Players to watch in Flyers Rookie Series

After all this time, we\'re back! It\'s been a long and arduous offseason, but at long last, we\'re finally back and games are being played.

The Flyers are set to kick off their Rookie Series against the Rangers this evening, with the first of two games taking place up in Allentown this evening. It\'ll be an interesting pair of games, as we\'ll be getting first proper looks at some of the newly drafted prospects as well as potentially some last looks at older prospects before they start competing for full time NHL jobs. So ahead of this first matchup, let\'s highlight a few players who we\'ll be keeping a particular eye on.

Players to watch

Matvei Michkov

It\'s the man of the hour and the moment we\'ve all been waiting for -- Matvei Michkov\'s official debut in a Flyers uniform. It\'s impossible to overstate the amount of buzz that\'s been surrounding Michkov since his arrival was announced and he signed his ELC, and it\'s all finally coming to a head.

Now, we want to be reasonable in our expectations, especially in a weird series like these rookie games often are, so we aren\'t going to lose our minds if Michkov doesn\'t absolutely dazzle in this very first showing, but getting a baseline will be useful, and we can go from there. We know there are heaps of potential there, but we also recognize that this is just the first step to him getting settled into the North American game.

That said, he seems to be just as excited to get rolling as the rest of us are to see it happen, and we still hope to see him do something cool and exciting. But time will tell.

Jett Luchanko

They\'re giving Michkov the best chance and setting to make some noise in this debut though, as he\'ll play tonight\'s game on a line centered by this year\'s first-round pick in Jett Luchanko. And they\'ll be interesting to watch as a pair -- we spoke already about how these two could be an excellent stylistic fit in the longer run -- but this will also be a first look for most Flyers fans, a proper introduction to Luchanko on his own.

There\'s still some work that needs to go into refining his game, but his speed makes him a flashy player, and he\'s all but certain to be a standout because of it. He\'ll be up against some older and more developed players, and it will be an interesting test of what he\'s able to do and how he\'s able to keep involved in play, despite a likely higher level of competition than he\'s used to. He\'ll be getting top minutes at even strength as well as on the power play, so it\'ll be a long look that we get of him, and we\'ll see how that all plays out.

Emil Andrae

Outside of the group of new arrivals giving fans their first look at them, we have players like Emil Andrae who have been through this before, gotten some experience playing professional games, and are now looking to take the next step up in their development. Andrae was a real positive on a Phantoms team that was pretty up and down for much of last season, and even in his first full season of North American play, he was able to hit the ground running and find some nice consistency. He received some pretty significant praise from his head coach during camp, and the consensus from those in the organization seems to be that he\'s close to pushing for an NHL job on a more full time basis (he began last season with the Flyers after a strong camp, we recall).

But once again, it\'s going to be a real uphill battle to earn one of those spots, given the logjam of defensemen in front of him on the depth chart. The Flyers certainly seem open and willing to give him a real run at it, but it\'s going to take a pretty remarkable showing for him to earn a spot on the opening night roster. It\'s very much in play, though, and his performances in this series are going to be the first step towards that.

Zayde Wisdom

Outside of the very biggest names taking place in this series, there are still a few more under the radar intriguing storylines to keep an eye on, and Zayde Wisdom, a somewhat surprising returnee to rookie camp, is certainly one of them. The last year and change has been admittedly pretty strange -- his 2022-23 season was a down year, but despite that, he came into last fall\'s rookie camp with some serious jump, came out as one of the real standouts, and talked a lot about working towards redefining his role at the professional level and finding his game again, but even after all that, he seemed to take yet another step backwards in his 2023-24 season.

So where do we stand? While we do remind ourselves that Wisdom is still just 22 years old and with a good deal of developmental road left ahead of him, he does need to start making some positive steps soon. He\'ll be one of the more experienced players in this group, and that should give him a bit of a leg up, a chance to put together another positive showing, and one which will springboard him to a strong start to the season. Fingers crossed.

Elliot Desnoyers

It\'s a similar situation to Wisdom\'s for Desnoyers -- while he showed some real promise in his 2022-23 professional debut, even looked close to competing for an NHL job, he took a real step back last season, looking at times rather inexplicably like a shell of his former self. This is going to be a big year for him, as he works to recoup his stock and get himself back on track, and giving him as much playing time, as much of a running start heading into main camp and the preseason feels like the right call.

And Desnoyers is being put in the best possible position to succeed in this setting and set a solid foundation for himself, as he\'s set to play on that line with Luchanko and Michkov for at least the first game of the weekend. If there\'s anything that\'s going to get him going again, that should well be it.

Bits and bobs (or, players not to watch)

Before we go, we\'ll touch on a couple of more housekeeping type bits, just to get that out of the way. The biggest and most notable absence from this rookie camp and pair of games, of course, is Alexei Kolosov, who\'s still embroiled in a sort of \"will he, won\'t he\" limbo as it relates to returning to North America to play this season. So far, things are leaning pretty heavily towards the latter, but who knows how things will change in the next few weeks. For now though, we\'ll be missing him in action.

And while we know Kolosov will be completely absent from the games, there\'s also a pair of players who are a bit questionable, as it stands. First, we have Denver Barkey, who\'s yet to participate in camp as he\'s working himself back from a bout of mono over the summer, as well as Carter Sotheran, who\'s dealing with a flare up of Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which kept him out of yesterday\'s session. Neither has been ruled out of the weekend\'s games entirely, but they both do have the night off on Friday. We\'ll see what happens for Game 2.

Talking Points