Here at Broad Street Hockey, we’ve always enjoyed taking stock of the young talent in the organization, through some of the leaner prospect pools and some of the stronger ones. But right now, as the Flyers engage in an honest-to-goodness rebuild for the first time in our lives, it’s as important as ever to have a good sense of who the guys are that may contribute to the next good Flyers team, however many years down the road that may be.
So here we are once again, embarking on another Broad Street Hockey Top 25 Under 25. A recurring feature here for close to a decade now, the 25U25 is our check-in on the young talent in the organization, as well as something of a ranking of those players in terms of their worth to the organization in its current standing. Why 25? It’s a nice round number (sort of), but it’s also generally speaking an age by which you have a good sense for who and what a player is, be it a star or a solid role player or a likely AHLer. Certainly there are exceptions, but 25 tends to be an age around which you can stop projecting what guys are and start knowing what they are.
So our panel of voters here at BSH filled out our ballots and ranked the the 25 players within the organization (in other words, currently under NHL contract with the Flyers or on the team’s reserve list) that are under 25 (speficially, will still be under 25 years old on September 15) that, in our view, have the most value to the organization right now as they get underway in their rebuild. The beauty of it is that there’s some room for subjectivity in how different people can try and answer that question, but at the end of the day we’re all looking for the same answers here.
With that, some quick housekeeping before we begin the series on Thursday.
The Players
Below, grouped by position, are the 42 players that were on the ballot sent out to our writers:
Forwards (24): Jon-Randall Avon, Denver Barkey, Bobby Brink, Bryce Brodzinski, Alex Bump, Noah Cates, Alex Ciernik, Elliot Desnoyers, Joel Farabee, Tyson Foerster, Morgan Frost, Cutter Gauthier, Alexis Gendron, Devin Kaplan, Cole Knuble, Olle Lycksell, Ryan MacPherson, Owen McLaughlin, Matvei Michkov, Ryan Poehling, Santeri Sulku, Owen Tippett, Samu Tuomaala, Zayde Wisdom
Defensemen (14): Emil Andrae, Ronnie Attard, Oliver Bonk, Adam Ginning, Helge Grans, Matteo Mann, Hunter McDonald, Mason Millman, Ty Murchison, Ethan Samson, Carter Sotheran, Cam York, Egor Zamula, Brian Zanetti
Goaltender (4): Carson Bjarnasson, Samuel Ersson, Aleksei Kolosov, Yegor Zavragin
And, finally, a brief acknowledgment to the five players who finished just outside of our ranking:
30. Alex Ciernik
29. Cole Knuble
28. Alex Bump
27. Hunter McDonald
26. Adam Ginning
We’ll get going with No. 25 on Thursday.
