Flyers Farm Stars: Yegor Zavragin heating up, Noah Powell making noise

Trade deadlines have come and gone and things are more or less beginning to return to normal around the prospect pool. We’ll check in with the going on this week as playoffs are nearing (and in some places, already kicking off). Let’s get into it.

The News of the Week

Things have begun to settle down around here again. The big bit we have here is an injury update on a pair of prospects on the Phantoms -- while both have been out since March 1, Massimo Rizzo is officially day-to-day with an upper body injury, but Samu Tuomaala is dealing with a lower-body injury that\'s going to keep him out for 6-8 weeks in total (meaning we\'re closer to 4-6 at this point).

Three Stars

Heikki Ruohonen

We’ve got some different names breaking into this section this week, which is a fun change. First up, Ruohonen had a productive week, putting up two goals and an assist across the three games he played last week. Those were spread across his first two games of the week, and saw him keeping the ball rolling nicely after finding a bit of momentum in the previous week, but he was held off the board in Dubuque’s Sunday game, and his five-game points streak was brought to an end. Still, he’s putting in some good work down the stretch, and hopefully he’ll be able to get right back to top form for his next weekend’s slate of action.

Noah Powell

Speaking of finding momentum down the stretch run, Noah Powell is continuing to rolls up in Oshawa as their regular season comes closer to winding down. He had a goal and two assists over his last two games played with them, and he’s cruising just under a point per game production pace, with 19 points over his 23 games played, to date. He’s been a nice addition to that Generals team, and he really seems like he’s been getting his confidence back as he gets more and more games under his belt in that league. He’s getting hot at just the right time, with the start of the playoffs just a few short weeks away.

Yegor Zavragin

And finally, despite things being a little up and down for him game over game, at least through this back half of the season, last week was undoubtedly a good one for Yegor Zavragin. He got the start in both of SKA St. Petersburg’s last two games and came away with two wins — the first saw him stop a perfectly respectable 19 of 21 shots he faced, and then in the second he rose to an even more difficult occasion, and only allowed one goal on 30 shots in the second game of the week. All told, it was just about as solid of a week as might be asked of him

Honorable mentions

It was a slightly quieter week for the Phantoms, but still productive enough. Zayde Wisdom stepped up as their biggest producer among the dwindling active prospect group, with a goal and an assist across his pair of games played. Jacob Gaucher also got involved in the scoring, picking up a goal of his own, while Helge Grans came away from the road trip with an assist. The biggest news from this group, of course, is that Aleksei Kolosov finally got back in for a game, as he was given the start in the second of those two games down in Charlotte. It was sort of a weird game — the Checkers were putting a lot of pucks in the general direction of the net, but really struggled to get many of them actually on goal. This made for, at least on paper, a relatively low event game for Kolosov, as he only faced 23 shots in total. Of those 23, he stopped 21, and though he looked a little shaky at times, he kept things locked down enough to secure the win for the his team in the end.

Elsewhere in the world, Alex Ciernik wrapped up his regular season on a high note, capping things off with a goal and an assist across his final three games played, bringing him up to 11 goals and 23 points across 46 games.

Back stateside, regular seasons in the NCAA are also continuing to come to a close. Over in the NCHC Alex Bump closed things out on a high note with a goal and assist across Western Michigan’s pair of wins over Miami to wrap up their last week of regular season action, a scoring output that Owen McLaughlin matched over North Dakota’s last two games (though they didn’t find the same level of collective success, splitting their last two game series with Omaha). Over in the Hockey East, Devin Kaplan has continued his hot streak to end the season, and he put up a goal in BU’s last game of the season, a 6-1 win over Vermont.

And then in the Big Ten, their postseason tournament has already kicked off, and Cole Knuble and his Notre Dame teammates have begun theirs in a huge way, pulling off a major upset of Minnesota in three games last weekend, punching their ticket to the semifinal, where they’ll face off against Michigan State. In that last matchup, though, Knuble factored in in a big way, putting up a goal and an assist across those three games, and they’ll need him to keep on rolling if they want to keep this momentum going, and their push for a place in the NCAA tournament in a couple of weeks.

And finally, it was another quite solid week for another pair of prospects up in the OHL (still just a pair though, as Denver Barkey remains out with an injury). His teammate, though, had a reasonably productive week, with Oliver Bonk picking up two assists across his three games played. Both of those assists came in London’s win over Guelph, to boot. Luchanko also had an assist in that game, and picked up two more across his remaining three games on the week.

Talking Points