The new season is continuing to wind up, but we’re back with the same old prospect report. Stick with us throughout the season as we provide updates on all of the news and top performances from the Flyers’ prospects all over the globe.
The News of the Week
Sine we last spoke, the Flyers made a swath of cuts from their training camp roster (which we broke down here, here, and here) but the biggest elements of note are that some of the older prospects like Samu Tuomaala and Massimo Rizzo were assigned to the Phantoms in time for the start of their training camp, a pair of the bigger name junior players in Jack Nesbitt and Spencer Gill were also returned back to their teams over the weekend. Also, in the world of not-quite transactions: Helge Grans is on waivers, and we assume he’ll be sent down tomorrow, so long as he clears.
The Flyers also provided a bit of an update on the lingering injury situations, announcing that while things are still more or less status quo with Karsen Dorwart and Oliver Bonk (who remain day-to-day officially), Ethan Samson took an injury which is expected to keep him out for the next 6-8 weeks.
Three Stars
Yegor Zavragin
Over in the KHL, now that the false start and bit of weirdness is well behind him, Zavragin is picking up steam quite nicely. Since we last spoke, he’s only gotten one more start, but it was another very good one — he stopped 28 of the 30 shots he faced in a 4-2 win over Sochi. This brings him up to a 3-1 record on the season at the top level, and a .946 save percentage and 1.75 goals against average. And while this is admittedly still a very small sample that we’re looking at and things could well go sideways quickly, you never know, for the time being these are numbers certainly worth getting excited about. Zavragin has taken a difficult situation and made the most of it, starting another season red hot, and certainly getting off on the right foot.
Nathan Quinn
Back in North America, while Quinn was held of the board in his season debut last week (after being one of the first cuts from Flyers camp and returning to the QMJHL), he’s gotten rolling nicely for Quebec since then — in his last three games, he has a goal and two assists, spread evenly over those games. These aren’t absolutely world-beating stats, but it’s a very solid start, and it’s nice to see him working towards building a bit of consistency in his early season play. With this being his second full season (and what appears to be final, as he has a college commitment with Northeastern University for next year) in the league, this should be a big one for him, and it’s a real positive to see him setting up a solid foundation to continue to build up from.
Alex Ciernik
Last time out, Ciernik was also still part of our group of players still looking for their first points on the season, but he finally worked himself out of that this week. He played in three games this week, and picked up both an assist in his Wednesday game for his first point on the season, and then quickly moved on to collect his first goal on Friday, and also put up a tidy nine shots on goal over that span. All of that, we should add, came in losses for Pelicans, as their losing streak extends to six games. So things clearly aren’t going super well over there for them on a collective level, but we’ll still offer a tip of the cap to Ciernik for finding a bit of production even in that difficult setting.
Honorable Mentions
In the world of NHL preseason, things have slowed down pretty significantly for those players in the prospect group who have managed to stick around into the back half of camp. Nikita Grebenkin had himself a very solid game on Saturday against the Bruins, picking up a goal in the process, while Jacob Gaucher also chipping in a goal in that sleepy showing in Hershey on Thursday — with Adam Ginning on the secondary assist — but that’s all the production to speak of this week. We’re still waiting around for a few more players to really break out, but it hasn’t quite happened yet.
Back in the WHL, Matthew Gard and Luke Vlooswyk (both part of the cuts from this past week) were able to get up and running with their junior squad, and to some pretty positive results. They both got in for just one game so far — a win for the Rebels over Lethbridge — during which Gard contributed a goal, and Vlooswyk, though he was held off the scoresheet, did still manage to rack up five individual shots on goal. Meanwhile, down in the USHL, Austin Moline’s game is starting to wake up a bit more, and he added to his points total on the weekend, chipping in an assist on Friday, in Madison’s loss to Dubuque, though he was shut down again in their win over Chicago on Saturday.
And finally, the shuffling around is going on a little longer for Ilya Pautov, as he’s back down in the VHL after a stint in the MHL. We’re hoping he can begin to settle in before too long, but he still managed to find a bit of production in the meantime, putting up an assist over his last pair of games played on the week.
