This season was an exiting one for the Flyers. The late surge into a meaningful playoff appearance did a lot of good to rebuild the excitement around the team, and make clear that, while the approach may not have always been the most conventional, their rebuild is moving in the right direction.
It was a positive to see so many players up and down the lineup stepping up in big ways for the Flyers throughout this season, but the arrival of so many of their highly touted prospects headlined it all. And in that, Alex Bump’s arrival — after working through the process, spending time developing in the AHL and buying in to the process of polishing out a good professional game — marked a big boost for the team in the shorter term, and another nod towards the success of their newly revamped internal development structure.
| Games played | Goals | Assists | Points | PIM | Shots on goal | Shooting percentage | Average TOI |
| 17 | 5 | 4 | 9 | 2 | 23 | 21.7 | 12:38 |
The hope, when Bump was recalled in March, was that he would be able to give the team a bit of a boost offensively through the strength of his scoring game, and that’s exactly what he was able to do for them. Bump picked up his first NHL goal in thrilling fashion, scoring in his NHL debut in Pittsburgh, and he was able to keep the ball rolling nicely from that point onward — he notched a total of nine points over his 17 regular season games played, clocking in just over half a point per game, which, while not positively world beating, is quite a respectable output for a rookie getting largely middle of the lineup usage.
And, what’s more, he was able to build on that success in the regular season nicely in his appearances in the playoffs — though he wasn’t able to get in as an every-game regular, he made the most of the games he did get, bringing a good level of energy and engagement (though not a mistake-free game entirely) over his six games played, and chipping in two goals as a reward for the work.
Now, there was a bit of luck at work here, as Bump was able to convert on his chances at a rate north of 20 percent, which is, even for a player with as good of a shot as him, likely not wholly sustainable. He’s shown that he can do some real damage with that shot at this level, to be sure, but he’s due for some natural regression over a longer span of games played, so that will be something to look out for next season.
| (5v5) Goals For % | Expected Goals For % | Corsi For % | High-Danger Attempts For % | PDO |
| 58.33 | 47.45 | 44.91 | 51.85 | 103.2 |
The underlying numbers paint, on the whole, a similar picture.
The Flyers very comfortably got the better of the share of scoring while Bump was on the ice, and that did make for a nice bit of tangible success in the short term, and it’s hard to begrudge that. However, they did still pretty dramatically outperform their expected results (based on the quality of offense they were generating with him out there) in their actual results, and while we might expect them to be able to continue to pull off a slight bit of that kind of over-performance based on the strength of his shot, that stark of a difference would lead us to believe that the scoring luck is going to come down to earth eventually, if there isn’t a greater emphasis placed on creating a higher volume of dangerous chances to keep themselves afloat.
| (5v5) Points per 60 | Primary Points per 60 | Shots on goal per 60 | Shot attempts per 60 | Expected goals per 60 |
| 2.48 | 1.24 | 5.89 | 13.64 | .74 |
Further to that, while Bump was one of the Flyers’ most efficient contributors of points and shot attempts when adjusting for usage, his contributions of shots on goal and more dangerous chances were more middling. And this points to something of an ongoing learning curve that he’s been working through this season — with a shot as good as his, he wants to take more of a volume shooting role, but he’s needing to learn to chose his spots a little better, to be a little more patient to get himself more to the interior and to find a lane to make sure that his chances are actually ending up on net. He’s improving therein, but it’s been a bit of a process.
Another interesting wrinkle — and perhaps the biggest area for improvement left in Bump’s game after this season — is what the number illuminate about his playmaking game. That is, Bump was producing points at a high rate (best on the team among players with more than 10 games played), but that production was buoyed by a high rate of individual scoring and secondary assists contributed, while his rate of production of primary assists is zero. What that tells us is that largely, while his scoring game was clicking, there was more that he could be doing to find his teammates with clean passes in dangerous scoring areas. Now, Bump is primarily a scorer himself, and we don’t want to see him moving too far away from that key element of his game,
Did Bump live up to expectations?
This season was a bit of a strange one for Bump, in that it began with all but certainly one big disappointment, as he put together something of a middling training camp, and failed to make the Flyers to start the season and had to spend most of the season down in the American League. But despite that, Bump put in some solid, dedicated work down with the Phantoms under their new head coach John Snowden (bookending an extended absence with a nagging injury), and got to a point where, when he finally did arrive to join the Flyers, he was able to stand out in a big way.
Right from the jump, the most exciting elements of his game were working well, between the strength of his scoring touch and his ability to get in as a bit of an agitator to opponents, but also his improving forechecking game, which has taken real strides from where it was at the beginning of the season.
His game wasn’t perfect — he still had some moments where he was exposed physically and got pushed off of pucks, and — but there was still a lot to like in this first look at him at the highest level. Even after some dedicated work put in down with the Phantoms and the development staff, no one expected him to graduate up and be a completely finished product, but he did well to show the core elements of his game translating well at this level, and that’s all we could have hoped for in this rookie season.
What can we expect from Bump next season?
Even with all of the positives that Bump was able to deliver through his stint with the Flyers at the end of this season, it’s worth an acknowledgment that the hardest parts are still ahead for him. Bump’s certainly done enough to show that he’s deserving to be in the mix with the NHL squad, and show what he can do when his game is clicking well, but things are going to get more challenging for him in some ways as he gets more games under his belt. Opponents are going to get more of a book on him and their defensive efforts will be refined, and Bump is going to have to learn how to work under that coverage, as well as how to work when his production begins to regress and he isn’t getting quite so many bounces as he was this season.
What’s more, grabbing a regular lineup stop and holding on to it is going to be another challenge entirely, given the surplus of NHL caliber forwards that the Flyers are going to have in their mix heading into the season (so long as they don’t make any offseason to clear up more space). Bump is all but certainly going to be in the mix, but it’s going to take a continued high level of effort to grab that lineup spot.
All in all though, to steal a favorite Snowden-ism, competition breeds success, and Bump has flourished under that competition up to this point, and there’s no reason to believe that he won’t ultimately do the same next season. Success at this level is a marathon, and he’s worked well so far to set a sound foundation for himself to build up from, and it will be interesting to see how he tackles that.
How do we grade Bump’s 2025-26 season?
Overall, this was quite a successful introduction to the NHL game for Bump.
There’s still plenty of room for improvement, but as far as what we’d been hoping to see from him in his first steps, he delivered. Next season is going to be about continuing to round out his game, and there’s plenty of runway ahead for that, but for now, he’s done some good work already to make a name for himself at this level, and that’s an excellent place to start.
Grade: B+
