Flyers prospect stat report: Samu Tuomaala finding his game, Alex Bump on the rise

We\'re gearing up for a big week of prospect talk around here, but before we get too deep into it, let\'s take a step back and dive into how the prospects have been doing on the stat sheet up to this point.

Prospects Playing In The NCAA

Beginning in the NCAA, the month of January was what the bulk of the season has been, in truth -- the Cole Knuble and Alex Bump show. They\'re now tied for a lead in overall points among this prospect group -- which feels fitting as well, considering as they both got nods for the Hobey Baker award -- and have proven to be consistent drivers of offense on their respective teams. And this is impressive for the both of them, but the particulars are in their own ways. That is, Knuble is driving offense on a team that hasn\'t had much to go around this season, and sits down in the basement of the Big Ten standings. Meanwhile, though Bump started his season reasonably well, he\'s been heating up in a big way down the stretch, and that\'s good news, as he\'s building momentum for his team at just the right time, with the games meaning more and more as the NCAA tournament draws nearer (Western Michigan, by contrast, is tops in the NCHC and is expected to make some noise come tournament time).

Prospects Playing In The AHL

The numbers for the prospect group on the Phantoms from January aren\'t stellar, but scoring was down for the team as a whole on the month, so it\'s hard to get too worked up about that. But even within that, we had a few notable steppers forward among the prospect group.

Probably the most encouraging among that group came from Samu Tuomaala, who\'s finally started to see his scoring come back to him. He was second in total points scored on the month among this group, but more critically, he put away his first goals since all the way back in November. It\'s almost a little poetic -- that lengthy goals drought began after a two-goal game back on November 27 against Hartford, and ended on January 29 with a two-goal game in Bridgeport. Now, there\'s still a lot of work left for him to do to build his game all the way back up, but there\'s a real feeling that a boost in confidence for him will help him jump start that process a bit more.

Away from that, Zayde Wisdom\'s continued to tap into his scoring touch, and while he\'s been a little inconsistent week over week, the zoomed out look at the month is still quite solid. Emil Andrae\'s also gotten involved nicely in his short time back with the team, which isn\'t exactly a huge surprise -- he\'s shown pretty clearly by now that he\'s too good for this league -- but it\'s been good to see all the same. And Massimo Rizzo has taken a big step forward in terms of his production as well, and this has felt like it\'s been a long time coming. After taking some time to get back up to game speed and acclimated with how things are run on this new team, he\'s been getting some good chances, and now they\'re finally starting to go in for him.

Prospects Playing In North American Juniors

On the flip side, it was a productive month pretty much across the board in the junior ranks. Denver Barkey once again ran away with the lead in production, as he got on a heater after being returned to London and once again being left off the World Junior roster, and he hasn\'t seemed to slow down in the slightest since then. Jett Luchanko has also been contributing really well in a much less favorable situation (that is, on a much weaker Guelph team), and a trio of defense prospects in Bonk, Gill, and Sotheran have been getting nicely involved in the offensive side as well, at least of late.

And finally, Noah Powell has been producing well in his first handful of games since his change of scenery from Ohio State to Oshawa of the OHL -- maybe not a huge surprise to see from a player who\'s a little older and a little more physically mature, but it\'s still been nice to see him hitting the ground running and ostensibly getting some of his confidence back.

Prospects Playing in Europe

Things are still pretty quiet in the European skaters department. Alex Ciernik had a reasonably productive month as far as the goals are concerned, but that\'s made up the bulk of his production for the month. Ilya Pautov\'s also building back in the right direction -- his eight points on the month are certainly respectable, and he\'s closing back in on that point per game mark, which would be more or less where we\'d ideally like to see him be by the end of the season, given the caliber of the league he\'s playing in. But we\'ll see how that all shakes out.

The Goalie Grab Bag

And finally, for the goaltending group as a whole, it wasn\'t a great month. Pretty much across the board, for each active goaltender, things have been trending lightly downward. But none of this should be cause for major concern, of course. Kolosov has played so little that it\'s understandable that when he is getting in for games, he\'s having to shake off a bit of rust. Zavragin\'s Goals Against Average has dipped the most, but he\'s still comfortably below three, which is a good spot to be in. And Bjarnason\'s season averages are still hovering (if only slightly) his numbers from last season, and have not yet dipped below. There\'s still plenty of space for rebounding, and nothing\'s getting near dire yet.

Talking Points