Philadelphia Flyers 2025 Top 25 Under 25, No. 6: Jett Luchanko

Welcome to Broad Street Hockey’s Summer 2025 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. 6: Jett Luchanko

2024-25 Primary League/Team: Guelph Storm (OHL)
2024-25 Statistics: 21 G, 35 A in 46 GP
Age as of 9/15/2025: 19 (08/21/2006)
Acquired Via: 2024 NHL Draft — Round 1, Pick 13

Jett Luchanko was a contentious draft selection the seconds his name left Michael Buffer’s mouth last year. The trade back by one spot, the selection of defenseman Zeev Buium by the Minnesota Wild, a player who was higher regarded than Luchanko heading into draft night — it was a series of events that left some fans who were soaking up as much public draft content as possible, confused.

But that was the past and since we’re still dealing with an annoying level of Cole Caufield comparisons anytime someone brings up Cam York, we hope that this draft decision doesn’t follow Luchanko around for much longer.

With the potential to make the Flyers roster out of training camp this season, and getting praised at just every opportunity possible, there is a future for Luchanko to have an impactful career. But, how impactful? Let’s see.

How did Luchanko’s 2024-25 season go? Is his stock trending up or down from where it was entering the year?

Luchanko had some immense hype at this time last year. After just being drafted and literally turning 18 years old just weeks before he went into his first NHL training camp, he impressed John Tortorella and the Flyers coaching staff to such a degree that he made the team. The only other player in his draft class to make their respective NHL team was first-overall pick Macklin Celebrini. That was it. A future all-star center and a guy the Flyers picked 13th overall who has such a fine detail game, it carried him to making four NHL appearances to start his season.

During those four games where he played 56 minutes and 13 seconds of hockey, Luchanko earned zero points, had three shots on goal, 10 shot attempts, was 17-for-37 at the faceoff dot and delivered six hits. And, off the stat sheet and with our own eyes, he didn’t look out of place at all. A couple misreads sometimes, but he excelled in the areas where some prospects take years to develop, at just 18 years old in the NHL.

But after a couple of healthy scratches and the team generally realizing that it probably isn’t best for his development to stick with the Flyers, he was sent back to the OHL’s Guelph Storm where he scored 21 goals and 56 points in 46 points. Luchanko easily led the not-good Storm team in points per game as their captain and among all Draft+1 skaters in the OHL last season, his 1.22 points per game was 12th-highest. The vast majority of those players were on excellent junior teams like the London Knights, Saginaw Spirit, and the Windsor Spitfires. Simply no one produced as much with not a whole lot around him in one of the best junior leagues in the world, than Luchanko.

Another day, another beauty Jett Luchanko assist pic.twitter.com/lcdTCx1B8T
— Nasty Knuckles (@NastyKnuckles) April 26, 2025

After his junior season wrapped up earlier than most (because Guelph easily missed the playoffs), Luchanko joined the AHL’s Lehigh Valley Phantoms to make it three teams (four if you want to count the disappointing Team Canada at the World Juniors) in just one season. In nine regular season games, the 18-year-old center earned just three assists, but it was during the playoffs where he finally grew to become so much more comfortable. In seven playoff games, Luchanko earned six assists to make it nine total points in 16 games. A perfectly respectable point total for someone who just legally became an adult that season.

If we want to take his season and wrap it up with a big ol’ thumbs up or down, most people should agree with Luchanko’s stock is trending up. His junior numbers didn’t reach triple digits like some players on all-star rosters could, but there were immense signs of growth such as scoring more goals than he did during his draft year in 22 fewer games. The haters will continue to hate and look enviously over at Minnesota’s prospect pool, but we’ll happily enjoy Luchanko’s upwards trajectory. Now, what happens next?

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

This is going to be a massive few weeks for Luchanko. As we all know, since this has been repeated ad nauseum by this point, it will either be playing for the Flyers or sent back to the OHL for what will be his final junior season.

It wouldn’t be an absolute disaster if the 19-year-old center gets sent back to juniors, but it would feel like a situation where at-best he does the exact same things and maybe gets traded to a better OHL roster for a playoff run. He then could put up those triple digits and we would just be waiting until the 2026 training camp for him to really hit the ground running.

But, if he does make the Flyers, one would have to assume there will still be a learning curve as there is with literally every single teenager to ever play in the NHL. If Trevor Zegras stays at center and Sean Couturier remains healthy, Luchanko would be slotted as a bottom-six center for the Flyers and it wouldn’t be terrible. Even if he averaged the same 14:03 TOI he did with the Flyers last season for his four appearances, that would be a solid amount of time to still not make his presence in the lineup a waste.

What we could expect if Luchanko is in that role — a bottom-six center that will probably play on the second penalty kill and power play units and average around 14 minutes a night — is to just see his detail work come alive. His incredibly active stick blocking passing and shooting lanes, his ability to be the F1 on a forecheck and use his speed to disrupt plays, his incredible vision to potentially earn some assists to get on the score sheet; all of that should be something we come to see from Luchanko in the NHL this season.

It might not be perfect or pretty, but he should be able to make an overall impact and not be a net-negative player while on the ice. That’s the expectation. We don’t even expect for him to score many points — if he ended the season with something like 11 goals and 26 assists, we would be over the moon. We can even just set the bar at 30 points for an ultimate goal for Luchanko this season. Ryan Poehling earned 31 points last season and he’s seven years older. Just be that but young and with so much more potential. That’s the expectation, or at least, a goal.

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

A championship team can always use a player like Jett Luchanko could become. A gutsy, two-way center that is as quick as anyone on the ice not named Connor McDavid, is an immense tool to have at your disposal.

For the Flyers, it just depends on the other aspects of the young center’s game coming to fruition so that they can reasonable push him up the lineup. If the offense develops into something more than making intelligent passes from the perimeter to set up his netfront teammates, then Luchanko could be slotted in as a player that is locked into the middle six. With the strength of present and future wingers for the Flyers, they could afford to have someone like Luchanko down the middle doing some of the greasy work and playing a strong possession game.

That’s the fit for the rebuild and right now, Luchanko has a step up on other center prospects like Jack Nesbitt…and the rest. So, it feels likely that Luchanko is going to be sticking around for a long time but it just depends on his development to see how large his role is when the Flyers are consistently trying to make the playoffs.

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

It is somewhat difficult to know what Luchanko’s ultimate upside is right now. We know what we can guess what he could become, but until we see him produce some amount of offense in the NHL, it becomes murky and more like we’re dreaming than putting a firm projection down.

In a world where he does show some offensive potential and ability to play with high-skilled wingers, then why couldn’t he be a makeshift first-line center? Someone who isn’t the best player on his line, but is the perfect complement to someone like Matvei Michkov. A center to retrieve pucks, be first on the forecheck, win back possession, to then make the job of his wingers incredibly easy. Which, why would the Flyers then deploy that type of player down on the third line? Make your stars get scoring opportunities easier and that could translate into a dynamic pairing down the line.

He wouldn’t be the Aleksander Barkov or Anze Kopitar type of first-line center that bends the game to his will, but he’ll let the wingers do that.

That, of course, is the very peak. Someone that can consistently be in the top six and play with skill no matter what. What more likely is going to happen is that Luchanko can settle into a role as a middle-six center who is the best penalty killer on the team and is on the second power-play unit. Somewhere in that archetype lies the most likely future for the 19-year-old from London, Ontario.

No matter what, still an incredibly useful player that eventually will have teams wanting one of their own.

Previously in Philadelphia Flyers Summer 2025 Top 25 Under 25:

Talking Points