Flyers prospect stat report: Ruohonen rolling, Samson, Grans take step forward

It\'s a brand new year, with some brand new prospects, but it\'s the same old monthly stat report. For those new to the series: we\'ve spent some time throughout the month going through the prospect happenings on a week over week level, but now we\'re taking some time to take another step back, look at the big picture, and contextualize the month within their seasons as a whole. Let\'s get into it.

Prospects Playing In The NCAA

With the NCAA seasons being one of the last to start, there\'s the least to recap here, so we\'ll move quickly through this group. Leading the group by a pretty comfortable margin is Cole Knuble, who\'s doing really well to keep the ball rolling on the momentum and consistency he found in the back half of last season. Mix in the overall success his Notre Dame team has been finding this season, and we might well have the recipe for a breakout season for Knuble, if all goes well.

Most of the rest of the big names in this group are in more of chipping away at it territory. Each of North Dakota, Western Michigan, and BU have had middling to good starts on a collective level, and the play of our prospect group more or less matches that. Owen McLaughlin is cruising at a point per game pace, but he\'s yet to pick up his first goal of the season. Alex Bump is just below that point per game mark, but his pace is down a little from last season (.75 ppg versus .95 last year), but given the fact that he\'s only played four games so far, we won\'t overly read into that. And Devin Kaplan\'s scoring pace is also down a touch, but not to a worrying degree -- he\'s been given a bigger role to work with this season, and there\'s a lot more runway to make up some ground when everything starts clicking a bit more.

Prospects Playing In The AHL

Things are beginning to trend upwards for them, but the Phantoms were one of the lowest scoring teams in their conference through much of the month of October. This means that, while we don\'t have heaps of offense to recap here, the prospects did a good job of getting involved in the offense that the team was generating. Perhaps unsurprisinly, Samu Tuomaala has been leading this group in scoring by a pretty comfortable margin. Despite some bad luck in the injury department to end last season, and then to begin this preseason, Tuomaala\'s been more or less able to pick right back up where he left off last season. He\'s been a consistent contributor through the first month of the season, and seems to be working to add some more depth to his offensive game, which has been paying off.

Olle Lycksell is trailing behind, the next closest to Tuomaala, and while he\'s beginning to find some consistency in the assist getting -- a reward for the good work he\'s been putting in to create plays -- he\'s still incredibly snakebitten, and waiting for that first goal of the season. It\'s a notable difference from last year, when he was scoring a ton and doing it consistently, but not an indication of poor play, just unbelievably poor luck. Things feel like they\'re trending in the right direction for him, and we\'ll see how long it takes for him to finally break through.

The Phantoms are also getting a nice bit of offense from the back end this season, with Ethan Samson and Helge Grans each chipping in a goal, while Hunter McDonald\'s chipped in a pair of assists and Emil Andrae added one in his one game back with the team. Samson and Grans specifically seem to have stepped up and increasingly emphasized shooting from the point, getting a lot of shots on net, and it\'s working well as they both have been noticeably better at getting more shots all the way through and on net. The team as a whole is still working on getting the traffic they need in front to fully benefit from those types of plays, but they\'re working towards it. It\'s an interesting extra wrinkle for them to work with.

Prospects Playing In North American Juniors

October saw Heikki Ruohonen make his debut in the USHL with Dubuque, and while the expectation was that he might struggle through some growing pains that come with making the jump to North America from the Finnish junior leagues, but after a quiet first couple of games, he\'s taken off and hasn\'t really slowed down. The growing pains are still on the table, but this season is all about adjusting on the fly and making the most of this year of development before he ramps up again and makes the jump to college next season, and so far, he\'s off to a good start.

Oliver Bonk and Denver Barkey have both gotten off to pretty good -- albeit a little streaky -- starts in what will be their final season in London with the Knights. They aren\'t absolutely lighting the world on fire like we saw them do at times last season, but they\'re still getting off to good starts, and putting down foundations that they should be able to build off of well.

Jett Lucanko found some production right off the bat in his return to Guelph, which was nice to see. That team, frankly, isn\'t very good, and while Luchanko has the skillset to make offense appear out of nowhere at times, he can\'t do it all the time without support, so we do expect things to be a little bit up and down for him on the scoresheet, but that\'s not an area for real concern.

Prospects Playing in Europe

It\'s a relatively small groups of prospects still playing abroad, but much of this group has found a nice bit of production in the early part of this season. Pautov, though he\'s been a little bit streaky, is leading this group in points, cruising along at a point per game pace and doing well to clean up in the MHL.

Jack Berglund is also averaging out a nice bit of production, but it\'s been a bit of a weird year for him, as he spent much of October being bounced between the J20 and SHL levels. He seems to have stuck in the SHL, at least for the time being, so he\'s been able to start building some momentum there, and the hope is that we can see an uptick in scoring from him there, in turn.

Alex Ciernik is also starting his season down in the Allsvenskan nicely, as he\'s hovered around or just below that point per game mark for most of the month. He\'s been doing well to hit the ground running, something we weren\'t sure he was going to be able to do, worried the stop and start momentum from the previous season, from the injuries he dealt with, would be an issue, but he\'s pretty well avoided that entirely. We\'ll see what the rest of the season looks like, but he\'s off to a good start.

The Goalie Grab Bag

And finally, the goaltenders. Yegor Zavragin has been on an absolute tear to start this season, beginning with a scorching start with Sochi, which earned him a recall from his loan after just six games. The numbers haven\'t quite reflected the good work he\'s doing there, with the lower save percentage, but he\'s been playing very well, and having a much stronger team in front of him will help him out over the long run of the season.

Carson Bjarnason has had a bit of an up and down start to the season, but it all averages out to a respectable of season save percentage, one which he\'s already looking to be building on (but that\'s as much of a spoiler as you\'ll get, we\'ve cover that next month).

Kolosov is pretty well embedded in the mix with the Flyers at this point and we\'re more interested in what he\'s doing with his time at the NHL level, so we\'ll be brief: the Phantoms have started very slow this season and really struggled in the early goings and made things more difficult on him, and despite the numbers not being world beating, he was trending in the right direction over his last couple of games with the team.

And finally, with Kolosov recalled, Makiniemi is finally getting in for games -- well, game, just one in the month of October. It was a decent one too, and while he definitely looked a bit rusty at times (understandable for a goalie who hasn\'t played in about three weeks), he held up well and laid a good foundation for the rest of his season, now that he has a chance to build on it.

Talking Points