Maybe the most annoying and somewhat pointless exercise that so many fans do multiple times a season is look at who their team could’ve drafted instead of the one they did, because of how those players’ careers turned out and how different their team would look if they just made that decision on the draft floor differently.
It often gets fairly old — such as the Cam York over Cole Caufield decision that so many Philadelphia Flyers fans bring up — or just becomes yelling about something that they can’t change. But there is one decision that the Flyers recently did make on the draft floor that could be raising some questions right now.
At the 2024 NHL Draft, the Flyers had a famous sequence of transactions. They held the 12th overall pick, traded down to the 13th overall pick with the Minnesota Wild, and handed them potential top defenseman prospect Zeev Buium in the process. Buium was the centerpiece for the Quinn Hughes trade and is now in Vancouver. And then at 13th overall, they selected center Jett Luchanko — and that was possibly even more of a surprise than them passing on one of the best blueliners in the Draft.
Immediately after the Draft, Flyers general manager Danny Briere had to explain why the team didn’t select Buium in that spot (sorry if this is bringing up painful memories). He cited the likes of Cam York, Jamie Drysdale, and Emil Andrae all being undersized defensemen and that adding Buium would mean another one of those. That’s fair enough to at least understand where he is coming from and Briere explained himself.
But after Buium was gone, almost every single person expected them to select center Konsta Helenius with the pick, since he was projected to go in that range and played a position of need for the Flyers. But instead, they went with Luchanko. Helenius went with the pick right after to the Buffalo Sabres and is now contributing to that Sabres team who at the time of writing is in a hotly contested Game 7 against the Montreal Canadiens to punch their ticket to the Eastern Conference Final.
Helenius had a very good sophomore season in the AHL this past year — you know, since he was drafted out of Europe he has already played two full seasons in the AHL instead of dealing with the OHL nonsense that Luchanko is currently in the middle of — scoring 63 points in as many games. That earned him a spot on the playoff roster and after being just a black ace for the first round and for most of the second, got into the lineup with the Sabres’ back against the wall and has performed incredibly well. In the three games he has appeared in so far, he has two goals while averaging 12:25 time on ice, serving as the team’s third line center between Jack Quinn and Jason Zucker.
It helps to be insulated with so much talent, for sure, but there is just a gut feeling right now that there could be some regret in the Flyers front office as they see the player that would’ve been the chalk pick by all accounts to take just two years ago, contributing in a big way to a very good team, while there are severe question marks around their own selection.
Flyers drafted for positional need, but took the other center
This is not an article to bash Jett Luchanko. This writer still believes that there is a path forward for him to basically turn into (somewhat ironically) Helenius’s own teammate, Ryan McLeod. A middle-six center with incredible skating ability and can kill penalties while chipping in around 45 points. McLeod himself didn’t really see his offense come to life until he was 25 years old and Luchanko could follow that same path (hopefully he finds his scoring touch a little quicker).
But we can only deal with what is right in front of our eyes. We can go on and on (and every Flyers fan surely has) about the team passing on Buium — but that’s behind us. Now, it’s pointing fingers at the other center that they could have had that has a similar build and while Helenius was not a very quick skater during his draft year, has developed that side of his game and it’s evident now while playing for Buffalo.
All while Luchanko severely struggled to score in his Draft+2 year in the OHL and everyone from fans and management have been disappointed to not see him explode in his final junior year, as expected. It’s not like he didn’t score anything at all — while still with the Guelph Storm, Luchanko was scoring at a 1.55 points per game pace and if he kept that up through the season, we would be feeling much more positive about his outlook.
But since joining the all-star Brantford Bulldogs and scoring just under a point per game despite being surrounded by the best team in the OHL — albeit, he was playing on the wing and with too many similar players where his playmaking ability didn’t really get to shine — there is a feeling that we should lower our expectations for the prospect.
Helenius was cast as this slow-pace center that lets the game more come to him than be the active player on his line. It’s why some people ultimately were not super excited about his game but he was seen more of a “yeah, sure why not” prospect at the time because he projected to be just a solid middle-six center. Which is also a major reason why this regret could be temporary.
Why the Flyers could eventually not regret their pick
We can almost picture the conversation at the Flyers draft table perfectly. They didn’t want Buium. So, if they were picking between Luchanko and Helenius as two centers that could help this team in the future, it was ultimately going to be the same result in their minds.
If the end product that both of these players are going to be middle-six centers in the NHL at a similar level, then it’s just picking the player with the characteristics they like more. Would they rather have the Finnish guy that can slow the game down and be more of a sponge on the ice, just letting play get absorbed and then deliver some impact play? Or, have the guy with elite-level skating ability and some of the best defensive chops and detail work in the draft, but has struggled offensively?
The Flyers went with the latter.
But that’s what it’s all about. Teams are trying to project what this player is going to look like when they’re 23 or 24 years old and through their prime and the possibility that Luchanko is a much better fit for the Flyers than Helenius would have been, is certainly still up in the air.
There is a world that we see Luchanko have a great AHL season next year and has a similar trajectory to Helenius’s own season this year, by playing some big games down the stretch and popping up in the playoffs. It would just be a year later. And then we go from there and when both of these players are 24 years old, we could have a clearer idea of whether or not the Flyers made the right call.
But all we see right now, six inches in front of our face, is that one guy is contributing for a team playing a solid role on a team making a concerted effort to go deep in the playoffs, and the other had a disappointing season while playing junior hockey and got to stick his head into the postseason before getting swept.
That’s the reality right now of the decision that the Flyers front office made two years ago, but there is still room for it to look a whole lot better.
As much of a mistake it could be playing the “what if” game with your favorite team, it could be an equally large mistake judging those Draft Day decisions less than two years after the picks were made.
