Philadelphia Flyers 2024 Top 25 Under 25, No. 15: Massimo Rizzo

Welcome to Broad Street Hockey’s Summer 2024 Top Under 25! The series is back and with the Philadelphia Flyers focusing so much on the future, it’s more important than ever. Join us as we rank the 25 best players under the age of 25 for the next few weeks.

No. 15: Massimo Rizzo

Massimo Rizzo came into the Flyers organization as something of a lottery ticket -- flipped for the rights to David Kase last summer (though more like a bit of compensation for buying out Tony DeAngelo\'s contract, which allowed the Hurricanes to sign him after their initial trade proposal to acquire him was shut down by the league (got all that?)), he was a bit of an unknown, as a reasonably productive college player, but one with a bit of risk attached to him, as there was no guarantee that he would want to sign with the Flyers in the end. But this season, we saw him take a step forward and outright dominate at the college level, and with the Flyers being able to successfully coax him into signing in the spring and forgoing returning for his senior year, he\'s now getting settled in the organization, and coming into his professional debut as one of their more intriguing prospects.

2023-24 Primary League/Team: Denver (NCAA) 2023-24 Statistics: 10 G, 34 A in 30 GP Age as of 9/15/2024: 23 (6/13/2001) Acquired Via: Trade for David Kase on August 9, 2023

How did Rizzo\'s 2023-24 season go? Is his stock trending up or down from where it was entering the year?

It was a bit of a weird season for Rizzo with really high highs and some pretty low lows. On the one hand, Rizzo, in his third season with Denver and now having been added into the leadership group, saw his production veritably explode. He was a very consistent contributor for Denver weekend over weekend, and he put up an impressive 44 points over 30 games played -- a pace with, had he played the whole season, would have seen him finish the season third in scoring across the whole of the NCAA.

But, of course, on the other hand, he didn\'t play the whole season. A high-ankle sprain he sustained in February really lingered on him, sidelining him until the Frozen Four, and while he played somewhat limited minutes and it was clear he still wasn\'t completely healthy (this was confirmed when the rehab from it still kept him from being a full participant in Development Camp in July), he showed some real positive flashes, and his dedication to getting back out there and helping his team -- who would ultimately beat Boston College to come away with the National Championship -- is admirable in a way.

All in all, despite the injury setback, we saw Rizzo take a really nice step forward this season as he asserted himself as one of the top players in college hockey. And that\'s not too shabby at all for a player who, just a year ago, was something of a throw-in on the series of trades to get Tony DeAngelo off the books.

What are we expecting from Rizzo this season? What should we be looking for from him?

This season, though, is when things are going to get really interesting for Rizzo. He\'s now signed his ELC and he\'ll be officially graduating to the AHL (he was around the team after his season with Denver ended last spring, but that ankle injury kept him from actually getting into any games). And while, as an older player coming from the most difficult and physical conference in the NCAA, we would expect that the jump wouldn\'t be quite as large as it would be for a player coming straight from Juniors, this is still a big step up in terms of quality of competition, and we still expect that Rizzo will have to work through some growing pains. The game is going to get a little faster and a little more difficult for him, and he\'s also not going to just be handed the same number and quality of minutes that he\'ll be used to getting at Denver, and earning the trust of a new coaching staff is going to be another challenge for him. The work that he\'s done up until this point suggests that he should be able to find a nice bit of success in the AHL, but we\'re not going to bank on him being able to clean up in this league straight from the jump.

How does Rizzo fit in the Flyers’ rebuild? Is it likely he’s going to be a part of the next good Flyers team?

We\'ve been talking a lot so far in this series about the group of forward prospects who project to be good middle-to-bottom six options for the Flyers in a few years, and Rizzo is another one who fits firmly in that group. He still has a good bit of developmental road in front of him -- which is fine, because it will also be a little while before roster spots on the NHL team begin to open up anyway -- but if he can continue to take steps forward and keep pace at the professional level and figure out how to continue to be effective when he has fewer minutes to work with, the potential to be in the running for one of those spots is there. The race is wide open, but he\'s right there in it.

What do we think Rizzo\'s ultimate NHL upside is, and how likely is it that he gets to something approaching that?

While we said that Rizzo seems to be pretty firmly in that group of players who could be competing for middle of the lineup spots with the Flyers in a few years, but we should also note that there does seem to be a bit of extra boom or bust potential with him. It\'s just by nature of the type of game he plays -- he\'s not exceptional at any one thing, and while some players are able to adapt to more limited usage and become strong utility-type players in the NHL, still others struggle to figure it out when they\'re not placed in exactly the right role with the right linemates, and that\'s not something that the Flyers can guarantee.

We won\'t really know which side of that Rizzo falls into until he gets some actual professional games under his belt, but it\'s something we\'ll have to keep an eye on as he settles in with the Phantoms.

Previously in Philadelphia Flyers Summer 2024 Top 25 Under 25:

Intro / Honorable Mentions

No. T-24: Spencer Gill

No. T-24: Jack Berglund

No. 23: Elliot Desnoyers

No. 22: Carson Bjarnason

No. T-20: Alex Bump

No. T-20: Alex Ciernik

No. 19: Adam Ginning

No. 18: Devin Kaplan

No. 17: Yegor Zavragin

No. 16: Hunter McDonald

Talking Points