Flyers top 10 prospects: Matvei Michkov is No. 1, but where does Jett Luchanko land?

With the dust now fully settled after the 2024 draft and rookie camp commencing this Thursday in Voorhees, it is time to examine the current state of the Flyers’ prospect pool.

The rebuilding Flyers continue to stockpile young prospects and future draft picks under general manager Danny Brière, and over the last few years have built one of the NHL’s stronger pipelines.

We ranked and broke down the Flyers’ top 10 prospects ahead of the start of the 2024 season.

The rebuilding Flyers have high hopes for Michkov, and his reputation as a hockey “genius,” along with his puck skills and deceptive shot, give him a chance to be a top-of-the-lineup winger and future All-Star. The Flyers don’t have anyone else in the pipeline with his level of skill, and he should be an immediate shot in the arm for an offensively challenged top six and an anemic power play.

Center was and still is a massive organizational need, and in Luchanko, the Flyers finally have a high-end prospect at that position to build around. This pick has really started to grow on me the more I watch Luchanko, as his combination of speed, passing, and hockey IQ are enticing for an organization that needed to take a big swing on a high-upside center.

The big question will be: Does Bonk’s offensive explosion (24 goals, 67 points in 60 games) translate to the next level and change his long-term projection? While I don’t ever see Bonk being a high-end point producer or running a power play at the NHL level — the majority of his 15 power-play goals last season came with him playing as a forward in the bumper — I do think there might be a little bit more offensively there than first thought. Bonk continues to improve and his floor might be as high as a second-pair, shutdown defenseman. This season he is expected to be a key cog on the blue line again for Memorial Cup contenders London and Canada at the World Juniors.

The 6-foot-2, 183-pound Zavragin is an impressive athlete who moves well for a goaltender his size. He has good command of his net and plays within himself, oftentimes making saves look easier than they are due to his positioning and ability to anticipate plays. After dominating in junior hockey and the VHL, Zavragin will take a big step up to the KHL this season with Sochi. While his numbers will take a significant hit because Sochi is not a very good team, it will be interesting to see how he handles playing at the top level while seeing a lot of rubber. Zavragin is the organization’s top goalie prospect in my opinion, ahead of Alexei Kolosov and Carson Bjarnason, but he also may be the furthest away, as he is likely at least three years from competing for an NHL spot.

Andrae is a smooth operator with the puck who always has his head up looking to make a play. He has supreme confidence in his passing ability while breaking out of his own end and can also carry the mail himself between zones. Offensively, he possesses a heavy shot and while he’ll never be mistaken for Quinn Hughes, he does a nice job walking the line and moving laterally to find angles to get his shots through to the net. A former captain for Sweden at the World Juniors, Andrae plays with the swagger, fire, and motor you wish all your players had. While he’s ready for a bigger role at the NHL level, Andrae is a bit blocked at the moment and will need to supplant one of the Flyers’ more established top six in training camp for that to happen right away.

» READ MORE: Flyers maintain high hopes for prospect Emil Andrae’s future: ‘He’s a special package’

While Barkey always graded highly in terms of competitiveness, defensive acumen, and drive, his playmaking and ability to draw defenders may have been a bit underestimated. That skill, if it continues to develop, could slowly start to convert the naysayers who say that the 19-year-old is simply too small. There is plenty of risk with a player who weighs 155 pounds and a lot of the time plays like a power forward. Barkey is going to need to get stronger, continue to improve his skating, and add probably 20 pounds to his frame, but he has plenty of time to do it and is certainly ahead of where the Flyers expected him to be at this point. I’ve seen enough from him to believe he will be an NHL player in some capacity, whether that is as a bottom-of-the-lineup energy guy and penalty killer or someone who could hit the high end of his projection as a middle-six center. Look for him to have another big year for London and push for a spot on Canada’s World Junior squad.

At just 22 years old, and with 2½ seasons of KHL starting experience, the cat-quick Kolosov was regarded as one of the better young goalies playing in Europe the last few years. Last season, on a middling Dinamo Minsk team, he posted a 22-21-3 record with a .907 save percentage and 2.39 goals-against average, which closely aligned with his career numbers there (.909 SV%, 2.56 GAA). With reports swirling that Kolosov wants to return to Belarus and Flyers GM Danny Brière maintaining that he will not loan him back there, things are coming to a head with less than a month until training camp.

This season represents a big one for the 5-10, 174-pound winger, as he will be looking to make an impression at training camp even though there isn’t an obvious pathway for him to make the Flyers. That said, his speed rivals almost any other Flyer in the pipeline, and his shot jumps off his stick — when he hits the net and takes the right ones. If he continues to tap into using his pace on the forecheck and in transition, Tuomaala could find his way into an NHL jersey at some point this season. I’m not quite ready to declare Tuomaala as fully back on track, but things are looking a lot better than they were at this time last year and he still possesses two high-end offensive tools.

» READ MORE: Samu Tuomaala almost quit hockey two years ago. Now, the Finnish prospect is pushing to make the Flyers.

One of the best passers in college hockey, Rizzo racked up 87 assists over three seasons, often threading cross-seam passes to teammates for tap-ins. But the odds are against him as a former seventh-round pick who is undersized and lacks elite foot speed. The Flyers will hope his ability to process the game quickly and his high-end skill will give him a fighting chance at being an NHL regular. While Rizzo will likely start his pro career in Lehigh Valley as a center, he probably projects long-term as a winger at the NHL level if he ever makes it.

I’ll start by saying assistant general manager Brent Flahr loves Bump, name-checking the former Minnesota high school star when asked by The Inquirer last year for an under-the-radar prospect to watch. The 6-foot, 194-pound winger may not have quite as high a ceiling as some of the guys on this list, but I see a plausible path for him to become a middle-six winger who given his release and knack for the net could push 20 goals at some point in the NHL. Not a bad outlook for a guy drafted 133rd overall.

With the dust now fully settled after the 2024 draft and rookie camp commencing this Thursday in Voorhees, it is time to examine the current state of the Flyers’ prospect pool.

The rebuilding Flyers continue to stockpile young prospects and future draft picks under general manager Danny Brière, and over the past few years have built one of the NHL’s stronger pipelines. While it’s no secret that Matvei Michkov tops the list, who slots in behind him following January’s trade of former No. 2 prospect Cutter Gauthier and the addition of 2024 first-rounder Jett Luchanko? What about the rest of the 2024 draft class or disgruntled goaltender Alexei Kolosov?

Below we ranked and broke down the Flyers’ top 10 prospects ahead of the start of the 2024 season.

No suspense here, as Michkov is not only considered the Flyers’ great hope but is regarded as one of the top prospects in all of hockey. The Russian phenom, who doesn’t turn 20 until December, is arriving in Philly two years early after posting historic numbers for a teenager in the Kontinental Hockey League. Last season on loan at Sochi, Michkov potted 19 goals and tallied 41 points in 47 games (0.87 ppg), one point short of Kirill Kaprizov’s U20 scoring record.

At 5-foot-10, 172 pounds, Michkov is not the biggest or fastest, but he makes up for it with elite passing vision, hands, and hockey IQ. He oozes creativity with the puck and always seems to be in attack mode and looking to carve out scoring chances for himself or his teammates. While his foot speed isn’t a strength, he’s hardly slow, and his strong work on the edges creates a “slipperiness” to him in tight areas in the offensive zone. As with most young players, there will be some growing pains when it comes to his play away from the puck, particularly in his own zone, but his offensive acumen and upside place him among the league’s very top talents.

The rebuilding Flyers have high hopes for Michkov, and his reputation as a hockey “genius,” along with his puck skills and deceptive shot, give him a chance to be a top-of-the-lineup winger and future All-Star. The Flyers don’t have anyone else in the pipeline with his level of skill, and he should be an immediate shot in the arm for an offensively challenged top six and an anemic power play.

To say Luchanko was a surprising draft pick might be an understatement. The Flyers opted for Luchanko with the 13th overall pick over more heralded talents like defenseman Zeev Buium and center Konsta Helenius, even though the Guelph center was ranked outside most experts’ top 20 prospects. Why? First and foremost, the Flyers love Luchanko’s speed. Luchanko was one of the top skaters in this year’s draft, and the Flyers believe his pace and competitiveness are great starting points to build on and mesh with the organization’s overall identity as a hardworking transition team. The Flyers are also betting on Luchanko’s upside, as general manager Danny Brière said they believe “he’s just starting to tap his potential.”

Luchanko made a dramatic jump in 2023-24 as a prospect, increasing his point total from 14 in 2022-23 to 74 (20 goals, 54 assists) last season. He is also super young for his draft (he turned 18 last month) and was tasked with carrying a big offensive load last season for a so-so Guelph squad. Then there is the explosive skating, which pops on tape and was evident from his first day on the ice at development camp. His skating suggests he can one day be a one-man break-in, while he also uses it to win foot races defensively.

The big debate on Luchanko surrounds his playmaking ability. There are some experts who believe this area of his game is just starting to blossom while others believe he has a limited ceiling offensively. I lean toward the former, as Luchanko was impressive at the World Junior camp this summer and has had a strong preseason. While Luchanko will always be more of a playmaker than a goal scorer, I think there is some room for him to grow as a goal scorer. Look for him to have a big season in the OHL, with 100 points a realistic target.

At 5-11, 187, there is also some discussion about Luchanko being a wing and not a center, but the Flyers are adamant that they see him sticking down the middle long-term. Center was and still is a massive organizational need, and in Luchanko, the Flyers finally have a high-end prospect at that position to build around. This pick has really started to grow on me the more I watch Luchanko, as his combination of speed, passing, and hockey IQ are enticing for an organization that needed to take a big swing on a high-upside center.

Entering the 2022 draft, Bonk was viewed by many experts as a bit of a safe pick; a prospect who didn’t have many glaring weaknesses but also didn’t have the highest of ceilings. But the narrative has started to change around the 19-year-old defenseman following a breakout offensive season for the London Knights.

Listed at 6-2, 180 pounds, Bonk is a reliable, defense-first blueliner who uses his skating, good positioning, and reach rather than pure physicality to consistently close down plays. Bonk isn’t flashy but makes efficient puck retrievals, clean breakout passes, and just exudes an overall steadiness to his game.

The big question will be: Does his offensive explosion (24 goals, 67 points in 60 games) translate to the next level and change his long-term projection? While I don’t ever see Bonk being a high-end point producer or running a power play at the NHL level — the majority of his 15 power-play goals last season came with him playing as a forward in the bumper — I do think there might be a little bit more offensively there than first thought. Bonk continues to improve and his floor might be as high as a second-pair, shutdown defenseman. This season he is expected to be a key cog on the blue line again for Memorial Cup contenders London and Canada at the World Juniors.

» READ MORE: Flyers prospects Oliver Bonk and Denver Barkey have become ‘brothers and really close friends’

This may come as a bit of a surprise, but given Zavragin’s stellar 18-year-old season and the Flyers’ track record of finding undervalued European goalies, I believe Zavragin warrants this lofty ranking.

The Flyers believe they have uncovered a diamond in Zavragin, a third-round pick in 2023 who last season posted a ridiculous .943 save percentage and 1.60 goals against average over 17 games in the VHL, the second-highest tier of Russian hockey. How good was Zavragin? While he didn’t officially qualify by the minimum number of games played, his save percentage would have been the best by a teenager and second-best ever by a goalie under the age of 20 behind only 2022 Vezina winner Igor Shesterkin. Not bad company to keep.

The 6-2, 183-pound Zavragin is an impressive athlete who moves well for a goaltender his size. He has good command of his net and plays within himself, oftentimes making saves look easier than they are due to his positioning and ability to anticipate plays. After dominating in junior hockey and the VHL, Zavragin will take a big step up to the KHL this season with Sochi. While his numbers will take a significant hit because Sochi is not a very good team, it will be interesting to see how he handles playing at the top level while seeing a lot of rubber. Zavragin is the organization’s top goalie prospect in my opinion ahead of Alexei Kolosov and Carson Bjarnason, but he also may be the furthest away, as he is likely at least three years from competing for an NHL spot.

If you’ve read previous editions of this exercise, it’s no secret that I am high on Andrae. Nothing has changed on that front after a solid first season of pro hockey in North America. The Swedish defenseman surprisingly made the Flyers’ opening-night roster after a strong training camp and played four games before spending the rest of the season with the Phantoms (seven goals, 35 points in 67 games including playoffs).

A polarizing prospect due to his size at 5-9, 189 pounds, Andrae plays much bigger than that and combines skating and offensive ability with a bit of nastiness. The 2020 second-round pick is no stranger to physical contact despite his frame, and has shown he’s capable of shouldering big minutes in Europe and the AHL. Andrae has a noticeable edge to his play and tends to thrive in competitive situations like a training camp.

Andrae is a smooth operator with the puck who always has his head up looking to make a play. He has supreme confidence in his passing ability while breaking out of his own end and can also carry the mail himself between zones. Offensively, he possesses a heavy shot and while he’ll never be mistaken for Quinn Hughes, he does a nice job walking the line and moving laterally to find angles to get his shots through to the net. A former captain for Sweden at the World Juniors, Andrae plays with the swagger, fire, and motor you wish all your players had. While he’s ready for a bigger role at the NHL level, Andrae is a bit blocked at the moment and will need to supplant one of the Flyers’ more established top six in training camp for that to happen right away.

» READ MORE: Flyers maintain high hopes for prospect Emil Andrae’s future: ‘He’s a special package’

The saying goes that it’s not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. Well, there’s certainly a lot of fight and a lot of dog in the 5-9, 155-pound Barkey. There’s also a lot of offense, as evidenced by his breakout 35-goal, 102-point season with the Knights.

When the Flyers drafted Barkey with the second-to-last pick of the third round in 2023, you got an immediate sense that Brière and Co. felt they had something. In Barkey, the Flyers acquired a relentless hound on the puck, who played inside the hash marks, and possessed some complementary playmaking skills. Fast forward a year, and the Flyers feel even better about the pick after Barkey made a seismic 42-point leap in scoring to finish as the OHL’s sixth-leading scorer.

While Barkey always graded highly in terms of competitiveness, defensive acumen, and drive, his playmaking and ability to draw defenders may have been a bit underestimated. That skill, if it continues to develop, could slowly start to convert the naysayers who say that the 19-year-old is simply too small. There is plenty of risk with a player who weighs 155 pounds and a lot of the time plays like a power forward. Barkey is going to need to get stronger, continue to improve his skating, and add probably 20 pounds to his frame, but he has plenty of time to do it and is certainly ahead of where the Flyers expected him to be at this point. I’ve seen enough of him to believe he will be an NHL player in some capacity, whether that is as a bottom-of-the-lineup energy guy and penalty killer or someone who could hit the high end of his projection as a middle-six center. Barkey is a winning player and those guys don’t grow on trees. Look for him to have another big year for London and push for a spot on Canada’s World Junior squad.

While Kolosov’s future with the organization is very much up in the air, he remains a top-10 prospect for the Flyers, at least for now. At just 22 years old, and with 2½ seasons of KHL starting experience, Kolosov was regarded as one of the better young goalies playing in Europe the last few years. Last season, on a middling Dinamo Minsk team, he posted a 22-21-3 record with a .907 save percentage and 2.39 goals against average, which closely aligned with his career numbers there (.909 SV%, 2.56 GAA).

Kolosov is a smaller goalie at just 6 feet but is an elite athlete who can go post-to-post in an instant and regularly flashes a good glove hand on tape. Quickness and competitiveness were the hallmarks of Kolosov’s game in the KHL, and his body held up extremely well despite a heavy workload. Goalies continue to get bigger and bigger, but Kolosov is an exception who relies on his athleticism, à la Juuse Saros, to get the job done.

With reports swirling that Kolosov wants to return to Belarus and Flyers GM Danny Brière maintaining that he will not loan him back there, things are coming to a head with less than a month until training camp.

What a whirlwind few years for Tuomaala. He was a second-round pick in 2021, but his next few seasons included him scoring only four goals in a year and a half, missing out on Finland’s World Junior team, and bouncing around between five teams and three levels of Finnish hockey. After finally finding his stride at second-tier Ketterä to end 2023 (26 goals in 29 games), Tuomaala made the move to North America last season with the Phantoms. There, he shattered expectations (15 goals and 43 points in 69 games), fell in love with hockey again, and firmly put himself back on the map as a legitimate NHL prospect.

While 2023-24 has to be viewed as a massive success — Tuomaala did tail off significantly over the second half of the season — now the question will be: Can he continue his forward momentum and maintain his confidence? Tuomaala, now 21, showcased last season the two traits that made him the 46th overall pick: his speed and his shot. He also showed more of a willingness to get involved physically and use his speed on the forecheck, beginning with development camp, a welcome sign for a player who had been labeled almost exclusively as a peripheral player up to that point.

» READ MORE: Samu Tuomaala almost quit hockey two years ago. Now, the Finnish prospect is pushing to make the Flyers.

This season represents a big one for the 5-10, 174-pound winger, as he will be looking to make an impression at training camp even though there isn’t an obvious pathway for him to make the Flyers. That said, his speed rivals almost any other Flyer in the pipeline, and his shot jumps off his stick — when he hits the net and takes the right ones. If he continues to tap into using his pace on the forecheck and in transition, Tuomaala could find his way into an NHL jersey at some point this season. I’m not quite ready to declare Tuomaala as fully back on track, but things are looking a lot better than they were at this time last year and he still possesses two high-end and intriguing offensive tools.

Rizzo, who was acquired from Carolina in a “wink-wink” deal after the Flyers helped facilitate Tony DeAngelo’s return to the Hurricanes last summer, makes our list after a big final season at the University of Denver. Rizzo, now 23, tallied 10 goals and 44 points in 30 games for the national champions, ranking sixth in the nation in points per game (1.47 ppg).

While the comparison is an easy one given they both played at Denver, Rizzo’s game has some similarities to that of current Flyers winger Bobby Brink. A little bit bigger than Brink, the 5-11, 174-pound Rizzo is still undersized by NHL standards and isn’t the fastest skater, either. Instead, his game revolves around his passing vision, anticipation, and silky hands. One of the best passers in college hockey, Rizzo racked up 87 assists over three seasons, often threading cross-seam passes to teammates for tap-ins. Rizzo isn’t just a flair offensive player either, as he pops up in battles around the front of the net a lot on tape, and also plays a fairly responsible 200-foot game.

The odds are against Rizzo as a former seventh-round pick who is undersized and lacks elite foot speed, but the Flyers will hope his ability to process the game quickly and his high-end skill will give him a fighting chance. While Rizzo will likely start his pro career in Lehigh Valley as a center, he probably projects long-term as a winger at the NHL level if he ever makes it.

I’ll start by saying assistant general manager Brent Flahr loves Bump, name-checking the former Minnesota high school star when asked by The Inquirer last year for an under-the-radar prospect to watch. Beginning at development camp last year, particularly in the scrimmages, Bump showcased his size, stickhandling, and high-end wrist shot. He deployed those skills into just short of a point-per-game freshman season for a tournament team in Western Michigan (36 points in 38 games).

Nothing to this point either by the eye test or his statistical production would suggest Bump was a fifth-round pick. That’s a credit to the Flyers’ scouting staff, but a lot of work remains. After being a bit of a pleasant surprise last year, Bump, who turns 21 in November, will be expected to dominate this season for Western Michigan and then potentially turn pro in 2025-25. Can he do so? The odds say yes, as he became a go-to guy for the Broncos over the second half of last season and did not look out of place under the bright lights of the NCAA Tournament when notching a goal and an assist in his team’s lone game.

The 6-foot, 194-pound Bump may not have quite as high a ceiling as some of the guys on this list, but I see a plausible path for him to become a middle-six winger who given his release and knack for the net could push 20 goals at some point in the NHL. Not a bad outlook for a guy drafted 133rd overall.