It’s been another busy week of action around the Flyers’ prospect pipeline — despite not everyone playing meaningful games just yet — and we’re back to break down some of the top performances by some of their top prospects around the world.
The News of the Week
This week has been something of the last bit of calm before the storm, before both the North American professional and all of the collegiate seasons get up and running, which means it’s also been a slower news week around here. The bit of news we have, though, is a big one — the final NHL roster is locked in and both Jett Luchanko and Nikita Grebenkin have made the Flyers’ opening night roster (though whether they’ll be in the lineup, of course, is yet to be seen).
Three Stars
Nathan Quinn
Quinn’s hot start to the season has been rolling on nicely, as he’s continued to find a nice level of pretty consistent production in this second full season in the QMJHL for him. It wasn’t a hugely busy week for him, with just two games on the schedule, but he certainly made his presence known in them, collecting a tidy three goals and one assist in Quebec’s pair of wins over Rimouski. He’s contributing nicely to his team’s success, to be sure, but this is also helping him nicely climb up the production leaderboard on his team. As it stands, he’s leading his team in goals and sitting at third in overall points after his six games played. Now, of course, there’s still a lot of season left ahead of him, and sustaining this level of production is another thing entirely, but all the same, he’s carving out a nice role for himself as things are beginning to ramp up.
Jack Nesbitt
After being held out from the previous weekend’s slate of action — the window between when he was assigned back to Windsor and when those games were kicking off seemingly too narrow for him to get into the lineup and be expected to success — he was able to get going starting this past week. And it’s been a good week for him too. Despite being held off the board in his first game against Niagra, he got going in the next one, picking up two assists against Brantford for his first points on the season, and then leveled up pretty immediately, picking up his first goal of the season in their next game, in the loss to Owen Sound. He’s expected to be a major contributor for them again this year, so it’s been nice to see him settling back in quickly and getting right to work, any disappointment from not putting together a longer run at NHL camp rolling easily off the shoulders.
Max Westergard
It was another big week for Max Westergard, as he continues to clean up at the U20 level over in Sweden. With two games on the schedule, he came away with a tidy goal and three assists, and an easy maintenance of his spot at the top of Frolunda’s leaderboard in points scored. He’s clearly figuring things out nicely at that level, putting together a solid campaign down there, so much so that it begs the question just when he’ll get his next look up at the SHL level, and whether the momentum he’s building up will be enough to carry him to more immediate positive results against more difficult competition, or whether the commitment is to let him clean up down a level for a while longer, continuing to polish out his game while playing a high volume of minutes.
Honorable Mentions
Circling back to Luchanko and Grebenkin, who we mentioned off the top, they closed out their NHL preseason on a reasonably high note — despite being out of the mix for the penultimate game (which seemed like the true final tuneup for the opening night lineup), they did get back in for the final game on Saturday against the Devils, wherein each came away with an assist apiece.
Down in the AHL, the Phantoms also knocked out their trio of preseason games last week, and while they weren’t the most productive or necessarily tidy on a collective team level — though John Snowden did acknowledge that those games were more about easing their players into the more foundational pieces of their system and getting a look at more of their bubble players, before they ramp up with their final group in practice this week — we did still see a nice handful of the prospects finding a bit of production in their relatively brief looks. Both Samu Tuomaala and Ty Murchison picked up goals in the Sunday game — Tuomaala allowing them to finally break through on the power play — after being held off the board on Saturday, while each of Alex Bump, Denver Barkey, Devin Kaplan, and Massimo Rizzo chipped in an assist apiece. On the goaltending front, Carson Bjarnason and Aleksei Kolosov each got one start on the weekend, but to somewhat mixed results — Bjarnason’s game looked a little more settled and he had a few more scrambles in front of him by his defensemen to deal with, and his numbers took a bit of a knock for that (19 saves on 22 shots), and while Kolosov came out with a slightly better performance by the numbers (25 saves on 28 shots), his technique looked a little more all over the place, so it will be interesting to see how things progress for both of them as the season opens up.
Speaking of goaltenders, Yegor Zavragin had himself another reasonably solid, albeit a little more quiet, week. He got just one more start since we last spoke, and it worked out to a good but not great showing, where he stopped 27 of the 30 shots he faced, but still came away with the loss.
Over in the SHL, things are getting a little unsettled again for Jack Berglund. Last time out, we talked about how, while his offense hasn’t really been coming to him yet, his role with his SHL team has been pretty stable up to this point, but we may have spoken too soon. Since then, Berglund has been demoted to Farjestad’s U20 squad, but he seems to be taking the demotion well enough, and he’s managed to hit the ground running with three assists registered over his first two games with them. It’s yet to be seen how long this stint down a level will last, but he’s certainly making a compelling case to earn a quick recall back to the big club.
Back stateside, Austin Moline has done well to keep the ball rolling and continue to string together some nice, if modest, offensive contributions — over his two games played on the weekend, he managed to chip in an assist in Madison’s huge 8-1 win over the NTDP squad, and then he picked up his first goal of the season on Saturday in their win over Waterloo.
And then up in the WHL, it was a quieter week for Matthew Gard, but he’s still finding a bit of production — he was held off the board in Red Deer’s loss to Saskatoon (though his teammate Luke Vlooswyk did contribute an assist in that one) but he did get back on track in their next outing, contributing a goal in their loss to Prince Albert.
Down in the NCAA, Boston University got their season started with a matchup against Long Island University on the weekend, and it was a busy game — it was an NCAA debut for both Jack Murtagh and Carter Amico (whose status heading into the season was a bit of a question mark, as he worked himself back from injury) and though they were held off the board, Owen McLaughlin, in his Terrier debut after transferring in from North Dakota did manage to chip in some offense, assisting on two of their four goals scored. And then elsewhere in the league, Michigan State will open up their regular season this weekend properly, but they eased into things last weekend with a big of exhibition play, and Porter Martone certainly got off to a hot start in that first bit of collegiate action, leaving us with a lot of be excited about heading into his first bit of regular season play.