This season is winding up to be a big one for the Phantoms, both as they look to take the next step forward in their overall team success as well as usher in the next wave of exciting prospects for the Flyers, and if there’s one prospect who’s coming into it with all eyes seemingly trained on him, it’s Denver Barkey.
Coming off a hugely successful junior hockey career — which he capped off with a Memorial Cup win with London in the spring — and an NHL camp which, though finding him pretty well on the outside of a look at a final roster spot, still saw him show some positive flash against difficult competition, he’s coming into this season with some momentum, and he made an impression right from the jump in his preseason debut with the Phantoms over the weekend.
Barkey saw a lot of ice in this debut on Saturday, skating on their second line with veteran captain Garrett Wilson and fellow rookie Karsen Dorwart, and while that line showed some pretty immediate pop and chemistry, Barkey also showed well in his ample special teams time — settling into a role on their top power play unit and, even more critically, getting some meaningful minutes on their penalty kill as well. It wasn’t an easy set of matchups that he was tossed into, but he did quite well in them, and immediately earned himself some favor from his head coach in the process.
“He’s a hockey player,” John Snowden said after Saturday’s game. “I thought he was outstanding tonight, I thought he was around everything and I thought he was good 5-on-5, he was good on the penalty kill, he was good on the power play. You know, he’s just a hockey player — he just works, he’s smart, he understands all situations, he’s a utility knife kind of guy and you can play him on any wing, you can play him in the middle. He’s a great player I think that’s gonna do a lot of really great things for us this year.”
Barkey’s game was an active one, and while he didn’t pile up the chances in this one — he came away with one shot on goal and another couple of near misses — he managed to make his presence known in other ways, using his speed and flexing a tenacious checking game. It may not have yielded immediate heaps of points contributions, but it was the beginnings of a solid process which, if he sticks with it, should bring him some positive results as he puts together a more extended run of games, and as it’s able to work a little more seamlessly into the Phantoms’ next steps taken in their evolving process in the offensive zone.
Now, we’re being sure to keep our expectations manageable when it comes to Barkey and his proper debut into the professional game — the jump up from the OHL level (particularly from a team so loaded and at times insulating as London has been) to the AHL level is a steep one for any player, much less an undersized player like Barkey. Even players who looked on paper — through their physical tools and the maturity if the league they’re coming from — like Alex Bump have struggled to make that transition a wholly seamless one. But, all the same, Barkey has found a great deal of success at every level he’s played at up to this point in his career, and while there is an expectation that he, like everyone else, might have to work to overcome some bumps he runs into along the way, the potential he brings to play a truly meaningful part in this team’s success this season is undeniable.
