Flyers Farm Stars: Luchanko debuts with Phantoms, Denver Barkey pops in playoff opener

Things are beginning to wind down across all corners of the Flyers\' prospect pool, as regular seasons come to an end and only select players and teams manage to advance, but there\'s been no shortage of notable and exciting action to recap this week. Let\'s get right into it.

The News of the Week

For a week where a relatively small group of prospects have played a relatively small number of games, we still had a lot of news come through! First up, the Phantoms got themselves some more reinforcements, as Jett Luchanko was assigned to the team, and Alex Ciernik joined them on an Amateur Tryout. Luchanko got in for his first games with the team this weekend (more on that later), but Ciernik is yet to make his debut.

The Flyers also made a signing this week, getting stay-at-home defender prospect Ty Murchison signed to his ELC this week. With the contract not set to begin until next season, he\'s also technically an option to join the Phantoms for the remainder of the season on an ATO, but there\'s been no development yet in that department, so we\'ll see what happens there.

And finally, the postseason runs are going to continue for two more Flyers prospects, as both Alex Bump and Devin Kaplan have punched their tickets to the Frozen Four , as Western Michigan took down UMass and Boston University bear Cornell in their respective regional finals.

Three Stars

Denver Barkey

Speaking of postseason action, the OHL playoffs got underway this weekend, and Denver Barkey and his pals up in London got their started off with a bang. The Knights took the first game of their series with Owen Sound, and they did it in pretty commanding fashion, coming away with the win by a 6-1 margin. Barkey picked up one of those goals (a buzzer beater to make it 4-1 heading into the second intermission), and assisted on another (Sam Dickinson\'s at the end of the first period). London\'s primed to make a long run at the Memorial Cup this spring, and they began it on about as high of a note as possible, and Barkey\'s remained a key driver of that success, both in the offensive production that he brings, as well as the energy, and he\'s doing very well to put to rest any concerns that he might not be fully ready to go for the playoffs, given the time he missed with injury earlier in the month.

Ilya Pautov

Internationally, there\'s another postseason which has gotten underway -- over in the MHL, things are getting rolling for Ilya Pautov and his Krasnaya Armiya squad, and he\'s been a big part of the success they\'ve found so far. They advanced past the play-in round with a pair of wins over Atlant, two games which saw their offense getting going in a big way (winning 5-0 in the first game and 7-2 in the second) and Pautov got involved nicely in those offensive efforts, scoring a goal and an assist across those two games. He\'s finding a bit of momentum of late, and hopefully he\'s able to keep that rolling, as they kick off their first-round series this week.

Heikki Ruohonen

And then in some of the last remaining regular season action that we have left to talk about around here, Heikki Ruohonen is putting in some nice work. With just one game on the schedule over this past week, he made the most of it, putting up a goal and an assist in Dubuque\'s overtime win over Green Bay. This also kicked off what we hope can be a bit of a scoring streak for him -- we recall that he also had a goal and an assist in last weekend\'s game against Madison, which broke a two-game drought. With still about three weeks left in the USHL regular season, there\'s a lot of runway ahead of him still, but it would be nice to see him keep rolling and finish it out strong.

Honorable Mentions

The other bit of regular season action still unfolding, of course, is down in the AHL. And while the NCAA have taken over their building for a regional, the Phantoms are on the road up in Canada, and they\'ve turned it into a pretty successful one. After letting Friday\'s game in Belleville slip away from them, they responded in a huge way, shutting out the top team in the whole of the league, beating the Laval Rocket 3-0. And there was a lot to like from the growing prospect group putting in work on that team -- of the five goals scored on the weekend, prospects accounted for four of them, as each of Zayde Wisdom, Elliot Desnoyers, Ethan Samson, and Nikita Grebenkin all chipped in goals (Grebenkin also had an assist on top of his goal). Outside of that, Helge Grans was supporting the team\'s offense well, and he set up a goal and came away with an assist in both games this weekend, while Luchanko picked up his first points as a Phantom on Saturday in Laval, assisting on Garrett Wilson\'s goal.

There have been some flashes of positive production elsewhere in the prospect pool as well, as we saw Devin Kaplan get himself on the board with an assist in BU\'s regional semifinal win over Ohio State on Thursday, and then Noah Powell pick up an assist as well in Oshawa\'s opening win over Brampton to put themselves up in their series.

And finally, to end on a bit of a low note, things aren\'t going great over in the KHL playoffs for Yegor Zavragin, but it certainly isn\'t for lack of trying on his part. His team is down 0-2 in their first round series against Minsk, and Zavragin has started in both of those losses. His play hasn\'t been poor, to be sure, but he\'s kind of getting hung out to dry -- he\'s only allowed three goals in his first game and two in the second (respectable feats considering his teammates allowed 37 shots get through to him in each of those games). He\'s doing just about all we might expect to see from him given the situation, but the support just hasn\'t wholly been there. So it goes.

Talking Points