It was the first day of Flyers Development Camp on Monday and it felt good again to see hockey being played again. Even though it’s been a shorter break than we’re used to, seeing actual skates on ice with pucks and sticks instead of thinking about hypothetical trades or reading the latest trade boards or listening to the latest trade rumors. Actual hockey, sort of.
In the first instances of development camp, one prospect certainly stood out though: Maksim Sokolovskii.
While not every single analyst, prospect expert, scout, or fan, agreed with the Flyers trading down from 21st overall to then be a little more justified in taking the gigantic 6-foot-8 London Knights defenseman at 27th overall, it is certainly easy to see just a hint of what the Flyers front office envisioned the large Kazakh could become.
Maksim Sokolovskii is putting in the work at Flyers Development Camp
The gargantuan defenseman is known for being extremely violent on the ice, while also doing some more hockey-related activities well like retrieving pucks, winning puck battles at a very good rate, and laying out big hits that are still purposeful in winning possession back. This wasn’t a draft pick that was going to dazzle with some swift puckhandling or a prospect that was going to put up some crazy points in juniors so that we can look at Numbers Go Up and praise the front office for their fine work at drafting. This is a project; a long-term and slow-growing project that should be at at least a few more of these development camps before fully being ready for a full-time role in the NHL.
But for his first moment on the ice with a Flyers logo on his chest, Sokolovskii’s size was obviously the first thing that you noticed. He’s big. He’s huge. It’s insane that he’s just 17.
And just the more and more we saw of clips from the people that were out in Voorhees in late June to watch teenagers play hockey — like our own Maddie Campbell — and saw how Sokolovskii moved out on the ice, the more we started to see the vision.
He can clearly skate. That’s his strength other than, you know, his strength.
There’s nothing like getting a little excited after watching a defenseman prospect do the most mundane puck retrieval drill.
Maybe we’re just so depraved of actual Flyers hockey going on that seeing someone look like that and moving around like that feels more interesting than it should be, but just look at that guy. He’s a monster truck that has the agility of a remote-control drone. A player that size should not look that fluid on skates — he should be good at standing at the blue line and firing in terribly aimed slapshots in the general area of the net. That’s what we’re used to. And the guys who are that size and can move like that just have a step above everyone if they can get to the puck faster than you but also have a body big enough to box someone out.
Imagine a world where Sokolovskii is in the NHL, racing back for a puck with Cole Caufield. He would not only probably get their first but then could just sit on the Canadiens winger and squash him like a bug without even noticing it. That’s an extreme example but Sokolovskii already has NHL size. There are only four forwards currently in the NHL who are either Sokolovskii’s height or taller: Matt Rempe, Elmer Soderblom, Curtis Douglas, and Adam Klapka. And maybe we’re overevaluating a freshly drafted player’s talent, but none of those forwards can move the way the Flyers prospect can. He already has a physical advantage over most of the NHL with his size and mobility as a package.
Again, probably hyperbolic but just look at the way he pivots on the ice and how his mechanics all work in sequence to get him to where he needs to be on the ice. He’s just so fun to watch and we so desperately hope that all of this translates into an NHL job where he can be some sort of freakishly large player that can also move around the ice with aggressive purpose and speed.
There is also a world where our eyes are deceiving us and we’ve just had no real passionate hockey to watch for over a month now, but there’s something enticing watching just the first little moments of Sokolovskii on the ice as part of the Flyers.
