The Philadelphia Flyers’ season is over, and the playoffs are now in full swing. For the half the league whose summer has already begun, the focus is now fully on staffing adjustments and preparing for the draft. This year’s draft class is thought to be not nearly as deep as the previous one, making every pick that much more of a guess. Without any lottery magic, the Flyers find themselves drafting 12th this year following their end of season collapse.
In 2017, we witnessed this same show unfold before us. The Flyers had a decent season of ups and downs ultimately missing the playoffs and drafting 12th. Or so we thought….
The NHL uses a draft lottery system to avoid tanking! (a lot of good that does, eh San Jose?) There are several rule adjustments made in recent years, 1 of them stating that a team can only jump 10 spots ahead in the lottery. The hockey gods smiled upon Philadelphia in 2017 winning the lottery and landing the Flyers the 2nd overall pick.
This moment of joy would quickly become a moment of infamy in Flyers history. Ron Hextall would go on to shock the hockey world by drafting Nolan Patrick at 2nd overall. The hockey gods giveth, the hockey gods taketh away. Unfortunately, Hextall ignored the advice of Patrick’s injury history, disregarded the team’s definite need of a 1D and chose Nolan Patrick. Patrick would go on to suffer from a migraine disorder and several head injuries that would derail his career permanently. Nolan played 222 games in his career split between Philadelphia and Vegas scoring 77 career points.
Notable players taken after this franchise altering blunder are some smaller known players like Cale Makar, Miro Heiskanen, Elias Petterson, Robert Thomas and Nick Suzuki just to name a few. Morgan Frost would also be drafted 27th overall in the same draft. Oh and just for fun Jason Robertson was 39th that year shoutout to the Dallas scouting team.
So what do they do this year? If the Flyers once more win the lottery draft and end up with the second overall pick. Who will they choose? Will we see the Flyers bring home Mitchkov’s future linemate? There could be a lot of merit bringing home another Russian Phenom in Ivan Demidov, someone for Michkov to feel comfortable with.
Or do the Flyers select a center at 2? Filling a desperate need with Berkly Catton or Cayden Lindstrom. Adding Center depth as Couturier gets older is a primary need.
It is, of course, possible the 2017 horrors will repeat. If the pick fails once more it will only continue to make things more difficult to find high end talent. Nolan Patrick’s career was derailed by injuries, who knows where the Flyers would be if he could have played.
This draft is extremely important given the current state of the Flyers rebuild, hitting on this pick will help tremendously. Time will tell!
Written by: Anthony Spotts
photo credit: cbssports.com
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