It’s been a wild week in the world of prospects, with movement up and down the organizational ladder, as well as some more in and out of it entirely, and we’re here to recap all of the week’s biggest happenings. Let’s get into it.
The News of the Week
We have a lot of what feel like slow news weeks around here, it’s the nature of the game, but this sure wasn’t one of them. Since we last spoke, the Phantoms’ defense group has been changed up quite a bit: Adam Ginning cleared waivers and was assigned to the team, while Oliver Bonk was finally medically cleared and assigned to them as well, and Max Guenette finally arrived after all of his visa holdups were resolved (they both made their debuts on the weekend); meanwhile, Ty Murchison was called up to the Flyers, and Ethan Samson was flipped to Tampa for right shooting defenseman Roman Schmidt. Got all that?
And speaking of players on the move, Alex Ciernik has returned to Nybro of the Allsvenskan in Sweden after starting the season over in Liiga. Things were seeming a little rich for him at that level at times, so this step back should hopefully help him get back to his game and get going again.
Three Stars
Carson Bjarnason
Bjarnason is still being used a bit sparingly by the Phantoms as he gets himself completely acclimated to play in the AHL, but he did deliver some really positive results in his lone start of the week. Bjarnason was given the start in the second game of the weekend, the Phantoms’ home game against Utica, and he came up big for them in that start. He looked a little bit shaky at the start, had a couple of scrambly looking sequences, but he was able to stick with it well and really lock things down as the game went on. Utica threw a lot at him, 35 shots in total, and he managed to stop 33 of them, and put in some good work to keep things settled well enough to get the group to overtime, on the way to the team’s lone win of the weekend.
Things have still been a little up and down for him over these last few weeks, but that’s to be expected for a rookie goalie still in the early part of the season. More importantly, he was able to rebound well from a tougher showing in his last time out (when he gave up four goals in the shootout loss to Laval), and quickly get things moving in the right direction again.
Jett Luchanko
It certainly was an exciting week for Luchanko. He kicked it off by picking up his first goal with his new team in Brantford on Saturday (which was also their teddy bear toss goal, which doesn’t make it count any more, but it’s still a nice thing to see), and then he quickly added his second by scoring on a penalty shot later in the game. From there, he added three assists in last night’s huge 8-4 win over Erie, as it looks like he’s really starting to get rolling with his new team.
That said, Luchanko is still working towards incorporating more of a shooting mentality into his game — he had three shots in the Saturday game, which was a positive, but then he only managed one yesterday as he was piling up all of those assists. It’s still early in his stint with this team, and he’s still finding his footing, but that’s something to keep an eye on.
Alex Bump
It’s been a bit of a weird week for Alex Bump, but it still all worked out to be a reasonably productive one, when it’s all averaged out. Bump was held off the board in the first of the Phantoms’ three games of the weekend in Wilkes-Barre, and though he kept up with his pouring on of shots (though perhaps to his detriment, doing it from more often the perimeter) and put up four in that game, he couldn’t get one to break for him. But then, Saturday saw him only manage to put up one shot on goal, and it ended up being their overtime winning goal, and then Sunday he did the same thing, put up one shot and it turned into a goal.
All in all, it was nice to see him finally break through, because he needed to, but it’s also clear that there’s some fine tuning that needs to continue to be done on his process, and we’ll see if he’s able to keep this positive momentum rolling into this weekend.
Honorable Mentions
Sticking with the Phantoms a little while longer, despite it being a more challenging weekend for them as far as the overall results go (with two losses and one win), they still got a nice bit of production from a number of the prospects on the team. Bump led the charge, but both of Jacob Gaucher and Tucker Robertson stepped up with a goal and an assist apiece, while Ginning got a goal himself, and Samson and Hunter McDonald each had two assists, while Alexis Gendron and Denver Barkey had one each.
Back to Ciernik, he’s beginning to settle back in with his new old squad again — after going pointless in his first two games for Nybro, he picked up his first goal on Friday, and then added on an assist in the Sunday game to wrap up the weekend. Now, he was held off the board again in his last game on Wednesday, but still, all in all it’s not a bad start to things for him. Meanwhile, the Flyers had yet another prospect who’s remaining on the move, though not so dramatically, as Max Westergard is continuing to be bounced between levels over in Sweden. For now, he’s back down in the U20 Nationell, and he’s continuing to produce really nicely at that level. He’s played two games back down there in this most recent stint, and he collected an assist in each of them, bringing him up to 17 points over his 12 games played so far.
Back in North America, Jack Nesbitt is really starting to pick up steam again. Last week saw Windsor split a two-game series with London, and Nesbitt managed to pick up a goal in both of those games, and then he added an assist in their win over Peterborough yesterday. It was a nicely productive week on the whole, and it’s also brought him back up over that point-per-game mark of production (he has 23 points in 22 games), which was nice to see.
And finally, it was a bit of a mixed bag of action unfolding down in the NCAA this week. It was a tough one for Michigan State, as they faced their most challenging opponent of the season in the top-ranked Michigan Wolverines for the first time this year, but they managed to come out of their pair of games with some positive results. While they didn’t really have their best stuff in the first game, and ended it getting shut out by a score of 3-0, they responded well in the rematch and were able to get their offense going to a much greater degree, and were able to limit the chances they gave up on the other side, and they were rewarded with a 3-1 win for their work. Porter Martone contributed one of the goals in that second game, but Shane Vansaghi was held off the board after a productive series against Colgate (though his line did still manage to create a few good looks). Elsewhere in the Big Ten, Notre Dame had a really tough weekend against Wisconsin, getting beaten 7-4 and then 9-2 in the rematch, but the more relevant piece for the Flyers fans around here is that Cole Knuble had an assist in both of those games, and seems to be trending up lately, so that’s something.