Despite the ultimate outcome, last night was a tough one for the Flyers. Coming away with a big win over a budding rival is a big positive, but with it came the loss of both Bobby Brink and Jamie Drysdale to injury. Now, there’s no word just yet on the severity of these injuries or on whether they’ll mean that either of them will miss significant time. All we can say at the moment is that the initial impressions were not great, particularly with Drysdale, and it feels like an apt time to check in with some of the players down in Lehigh Valley, their standings and their cases for recalls, in the event that they’re looking at some lengthier absences that will need addressing beyond just bringing in the two players — in Nic Deslauriers and Noah Juulsen — already waiting in the wings on the NHL roster or keeping Garnet Hathaway in the lineup indefinitely.
For starters, looking at the back end, if the Flyers are looking to go for a more direct replacement in terms of handedness, they certainly have a wealth of options to pull from, even if all cases are not exactly equal.
Christian Kyrou
The most immediately intriguing option to serve as the most direct replacement for Drysdale would be Kyrou, as his profile — an undersized, right-shooting defenseman who can bring some defensive steadiness while also feeding offense with the strength of his shot and his ability to quickly advance the puck up-ice in transition — does most closely resemble that of what the Flyers would be missing in Drysdale. Kyrou certainly made a strong impression upon his arrival to the Phantoms, putting up four goals and 14 points over his first 12 games with the team and, most notably, stepping in to give their power play a real boost.
Now, the production has cooled off for Kyrou since his scorching start to his tenure with the Phantoms — and he’s sitting now with 12 games without a point, while also having a stretch in there where his overall process dipped a bit, and his decision making with the puck slipped to a noticeable degree — he’s gotten things trending in the right direction again over the last couple of games, even if the bounces haven’t swung back around to going his way again.
But this, still, is a bit of a slippery one. To start the season, it seemed that the coaching staff had some real reservations about icing three undersized defensemen in their lineup at the same time, and while they quickly got over that based on how well all of Cam York, Emil Andrae, and Drysdale were all playing, it is another thing entirely to introduce more of an unknown commodity, a player who hasn’t seen any NHL action yet, into that mix.
All the same, if the Flyers have been happy with their ability to generate offense beginning with their back end, and their ability to create pace through their transitioning ability, Kyrou would be their best bet to offset Drysdale’s loss in those areas.
Helge Grans
Elsewhere on the right side of the Phantoms’ lineup, the next best option would be someone like Grans. Now, there is the added wrinkle in this mix that he did pretty actively play himself out of the inside track on a job with the Flyers to start the season back in the fall, and this impacted his standing enough that he was passed over as recently as last month for a recall, but he’s put in some really good work through these last few months with the Phantoms to build his game back up to a level that he can be more proud of, and that’s not nothing. He doesn’t bring the same pop of skill that someone like Kyrou does, but his defensive game is more rounded out, and he’s been a more under the radar positive impact in transition.
All the same, this might be an option better suited for a situation where the Flyers want to have an extra body around on the roster but still want to use this time to give Juulsen some more reps, as Grans, in spite of the work he’s done to get himself to a level more deserving of an NHL look, is someone they’d certainly be more comfortable parking in the press box on a rotating basis.
The 3D chess option
Elsewhere, the outside chances on the right side are someone like Max Guenette, acquired in the trade for Dennis Gilbert in November who, while still somewhat finding his footing down with the Phantoms does have a handful of NHL games under his belt, or Oliver Bonk, who could be an interesting stylistic fit but is still so new, only 11 games in, to his professional career.
But perhaps the handedness question is not everything to the Flyers, and instead their level of comfort lies more in calling on the player at the top of the depth chart for the defense as a whole. That is, one wonders whether they’ll return to their top choice for a recall from just a month ago and give Ty Murchison another look up with the big club.
Now, undoubtedly, to make this work, it would require some shuffling — something like elevating Rasmus Ristolainen to play alongside Andrae and moving Nick Seeler over to the right side (or else pulling him out of the lineup entirely in favor of getting Juulsen in) to make that handedness balance work — which could get clunky quickly. All the same, Murchison showed well in his three games up with the team already, certainly impressing the coaching staff, and we’d be hard pressed to argue that he isn’t one of the more deserving candidates for recall based on his play with the Phantoms since his return to them.
What about up front?
The options down with the Phantoms as far as the forwards who could slide into the into a top-9 role are concerned are numerous, but a bit of a mixed bag. If it’s a right shooter above all that the Flyers are looking for, they could again go the veteran route and pull up Lane Pederson — who has been playing all season at center but could be shuffled over to the wing in a pinch, and who is also, more critically, the Phantoms’ leading scorer — for both a bit of extra stability along with some potential for an offensive boost. If not this route, though, they could go for someone like Tucker Robertson, who hasn’t been quite as productive over the whole of the season, but has really been flourishing as of late playing up in the lineup with some more skilled linemates, but would still slide nicely into a checking role with the NHL squad.
The most obvious candidate, though, is a brand new name in the mix — Phil Tomasino, who just arrived last week from Pittsburgh’s organization in the trade for Egor Zamula has been more or less an NHL regular for the past four seasons before he was sort of boxed out of the lineup in Pittsburgh and shuffled down to their AHL squad, and was a standout in his first weekend with the Phantoms, brings both the experience and positional flexibility to be an interesting fit on that third line. And, what’s more, it could be valuable for the Flyers to get an immediate look at what their brand new player can do in their NHL system.
Of course, moving Matvei Michkov — assuming he’ll be back in the mix soon as the foot injury doesn’t seem to be too serious — back over to the right side could open up the door for another dependable veteran option in Anthony Richard, or, perhaps, their next most-touted wing prospect.
Relentlessly, the Alex Bump of it all
Of course, we can’t begin to talk about recalls around here without bringing up Alex Bump. Because, as it stands, if you’d have asked before the start of the season, now is the point in the year where many would have predicted he’d be getting his look up by the NHL squad if he didn’t earn that straight out of camp, but for a number of reasons, that hasn’t panned out — and still feels like it’s a little ways away from reaching that point. For one, there is the fact that last weekend was his first back after missing a little over two weeks with an upper-body injury, and considering that the team seemed so committed to easing him back into action that they only dressed him for one game on the weekend, it would be a bit of a surprise to see him go from that into being pulled up and tossed into a busy week of NHL games. But beyond that, there’s the still ongoing work that the coaching and development staffs are chipping away at with him, as they work to unlock more consistency in his offensive game, as well as a greater degree of effectiveness away from the puck.
It has asked of him a bit of a mindset reset, and that takes a lot to flesh out and really settle into to the point that it becomes and ingrained process. He’s making some good progress, but there’s still a lot of work to be done for him, and it seems to be in his best interest in the development of his most successful game long-term to let him continue that work uninterrupted. He’ll get to that level of recall readiness before long, but there’s no need to rush him there either.
