ANOTHER UPDATE, 3/20: The community ballot is now closed. The series will begin next week. Thanks to everyone who participated!
UPDATE, 3/14: So, uh, things have changed. The Flyers and the NHL, as you surely know by now, will not be playing hockey for some yet-to-be-determined amount of time in the future, if at all again this season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, we’ve got a hockey-less void here and we don’t exactly need to compress this into a very short period of time like we were planning to.
So, we’ll extend the community ballot to remain open until the end of the day on Thursday, March 19. We’ll plan to run the series beginning the following week, though what exactly it will look like is still a bit up in the air. We’ll figure it out.
So get those rankings in!
Original post below.
The Flyers are in the middle of their best season in a decade and are on a nine-game winning streak. So what are we going to do? Talk about prospects!
(/crickets)
That’s right, friends, our twice-yearly Flyers Top 25 Under 25 series is back. This is a time where we get together and rank the value of each of the Flyers’ players and prospects that have not yet turned 25 years old. We typically do a set of longer, more in-depth profiles in the summer, and we do a mid-season check in during the winter. Typically, we do it a little earlier in the season than this (usually around the All-Star break), but due to some screw-ups on my end, we’re getting it out a bit later than usual.
Anywho! As always, one of the ballots here will belong to you, the people. Anyone who’s interested in contributing to our ranking can do so by filling out a Top 25 Under 25 ballot at this link. You can rank the players on the list from 1 to 25 by whatever methodology you like — best player right now, highest upside, “trade value”, etc. When we’ve closed down the survey, we’ll sum up the results of all of the ballots we’ve received and line the final results up alongside each of the ballots that our staff submits.
But before we do that, a quick note on the elephant in the room.
As you assuredly know, Flyers forward Oskar Lindblom was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma back in December. He is out for the remainder of this season, and at this time we do not know what the road back to hockey looks like for him. Lindblom was having an excellent season for the Flyers before his diagnosis, and we think that when he conquers cancer and makes it back onto the ice he’ll continue to kick ass for this team.
Still, within an exercise as ultimately trivial as this one is, the question of how to handle a promising young player who has to deal with something like this was one that we, as a site, didn’t quite know how to handle. We chatted about it a bit, and didn’t want to make any of us (or you) have to try and uncomfortably guess what’s going to happen with Oskar and how he’ll look when he eventually gets back in the game. Also, we wanted to show our support for him in any way we can, even one as small as this.
So we reached the decision that, and pardon me for ruining the suspense here, Oskar Lindblom will be the No. 1 player in the Winter 2020 25 Under 25. He will not be on our ballots or the community ballot and will be slotted at #1 on every ballot we receive. Everyone else is fighting for No. 2 this time around. We hope you all understand.
With that acknowledged, some other quick notes:
- The survey will technically let you enter as many rankings as you want, but we will ignore everything after 25 (or, in this case, 24).
- Please only fill out one ballot.
- We reserve the right to remove ballots that are incomplete or appear to be completely detached from reality in some way or another.
- Remember: player #1 should be your best/top-ranked player, #2 should be your second-best, and so on./
Please submit your ballot by 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, March 19. Thank you!
