With just two more games remaining in the preseason, the Flyers are staring down the final stretch towards decision time on the outcome of their main roster battles for the pair of spots remaining among their forward and defense groups, and if the setup of their practice groups from this morning are any indication, the Flyers may well be drawing closer to that final decision, and identified the players who will be in their next round of cuts.
Barkey on the ice with this group as well. Missed him the first time. https://t.co/bRJKRhqfu6
— Charlie O'Connor (@charlieo_conn) September 30, 2025
Most of the composition of this group isn’t much of a surprise — guys like Kaplan and Gendron were always going to be AHL-bound as their development tracks require, and Grans was placed on waivers yesterday afternoon, and one can only assume that he’s next in the line of cuts — but to see Alex Bump and Emil Andrae shuffled down to this group already comes as a slightly more significant shock.
The fact that they were more on the outside looking in on these spots to begin with wasn’t much of a mystery — Bump’s game is still more or less at the level it was back in the postseason with the Phantoms, and some more time spent doing targeted work with the development staff down in the AHL seems a more beneficial course of action, and despite playing at a reasonably good level through his couple of games in the preseason (arguably better than a number of these other bubble defensemen) Andrae seems to have been dinged in the group standings by his lack of size and right-handedness, both of which Rick Tocchet has placed a premium on — but to see that their last chance to prove themselves has already passed them by is the more jarring part of this equation. That is, even if the race for those forward spots has seen some frontrunners emerging, the performances on the backend have remained lackluster, and it’s certainly not as though Andrae has fallen behind in that race.
If nothing else, though, perhaps it points to a decisiveness with the decision makers, that they see these two as being outside of their plans for the time being, and want to pull the cord early and dedicate the last two games to the players that they — rightly or wrongly — see as having the inside track on a spot on the final roster. And we’ll just have to see how the rest of it plays out from here.
