The Flyers’ season may be beginning to wind down, but that certainly hasn’t meant that we’ve been without our news happenings. The Flyers have announced that they’ve signed defenseman Hunter McDonald to a two-year entry-level contract, which will begin for the 2024-25 season.
McDonald, the Flyers’ 2022 sixth-round draft pick, has spent the last two seasons playing for Northeastern University, where he (this season) put up a goal and six points across 23 games played, and totaled two goals and 20 points over 58 games played. He’s spent the last few weeks since his season with Northeastern ended playing with the Phantoms on a try-out contract, and he’s registered two points over his first nine games.
The Flyers, of course, likely haven’t signed McDonald for the potential of his offensive upside — that hasn’t really emerged up until this point as a hallmark of his game. He’s a big (6’4, 205 lbs) defensive defenseman, and one would assume that they view him as something of a balancing counterpoint to the smaller, more offensive defensemen in the pipeline like Emil Andrae and Oliver Bonk.
But McDonald will be an interesting test for the newly rehabbed development staff that the Flyers have put together. He’s pretty raw, his skating already needed some polishing, and will need even more if he wants to be able to hang long term at the professional level, and, frankly, his game didn’t have a whole lot of pop at the college level. But clearly the Flyers’ staff sees something in him, and it will be interesting to see how they’re able to develop that in him as a professional. He might well be a little bit more of a project developmentally, but the Flyers are also in a good position now of not really needing to be in a rush for their prospects to be NHL ready. So we’ll see how this all shakes out.
