Philadelphia Flyers Top 25 Under 25, No. 25: Alexis Gendron

No. 25: Alexis Gendron

2022-23 League/Team(s): Blainville-Boisbriand Armada, Gatineau Olympiques (QMJHL)
2022-23 Statistics: 22 G, 12 a, 34 P in 29 GP (Blainville-Boisbriand), and 33 G, 14 A, 49 P in 34 GP (Gatineau)
Age: 19
Acquired In: 2022 NHL Draft – Round 7, Pick 220

How did Gendron’s 2022-23 season go? Is his stock trending up or down from where it was entering the year?

Gendron had, all in all,  very successful season. After closing out 2021-22 with a scoring pace of a cool .7 points per game, he took a big jump forward in his third season with Blainville-Boisbriand, scoring at a rate of 1.17 points per game through his first 29 games played for them. And this is all well and good, but it’s not even the end of the good news. After a mid-season trade sent him to Gatineau, he just continued to pick up steam, still. In his final 34 games of the regular season, he put up 33 goals and 47 points (and for those keeping track at home, that’s .97 goals per game, and 1.38 points per game). His new team suited him well, and as they looked to make their post-season run a long one, Gendron showed up big for them. In their 13 playoff games, he scored 14 goals and 19 points (including two, yes two, hat tricks), and was really driving the bus as far as their scoring charge went. He did seem to run out of steam a little bit in their last couple of games, but in a season that long, it’s hard to fault him. He did, in short, some excellent work this season, not just for a former seventh round pick,  just in general, and did well to put his name on the radar of Flyers fans.

And before we move on, let’s take a moment to appreciate some of that playoff scoring. To the tape!

What are we expecting from Gendron this season? What should we be looking for from him?

Because of his early birthday, Gendron is eligible to make his AHL debut this fall, while still a teenager. And this news is, well, a bit of a mixed bag. We saw during the COVID shortened season, when OHL players were allowed to play in the AHL while their regular seasons were paused, that playing professional games while underage by the league standard didn’t have an adverse effect on these players — in fact for Tyson Foerster and Zayde Wisdom, it seemed to go quite well. And while, with taxi squads done away with, this year’s AHL is going to be more difficult to play in than the AHL Foerster and Wisdom jumped into, there’s still some truth to the idea that more time spent playing professional games is better for development. And while this may be good for a player like Gendron — who will likely have a longer development route — in the long run, it’s worth reminding ourselves that this is just the beginning of that long road. It’s a steep jump from the QMJHL to the AHL, particularly as a smaller player, and there’s going to be a real learning curve involved here. Gendron is coming into this season with a lot of momentum, but we should be careful about expecting too much of him right off the hop. If he hits the ground running well, that’s great, but if it takes him some time to get settled in, that more or less matches the expectation.

How does Gendron fit in the Flyers’ rebuild? Is it likely he’s going to be a part of the next good Flyers team?

The short answer here is that it’s up to Gendron. The good news about the Flyers rebuilding — well, one piece of good news — is that they don’t have many players left that they’re committed to long term, particularly as far as depth players go. This means that, while Gendron hasn’t yet done enough to fully solidify a place for himself in the Flyers’ future plans, there door remains wide open for him to do so. There are some older wingers ahead of him in the depth chart, and that will be a challenge in some ways, but with the Flyers committed to taking the time to build the best possible team, seniority becomes less of a sticking point. If he comes in and is one of the absolute best options for them at wing, despite his younger age, then he’s in luck. But that’s a ways down the road, and we’ll see where he stands after he actually gets some professional games under his belt.

What do we think Gendron’s ultimate NHL upside is, and how likely is it that he gets to something approaching that?

As we sort of alluded to above, on the next good Flyers team, Gendron doesn’t seem likely to be a player that’s fighting for a spot at the absolute top of the lineup. That said, he does have a chance to be a useful depth contributor for them — which is exciting, as the Flyers have been decidedly thin in the secondary scoring department of late. He has some work to do, as an undersized forward making the jump from the QMJHL (the “easiest” of the CHL to score in, on average) to the AHL while still a teenager. We’d be hard pressed to call him a sure thing until we see what he does at the next level. There are tons of players who can score heaps in juniors but lose steam when they turn professional, and it remains an open question whether Gendron will continue to develop on the same trajectory he has up until this point. But, all that said, there’s still an exciting prospect to keep an eye on here, even if he does remain a bit mysterious for now.

Anything else?

That’s all for now. Welcome to the top-25 under 25, folks!