in terms of one-on-one creativity and puck handling, particularly early in camp.
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In the scrimmage, however, he did show flashes of more. Take this play, for example.
Bonk clearly has the ability to stickhandle the puck through traffic — he just needs to make sure he’s not stickhandling himself into further trouble in the process.
If Bonk pans out, he’ll be a quality two-way defenseman — not a dynamic offensive weapon, but one fully capable of making plays and engineering successful breakouts, while also being a positive asset in his own zone as well. In other words, an ideal complement to a more dynamic left-handed partner like Cam York or Andrae.
Samu Tuomaala
Tuomaala (2021 second round) can still absolutely fly. He made that abundantly clear from Day 1 of camp.
But Day 4 was when Tuomaala showcased a package that could potentially remove him from the category of “second-round bust.”
In terms of puck skills, Tuomaala isn’t where the Flyers hoped he would be two years after being drafted. Throughout the week, he didn’t show much in the way of creativity, or ability to make opposing players miss. Sure, the speed was apparent, which he proved in blasting past Andrae on a rush drill on Wednesday. But if he wasn’t beating opponents in a straight line in drills, he wasn’t beating them, period.
In the scrimmage, however, Tuomaala zeroed in on a way to be effective and noticeable without the kind of playmaking ability that players like Brink showcased: he turned himself into a speedy pest of a checker (No. 56).
For the first time since he was drafted, I was able to watch Tuomaala and envision an NHL role for him, that of an energy third-line checker with some skill in the Andrew Cogliano mold. After all, Tuomaala still has plus skating ability, and if he can consistently play with an edge and be incredibly annoying to the opposition on the forecheck and in the defensive zone, he has enough talent with the puck to be a quality depth forward. He may not be showcasing much yet in the way of creativity or vision with the puck, but he still has the ability to score goals like this one given time and space.
Tuomaala plans to come to North America full-time in 2023-24, and it will be a huge season for him. If he tries to play like a top-six scorer, I doubt he’ll make it. But if he can remake himself as a middle-six speed-and-energy type of player? Thursday’s scrimmage hinted that version of Tuomaala just might have some legs.
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Alex Bump
Bump was a surprise standout at camp last year as a relatively unheralded 2022 fifth-round pick. He stood out yet again this year.
Simply put, Bump’s puck skills are more in line with a player taken in the second or third round than the fifth or sixth. He can weave through traffic, evade oncoming checkers, and create his own shot.
But it goes beyond stickhandling ability. Bump has the confidence to try and make the kind of high-difficult plays that most players at this camp would never even try. Check out this pass from Monday, where he barely threads a feed through three defenders — and it actually (mostly) works.
But Bump was at his best during the scrimmage, where he showcased his most enticing skill set: his natural goal-scoring ability. He not only delivered one of the prettiest goals of the game — a bar-down snipe — but he also finished out the proceedings with a shootout goal to clinch his team the victory.
Keep an eye on this guy as he heads to the University of Vermont this season for his freshman year. He may not have lit up the USHL last season (39 points in 48 games) but there’s something here.
Hunter McDonald
McDonald (2022 sixth round) didn’t come to camp totally off the radar, mostly because former Flyers GM Chuck Fletcher talked him up in a recent interview with the 32 Thoughts podcast. But still — we’re talking about a 21-year-old sophomore who scored just 14 points last season. He wouldn’t possibly be able to truly impress, right?
Guess what — McDonald did.
No defenseman at camp — not Andrae, not Bonk, not Adam Ginning — was more consistently impressive at pure defense than McDonald. He put on an absolute clinic in rush coverage on Sunday to immediately catch everyone’s attention — all of Desnoyers, Ciernik and Devin Kaplan tried and failed to make it past the impenetrable wall that was Hunter McDonald.
Then, on Wednesday, he showed off his physical strength against Kaplan, dominating in battle drills along the boards.
Basically, McDonald was the defensive stalwart at camp. His play with the puck remains a work in progress, though he did flash some nice bursts of on-puck acceleration and showcased an unspectacular-but-not-awful passing ability. Yes, McDonald is an older player, and was drafted at 20 and not 18, being passed over twice, which is rarely a good sign in terms of future upside. But there’s NHL potential here as a shutdown blueliner.
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Devin Kaplan
Credit Kaplan (2022 third round) — while most players figured out quickly that they weren’t going to win a battle with McDonald and more or less conceded the victory before the rep even began, Kaplan went right at McDonald every time he faced him. Did he lose most of the time? Sure. But they had some epic battles, and it speaks well to Kaplan’s competitiveness.
Kaplan isn’t close to being a finished product, and his skating is still on the stiff side. But he showed me this week that he has the mentality of a potential power forward. Now he just needs his body to catch up.
Helge Grans
How did Grans — acquired in the trade that sent Ivan Provorov to Columbus — look in his first formal appearance in a Flyers uniform?
Uneven.
The tools are there with Grans. His reach is impressive, and absolutely works to his advantage in the defensive zone. Particularly in rush coverage, Grans had some nice stops that speak to his upside as a quality top-four RHD at the NHL level.
But Grans all too often looked casual on the ice. He was beaten on multiple reps over the first two on-ice days of camp mostly because he didn’t look especially engaged in the play. Day 3 was a bit better, but his “best’ moment in that regard came when he got beat by Cole Knuble in a drill and gave him a two-hand chop to the back of the leg, leading to Knuble losing his balance and crashing into the netminder, leaving both on the ice for a good minute to make sure they had avoided injury. Not exactly the best way to show engagement in the play.
He flashed his two-way upside a few times in the scrimmage, notably on one shift when he led the rush twice and showcased a willingness to activate in the play. But he was still overshadowed by defensemen like Andrae, Bonk, McDonald, and even another countryman who will be battling for an NHL roster spot come September as well.
Adam Ginning
I’ve long been a Ginning (2018 second-round pick) skeptic, dating back to his draft year. But I’ll admit, it’s becoming easier and easier to envision him developing into a passable third-pair defensive defenseman at the NHL level. He held up quite nicely in coverage all week, even against some of the most skilled forwards at camp, such as Brink and Bump.
Ginning’s skating looked a bit smoother this year in comparison to last summer at Flyers rookie camp, and he even made the occasional quality play with the puck. Still, if he makes it, it’s going to be as a shutdown D-man. At the very least, he looks like someone who won’t look out of place at the highest level for an occasional call-up, and perhaps he could establish himself as something more than that.
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Scattered thoughts on other players
- Owen McLaughlin (2021 seventh round) impressed during the scrimmage in particular, scoring a slick wraparound goal and proving particularly adept at avoiding F1 pressure on the forecheck. He’s not exactly a fast skater, but he’s definitely a slippery one. I’ll be intrigued to see how the remainder of his college days go at North Dakota, and if he can slowly move into a prime scoring role and put himself on the radar. There’s some upside there.
- Cole Knuble (2023 fourth round) certainly didn’t look slow during his two days of camp this week. Brent Flahr was right post-draft — if at one time he was a poor skater, he isn’t anymore.
- It’s not quite accurate to say that Elliot Desnoyers (2020 fifth round) stood out at camp, but mostly because that’s not quite his style. Desnoyers is a detail-oriented player, and in that regard, he came as advertised, threading smart passes to his teammates and performing well in battle drills. He’ll be in the NHL mix at camp.
- Alex Ciernik (2023 fourth round) was a mild disappointment at camp before he bowed out for the final two days due to a minor groin issue. It’s not that Ciernik wasn’t trying the high-skill plays that made him a Draft Twitter favorite; it’s that he really wasn’t able to finish on any of them. Like the ambition, but at least at this camp, it didn’t lead to results.
- Aside from Tuomaala, two of the fastest skaters at camp were J.R. Avon and Alexis Gendron. I’m not sure either CHL product will ultimately be more than a quad-A tweener type at the pro level, but they both have skills and can really fly.
- I don’t usually pay close attention to the camp invites unless I think they have a real shot of earning an entry-level contract, but Sam Sedley scored one of the best goals of the week in the scrimmage on Thursday. I’ll leave you all with that one, as the final especially busy week of the Flyers summer comes to a close.
(Photo of Tyson Foerster: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
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