A pre-deadline audit of the Flyers prospect pool

Trade deadline day is officially upon up, and this period of flux for the Flyers is nearly coming to an end (for now, at least). The Flyers have already made one trade and re-signed one of their other players with the highest deadline trade potential, which leads us to feel that perhaps this deadline day is going to be a quiet one for them, but truly who knows, the door for it remains open.

And this potential for more moves to be made means that there remains an opportunity for the Flyers to make additions which will aid their plan of building for the future -- that is, if they make this another trade deadline wherein they take back a prospect to bolster their pool, rather than just a pick or roster player, as we\'ve already seen them do.

So with that potential in mind, we\'re going to pivot to look at the skaters in the prospect pool as it stands -- how the players are projecting, how much help the future lineup is going to have from home grown talent, and where the Flyers would need to work to build up.

Now, before we get too deep into this, we want to make a couple of notes, just to get them out of the way. First, we\'ve put prospects into several bins, if you will: top line impact players, top-six potential, middle-six, fourth line option, and then the tweeners/organizational depth pieces. Those groups admittedly have some flux potential, because we know the difference between, say, a top-six and middle-six contributor can be slippery and be varied by team context, but for the purpose of this thought exercise, it serves our purpose. Additionally, the players themselves have some flux potential -- they\'re all so young, and many haven\'t even sniffed the professional game yet, and there\'s still a lot of development ahead of them, and we could see move up or down in these groups as they develop and we see more of their game.

The Forwards

We\'ll begin up front with the forwards. What immediately strikes us is just how many players we have to look at here. Particularly of late, the Flyers seem to have figured out that one of the factors which increases their odds of hitting in the draft is by making as many picks as possible. The prospect pool, at this point, is looking pretty robust, and on the forward side at least, there seems to be a lot of NHL potential.

We don\'t have to spend too much time talking about Matvei Michkov (but we will still spend a bit of time on it). He occupies a level all his own in the prospect pool, as the one player in the mix with bonafide NHL star potential. A volume approach to building up the team\'s future through the prospect pipeline is all well and good, as we\'ll see, but having one player the caliber of Michkov really helps to raise the level of the pool itself.

But Michkov isn\'t the only top of the lineup option in the mix here. We\'ve already seen Bobby Brink show some flash at the NHL level, and while things haven\'t gone perfectly smoothly for him so far in his NHL career, the top-six upside remains for him. Samu Tuomaala has done an excellent job rebuilding his stock with a stellar rookie season in the AHL, and he\'s gotten himself back into the conversation for a significant role with the NHL squad in the future. New additions Denver Barkey and Massimo Rizzo have been on tears this season as well, and added more optimism for the dynamic talent the future Flyers can have at the top of their forward group.

And while most of them are likely a few years away from really factoring into the battles for these positions, the Flyers have a heap of options to bolster their middle and bottom six with some more young and dynamic talent. This isn\'t really a huge development for them -- this prospect pool, through the last few management groups, has been pretty well loaded with players who you can look at and say \"yeah, he could be a good middle sixer on an NHL team,\" but that\'s about where they capped off. This support is a very good thing to have, but only so long as it is support for a well filled out top of the lineup, and it\'s only now that this is finally really starting to come together for them.

The Defense

As we move to the back end, though, this is where things begin to look a little more dodgy. On the positive side, there are some interesting pieces here. Oliver Bonk is in the midst of a breakout season in the OHL and is looking like, if all continues more or less on this trajectory, that he could develop into a top-pair player in the NHL, and that\'s really exciting.

They have a mix of more depth-type options as well -- players like Ronnie Attard and Emil Andrae have done well to round out their games, while still maintaining the offensive upside which initially made them interesting as prospects, and could well be second pair options for the Flyers in not long at all. And then if they\'re looking for someone to play a more defense first role on a future third pair, players like Adam Ginning and Helge Grans, while still developing and needing to prove that they can stick there, are looking like they have potential to fill that role.

But they don\'t have a wealth of options at this position. They have some options that could work their way into the future NHL lineup, which is something, but if disaster strikes and one of these players absolutely falls off a cliff with their development or something, we quickly start to feel less secure. The majority of their defense prospects are looking more like they would max out as something closer to a tweener, and that leaves the support feeling thin.

So, we see defense is really the position of need for the Flyers. Certainly we can point to the top of the forward pool and say that the Flyers would greatly benefit from adding more players of or close to Michkov\'s caliber, and this would be true, but the defense prospect group is the one that feels more immediately in need of bolstering. If not now, at the deadline, then perhaps down the road a bit more, with some of the heap of first round picks that they\'re amassing.

But the good news, perhaps, is that this doesn\'t appear to be a critically urgent need. The Flyers\' defense, at the moment, is as thin as it\'s been in recent memory, and them still managing to knock off the Florida Panthers with that group has proved that they are fine in the short term (and also perhaps that they can\'t be killed).

The gaps are clear, though, and how the Flyers\' front office addresses them will be their next big task. The NHL team is finding some real success this season, but management has made it clear that the rebuild is still on, and ticking the box for building the strongest and most complete prospect pool remains a necessity.

Talking Points