After a pretty volatile rookie season in the American Hockey League, defenseman Hunter McDonald worked through the bumps of a slow start to the season to turn himself into one of the Phantoms’ more dependable defenders by the time the end of the season rolled around — and earned himself a bit of time up in the NHL, joining the team for a road trip in January and then making his proper debut in the final game of the regular season, as a result.
The state of his stock in relation to the rest of this defensive prospect pool is still up for debate, but he’s worked well to prove that he’s back on the up and up.
No. 23: Hunter McDonald
2025-26 Primary League/Team: Lehigh Valley Phantoms (AHL)
2025-26 Statistics: 0 G, 6 A, 6 Pts
Age as of 9/15/2026: 24
Acquired Via: 2022 NHL Draft – Round 6, Pick 165
How did McDonald’s 2025-26 season go?
McDonald’s season was, on the whole, a bit lopsided. The first stretch of his second season with the Phantoms was a bit of a challenging one, as he seemed to backslide a bit, dealing with some of the same positional challenges and issues in discipline which hindered him in a big way through stretches of his rookie season. But after the first couple of months (and after being passed over for a recall once), and some honest conversations between himself and the coaching staff about where his game was at and exactly what he needed to be doing to find true and sustainable success at this level, the tide started to turn for him.
The back half of the season saw his game settle down in a big way, and made him one of the Phantoms’ most dependable presences on the back end. He was able to take his positioning to the next level, and while it wasn’t always completely perfect, he was able to make those big errors, those moments of being wildly out of position, much fewer and farther in between. And, what’s more, he was able to deliver a mode of defense that was lacking in just about the whole of the rest of the defense group. That is, with a number of their players in a number of situations in the defensive zone, they would seem to get stuck in this mindset of trying to do too much, and getting themselves into trouble by being goaded into running around, burning all of their energy, getting out of position, and ultimately getting scored on. Something that the Phantoms really struggled to thread the needle on was knowing when to step up in an attempt to make a play and when to just eat a shot and live to fight another day. The willingness to do the latter was at times shockingly low, especially after Ty Murchison went down with injury, and McDonald was left as the one player consistently willing to make that hard play and put his body on the line to kill a play.
That’s a lot of hockey cliches thrown into one section, but it’s worth a particular emphasis of the value that McDonald was able to provide for his team when they quite badly needed it. It wasn’t always flashy, but it made him vital to their success.
What are we expecting from McDonald this season?
Looking at the whole of the projected defense group for the Phantoms heading into next season, the mix is looking quite a bit more balanced, and that — plus hopefully having a healthy Murchison for the whole season — should take some of the pressure off of McDonald and allow him to continue to work on building out his game. We can reasonably expect that he’ll be playing a significant role as far as minutes go — his pairing with Oliver Bonk last season was really effective, and it’s not hard to imagine the team feeling comfortable running that one back — so he’ll have a lot of runway ahead of him to continue to showcase the physical side of his game, but also a good opportunity to work in some other elements as well.
He’ll likely have a more experienced partner playing beside him this season, and having someone with that knowledge and ability to cover when necessary should open up the door for McDonald to feel a little more empowered to make a few more plays and flex a side of his game that is a bit more dynamic. Exactly how much of that we end up seeing is yet to be determined, but there’s still some room for growth in his game, if he can just tap into it.
How does McDonald fit in the Flyers’ organization?
The question of McDonald’s longer term fit in the organization is a bit of a complicated one. On the one hand, he did put in some quite impressive work this season to get his game to a much more effective level by season’s end, and that work will have gone a long way to restoring some of his stock within the organization. But, on the other hand, that race to claim that third pair left side spot is a heated one, and the question remains open whether the work that McDonald has done is both enough to move him back ahead of Murchison — who had cleared him pretty comfortably before he took his injury halfway through the year — in the pecking order, but also to prove in his own right that his game is mature enough to hold up against NHL competition over the longer term.
The good news, perhaps, is that this is not a decision which will need to be made as early as the opening of camp — the Flyers’ defense group is already looking a little crowded to begin with — but this competition will be an interesting one to watch unfold throughout their season with the Phantoms.
What do we think McDonald’s ultimate NHL upside is?
Further to that work that McDonald put in over the last season, he’s regained some ground towards putting himself back in the conversation as a legitimate NHL option, should the space become available for it. His upside remains somewhat limited, given the step back he needed to take offensively in order to shore up the defensive side of his game to a greater degree, but he’s working well towards getting himself to a place where he could find an NHL role as the more stable defensive counterpart to a more offensive minded puck mover on the opposite side.
All the same, consistency remains an issue here, but if McDonald can start this coming season well and string together a full year where he holds up well as a stable defending force, he could get himself well-positioned to make the case that he’s close enough to hitting that upside to be deserving of a graduation up to the top level. The numbers game around him complicates things, but if he can just keep chipping away at it and controlling what he can control, he could well be in good shape.
How we voted
… At No. 23
| Brad | Cole | Evan | Jason M | Kelly | Kurt | Maddie | Readers | Ryan G | Thomas |
| Maksim Sokolovskii | Brek Liske | Helge Grans | Jack Murtagh | Hunter McDonald | Maksim Sokolovskii | Max Westergard | Ty Murchison | Spencer Gill | Brek Liske |
For Hunter McDonald:
| Brad | Cole | Evan | Jason M | Kelly | Kurt | Maddie | Readers | Ryan G | Thomas |
| N/A | N/A | 16 | 13 | 23 | N/A | 25 | 21 | N/A | N/A |
