It’s NHL Draft season so we’re going to do the only thing there is to do (other than extensively go over the top available prospects this year), and that’s try to peer into a crystal ball and determine who might be the right pick for the Philadelphia Flyers with the picks they currently have.
As of now, the Flyers have just four draft picks this year. They traded their third-round pick away in the Joseph Woll deal, their fourth-round pick as part of the Trevor Zegras acquisition, and their fifth-round pick this year was the one that they attached to Sean Walker so that they can get their asking price of a first-round pick in return from the Colorado Avalanche. And, they didn’t acquire any additional picks so they’re just left with four of the seven that they are handed each year.
While that lowers the chances of them having some incredibly exciting draft selections, as they take major swings because they have so many picks or something like that, it does pose an interesting situation. Since, the Flyers won’t have much ammunition either to move around in spots. They could very well trade down multiple times from some of their picks and end up with some more picks — but from what general manager Danny Briere said during his pre-draft availability, the fact that they have a fewer amount of draft picks this year is fine with him since they drafted so much already.
But even with just four picks, we’re going to try to predict or do our own full-draft mock draft of the Flyers’ selections.
Doing a full 7-round simulation of the 2026 NHL Draft
Thanks to friend of the blog Will Scouch and his new website scouchsim.com, we can simulate a full seven-round NHL Draft better than before. This includes potential trades up and down, looking at the weighted average of each player taken, and all that fun stuff.
So we popped over to scouchsim.com, put ourselves down as the Flyers, kept the randomness at 40% (since it is very rare that drafts go in the consensus order and there is a reason why that is the default percentage), and decided to take a swing.
For this exercise we decided to just do one simulation and stick to it. While it would technically be more scientific if we ourselves did upwards of 50 simulations with the four picks and then did our own average of what prospects were available and who we decided to take, going with the very first one felt more raw and real and we didn’t want to keep on just doing more and more and more until we get a player we like at 21st overall or something.
And something to note: This is what we believe the Flyers would pick. We will provide reasoning, but this isn’t necessarily who we would draft in this situation, it’s who we think the Flyers would go after considering where they are now and what tendencies they have under assistant general manager Brent Flahr.
1st round, 21st overall — Elton Hermansson, RW/LW
Other players available: Ilia Morozov, J.P. Hurlbert, Xavier Villeneuve, Tommy Bleyl, Juho Piiparinen, William Hakansson
Elton Hermansson felt like the choice here. While we have seen other mock drafts list the Flyers as a destination for a big center like Ilia Morozov, getting the amount of skill that they are getting with Hermansson is undeniable. At 21st overall, to get a future top-six winger who can score a whole lot, feels like someone you just take and let them develop until they’re banging on the door.
Hermansson is already lighting it up in the HockeyAllsvenskan, with 11 goals and 21 points in 38 games — finishing as the leading scorer among the small number of draft-eligible skaters in that league — so he has professional experience. His shooting, puckhandling, and passing ability just screams like someone who can be an effective scorer in the NHL, and his skating isn’t too far behind to make him completely unprojectable.
Another reason why Hermansson just makes sense for the Flyers is that they have already been linked to the player. Cam Robinson of Elite Prospects mentioned that he was told that Philadelphia had a great interview with the Swedish winger and that he could be fairly high on their list. So, why not take the player we already have a little miniature report that the Flyers certainly don’t hate the player? While it would be nice to see them take the home-run swing on someone like Xavier Villeneuve, we just thought that would be a little too unrealistic in this spot.
Hermansson is under contract to play for MoDo in the Allsvenskan again next season, but after that he could certainly be over here playing for Lehigh Valley fairly quickly and could be on a fairly quick development path if everything breaks right. He’s an offensive talent that is undeniable — the other attributes will just need to play a little catch up and that’s a much higher-upside bet to make than getting another third-line center in the prospect pool.
2nd round, 53rd overall — Jack Hextall, C
Other players available: Niklas Aaram-Olsen, Brooks Rogowski, Maksim Sokolovskii, Thomas Vandenberg, Brek Liske
Sometimes, the NHL Draft is weird. The simulation handed us a player who the Flyers have been mocked to several times already and it just feels like an instant fit. While positional need is a little silly to focus on in the draft, if the Flyers take a winger in the first round, it’s hard to not see them taking a center or a defenseman with their second rounder. And Jack Hextall is just the perfect fit.
While there is obviously the last name and his distant relation to Ron Hextall, Jack is someone who the Flyers crave to have in their prospect pool. He’s a smart and strong two-way center who plays above his height of 6-foot-1. His skating isn’t the strongest, but he has more than enough hockey sense to make up for it. Hextall isn’t the type of Morgan Frost-esque player who would peak in junior just because they can’t play up to the pace, he can read the ice well and make up for his potential high-end mobility — or he could just become a much better skater like we’ve seen happen before and he becomes a real, total package.
Hextall’s ceiling might not be more than a smart third-line center that can kill penalties, but getting that in the second round is a massive win. Maybe he can be something more, since his anticipation is fairly high-end and that can work with more skilled teammates, but we wouldn’t bank on it too much. Regardless, the Flyers would be adding yet another toolsy, detailed-oriented center to the mix.
We could see the Flyers opt for size and if Oshawa Generals center Brooks Rogowski or London Knights defenseman Maskim Skolovskii is here, then they might need to prevent Keith Jones from having a heart attack in delight. I do like Thomas Vandenberg enough and Brek Liske projects as just a real solid and supportive right-handed defenseman, too. Basically, there were options that are not terrible, but Hextall felt too obvious.
6th round, 181st overall — Samuel Hrenak, G
Other players available: Dennis Nilsson (G), Marek Skelnicka (G), Ben Wilmott (C)
The Flyers do not have another pick until all the way in the sixth round at 181st overall (for now). While I could’ve played around with trading down from 53rd overall to get another one later on (because the wonderful scouchsim.com has that ability), it didn’t feel right.
So, here we are in the sixth round and I was thinking goalie. It makes sense that the Flyers would add another goalie to their prospect pool, just to keep the pipeline moving along since Yegor Zavragin and Carson Bjarnason are starting to age into their early-20s. There are some good ones available but I went with Slovakian netminder Samuel Hrenak.
Hrenak bounced around a lot this past season. Starting his year back in August representing Slovakia at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup for the U18 team, and then playing for the U20 national team in September either in the junior league or the second division — as for some reason the Slovakian national U20 team plays a whole lot of club teams in other leagues.
He started to find some consistency but it was in February when he made the big move to come overseas to play in the USHL for the Fargo Force. For nine games with the Force, Hrenak earned a .918 save percentage — while it an extremely small sample size, that would’ve ranked him second in the entire league.
But even if he’s just a sixth-round pick, there is some projectability for the 6-foot-3 Slovakian.
“Hrenák is an absolute dog — something he no doubt learned he needed to be to survive against pro competition in Slovakia. He pairs that engine with quick feet, which allow him to reach the play with his feet, even if he’s late to a read. He became more confident in his backdoor play reads and has the quickness and athleticism to extend and make those stops consistently,” the Elite Prospects 2026 NHL Draft Guide reads. “He’s also impressive on his posts, with confident and effective use in both the RVH and overlap positions. Hrenák often scans to anticipate plays, which allows him to execute reads by adjusting his depth and angle to tackle threats efficiently.”
Seems like a perfectly reasonable goaltender to bring into the fold.
7th round, 213rd overall — Alexander Grunin, LD
Okay, this one is more of a pet favorite. Unlike the other picks, for this 213rd overall selection, I didn’t go with one of the top projected players remaining, but I went with someone who I just have so much interest in and as a seventh-round pick, you can do a lot worse.
Alexander Grunin has been called as one of the draft’s best-kept secrets and we imagine that some team is going to fall in love with him as a mid-round pick, but he was still available here in one of the final selections of the draft. He’s a 6-foot-3, 176-pound, left-handed defenseman who has been playing in the middle of Russia for the MHL’s Sibirskie Snaipery Novosibirsk. But the thing is, he is an extremely good skater for his size and is willing to use his frame in an incredibly smart way to impact the game. He’s just completely and totally raw.
He still needs to put on a whole lot of mass for his height and doesn’t have the strongest puck skills, but there is a world where he uses his mobility to an elite level where he eventually makes the trip to North America four or five years from now after playing a few good years in the KHL and makes an impact in the NHL. A real long-term project who could be molded and grow into something really solid.
It’s a seventh-round pick, so why not?
If the Flyers were to walk away with something like this, even with just four selections, it would really add a whole lot to their prospect pool. The high-end skill in Hermansson, the projectable center in Hextall (who is also heading to Michigan State next season, by the way), another solid goalie prospect, and a long-term project that can turn into something fun.
Hopefully we don’t set the expectations too high before the Flyers take some prospects that not everyone is fond of beforehand.
