Flyers select high-scoring right winger Bobby Orr Brink in second round
Brink has a somewhat choppy skating style, but plays fast. He says he will work hard this summer on improving his speed.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Having bypassed Cole Caufield in the first round, the Flyers didn’t let another high-scoring right winger get past them in the second round of the NHL draft Saturday in Vancouver.
They traded up 11 spots and chose 5-foot-8, 165-pound Bobby Brink with the No. 34 overall pick.
"It’s exciting for our guys,“said Brent Flahr, a Flyers assistant general manager who oversees the organization’s amateur scouting. “He’s a little undersized, but he’s a hockey player and a guy we had higher up on our board.
"Bobby jumped out of high school last year … and tore the league apart,” Flahr added. "Very intelligent player. Highly skilled and can really shoot the puck. Very competitive. He’s going to a good program at Denver and a player who has a chance to be a quality NHL player going forward.”
Brink, who will turn 18 next month, was named the top forward in the relatively low-scoring USHL, collecting 35 goals in 43 games. Scouts say he needs to get faster to make an impact in the NHL.
Brink has a somewhat choppy skating style, but he plays fast. He said improving his skating will be his main focus this summer. “Keep getting faster and keep improving my skating technique.”
Many scouts had Brink projected to be selected in the latter stages of the first round.
“Obviously it was disappointing,” Brink said. “It was a long wait there and not getting picked. But being drafted today by the Flyers, a great organization, it’s an unreal feeling.”
Brink is a feisty player with good hockey sense. He will play at NCAA-power Denver, which is coached by David Carle, the brother of former Flyer Matt Carle.
“I need to get bigger and stronger,” he said. “Going to Denver will help a lot with that. With less games and extra time in the gym, I think that will help me.”
The Flyers traded their 45th (second round, which they had acquired Friday from Arizona) and 65th (third round) overall picks to Nashville to move up and choose Brink.
The winger’s full name is Bobby Orr Brink -- he is named after the Boston Bruins legend. His father, a huge hockey fan, was torn between naming him Bobby Orr Brink or Bobby Clarke Brink and decided on the former.
A Minnesota native who was in contact with Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher during Fletcher’s GM days with the Wild, Brink has been compared to 5-11, 180-pound Jake Guentzel, whose goal production jumped from 22 in 2017-18 to 40 last season.
As for selecting talented defenseman Cam York in the first round Friday, the pick was not popular with fans, who wanted the high-scoring Caufield.
When the second round of the draft ended Saturday, 67 percent of the more than 2,200 Twitter responders (and counting) said they would have selected Caufield. York received 24 percent of the votes, followed by Peyton Krebs (6 percent) and Alex Newhook (3 percent).
But the addition of Brink might change the fans’ perception.
In the third round, the Flyers selected righthanded defenseman Ronnie Attard, a 6-foot-3, 208-pounder who had a breakout season in the USHL.
Headed to Western Michigan, the 20-year-old Attard had 30 goals and 64 points in 48 games while playing against younger players.
He called it an “awesome surprise” to be selected by the Flyers. Attard, a Michigan native with a heavy shot, was bypassed in the NHL draft in the previous two seasons and said he used that as a motivator.
The fact he is an over-age player, he hopes, will help him get to the NHL faster.
“I would say I’m a little bit more mature than some of these young kids taken in the draft,” Attard said. “But either way, there’s still a lot of hard work to be put in.”
The Flyers selected three defensemen in their first four choices, adding puck-moving Mason Millman in the fourth round (No. 103 overall). He was the first Canadian they had drafted since 2017. (They had taken eight Americans in that span.)
“We really like his skating ability,” Flyers amateur scout Rick Pracey said, calling Millman a two-way defenseman with offensive upside.
The 6-1, 175-pound Millman had three goals, 25 points and a plus-13 rating for Saginaw in the OHL last season.
The Flyers later drafted right winger Egor Serdyuk (165th overall) and goalie Roddy Ross (169th) in the sixth round. The 5-11, 165-pound Serdyuk was the top-scoring rookie in the QMJHL with 65 points.
They took right winger Bryce Brodzinski (6-0, 198), a Minnesota high school sensation who had 76 points in 23 games, in the seventh round before continuing an odd trade tradition with Montreal. For the third straight year, the Flyers and Canadiens swapped seventh-round picks. The Flyers traded their second seventh-rounder Saturday for Montreal’s pick in that round in 2020.
Breakaways
With the exception of Russia’s Serdyuk, all of the players the Flyers drafted this weekend are expected to be at their prospect camp, which will start Tuesday in Voorhees. ... Fletcher believes York has the talent to run an NHL power play someday.