Last year, we witnessed what happens to a team when they don’t carry enough depth pieces entering a season. The Philadelphia Flyers’ back-end was unbelievably tested with 3 regulars being placed on IR and another one being traded ahead of the trade deadline within a span of a week or two.
This year could be more of the same, but on the offensive side of things with the organization not having much depth at the either the NHL or AHL levels.
Up front, the Flyers’ top-9 is more or less set and you can say the same for their supposed fourth line of Ryan Poehling, Noah Cates, and Garnet Hathaway. That would leave Nicolas Deslauriers as a rotational player heading into the 2024-25 season and considering how much they value his intangibles and how the organization joked about him becoming Matvei Michkov‘s best friend, there’s probably going to be a handful of games we see him taking part of.
Outside of Deslauriers, however, is where the real problems lie. The Flyers don’t have an extra NHL forward and the options from Lehigh Valley don’t bring about a lot of optimism. Olle Lycksell and Elliot Desnoyers come to mind considering they have played at the NHL level under John Tortorella, but they never really pushed the envelope.
Nevertheless, 2024-25 brings about new opportunities for youngsters like Lycksell, Desnoyers, Samu Tuomaala, and Massimo Rizzo as well as older players and veterans like Rodrigo Ābols, Cooper Marody, and Anthony Richard. The hope is that the Flyers avoid the injury bug but should that not be the case, we look at the few able-bodied candidates who would get the call up.
Last year, the Phantoms were paced by Marody’s 19 goals and 56 points in 68 games played. Following Marody was Tanner Laczynski’s 17 goals and 44 points in 49 games, Tuomaala’s 15 goals and 43 points in 69 games, and Lycksell’s 19 goals and 39 points in just 38 games. Desnoyers on the other hand had a down season compared to his rookie campaign in 2022-23 after he scored just 6 goals and 22 points in 63 games played compared to the 23 goals and 44 points he recorded the year prior in 65 contests.
The Flyers decided to bolster their attack by signing Ābols and Richard during the offseason with the former coming over from the Sweden and the latter having spent the year in Providence with the Bruins. They will be looked upon to provide secondary scoring at the very least with not so many household names or prospects ahead of them on the depth chart.
Of the homegrown talent, Lycksell looks to be the most poised, productive, and NHL-ready player in minors. Not only did he produce at a point-per-game pace last year but he was coming off a rookie campaign the year prior where he tallied 45 points in 53 games. He has also played in 26 games for the Flyers split up with 8 games played in 2022-23 and another 18 games in 2023-24 – where he scored his first career NHL goal and added 4 assists.
Lycksell was relegated to fourth line duties and averaged just 9:57 TOI, but at times showed some promise playing alongside Sean Couturier, who was relegated himself. There’s a good chance that the former 6th round pick from the 2017 NHL Entry Draft has a good enough training camp where he earns a spot with the Flyers to start the season but should that not be the case, he will likely be the first name called upon should they need extra bodies.
Two potential wild cards that could see NHL action in 2024-25 are Tuomaala and Rizzo. Tuomaala was drafted in the second round of the 2021 NHL Entry Draft and it certainly left a lot of people scratching their heads because the highly-touted Logan Stankoven was still on the board and ultimately taken the very next pick by the Dallas Stars. In fact, the Oulu, Finland native struggled mightily in his first couple of seasons post-draft but has really turned a corner which was bolstered by a stellar rookie season last year.
Although he was relegated to the second division in the Finnish league, Tuomaala flexed his muscles and tallied 26 goals and 46 points in just 29 games for Ketera Imatra of Mestis. He then had a very strong training camp, which allowed him to gain the confidence to become one of the Phantoms go-to targets down the stretch with 15 goals and 43 points on the year. He’s expected to lead from the front this year and hopefully take the step that many were hoping Desnoyers was going to take after his rookie season.
In Rizzo, the Flyers have a stellar playmaking forward that excelled at the collegiate level and was surprisingly acquired from the Carolina Hurricanes for the signing rights of David Kaše. It was always believed Rizzo was going to be a part of the initial trade package that was supposed to send Tony DeAngelo to Carolina in the summer of 2023 but it was vetoed by the NHL due to alleged cap circumvention. Eventually he found his way to the Flyers in the middle of the summer and posted a fantastic season in his swan song with the Pioneers.
The 23-year-old from Burnaby, British Columbia finished his third season at the University of Denver, where he recorded 34 assists and 44 points in just 30 games. He dealt with a few ailments along the way but was a key component to the championship run that ended up with the Pioneers securing their league-leading 9th NCAA title after they took down Cutter Gauthier’s Boston College Eagles in the finals.
Selected in 2019 with the penultimate pick (216th overall) in the draft by the Hurricanes, Rizzo scored 19 goals and 44 points in 42 games for the Coquitlam Express of the BCHL before taking his talents to Denver. He scored 12 goals and 36 points in his first year before taking it up a notch with 17 goals and 46 points in 38 contests in 2022-23. With his collegiate career coming to a close, expect Rizzo to stake his claim as one of the more skilled and preferred options for a Phantoms team that needs all hands on deck in the creativity aisle.
With Desnoyers, things are slightly different. He was drafted in the 5th round of the 2020 NHL Entry Draft and switched gears almost immediately. In 2020-21, he tallied 21 goals and 49 points in just 37 contests compared to his draft season, where he managed just 11 goals and 35 points in 61 games. He then followed it up with an extraordinary 42 goals and 88 points in 2021-22 and an additional 9 points in 5 post-season games. He was even selected to play for the Canadian World Junior team and was also named captain of the Halifax Mooseheads that year.
Desnoyers then added to his totals with a stellar rookie season that saw him light the lamp 23 times and it earned him a short 4-game stint with the big club that impressed Tortorella and the rest of the coaching staff. He entered the 2022-23 season as one of the better options in the minors but had an uncharacteristic down season and has since seen his name drop down the pecking order. With just 6 goals scored in 2023-24, Desnoyers is going to need to to turn things around in a hurry should he want to be considered as one of the top call-ups in the middle of the NHL season.
On the flip side, Ābols has had a journeyman type career with pit stops in the Russian circuits of the MHL and KHL, the Canadian junior leagues of the WHL and QMJHL, and he spent several years in the Swedish Elite League as well as one year in the North American professional leagues of the AHL and the ECHL. While he isn’t a household name, Ābols can be relied upon should the Flyers need a responsible two-way forward who could eat up fourth line minutes in a crunch.
After being drafted by the Vancouver Canucks in the 7th round of the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, Ābols spent one more season in the Canadian junior circuit before taking his talents to Sweden. Although his signing rights expired with the Canucks, he tried his hand at the AHL in 2019 but COVID-19 didn’t allow him to see through the season so he decided to return to Sweden in 2o2o-21. Since then, he’s scored 67 goals and 136 points in 195 games across 4 seasons with Örebro HK and Rögle BK in the Swedish Elite League.
Last year was his lowest scoring output in 5 seasons in Sweden with 14 goals and 26 points in 50 games but he made up for it with a strong post-season run that saw him light the lamp 5 times while adding 7 more assists along the way. Ābols is a big-bodied centre who stands in at 6’3” and 207 pounds and should provide the Phantoms with the necessary depth down the middle – which is something lacking in both the NHL and AHL levels.
After being drafted by the Flyers in the 6th round of the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, Marody spent the following 3 years with the University of Michigan before finally taking the ice professionally but with the Edmonton Oilers’ AHL affiliate in the Bakersfield Condors. Marody has his NHL rights traded to the Oilers in the spring of 2018 for a third round pick in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft. After 5 years with the Oilers, Marody returned to the Flyers organization as a free agent signee in 2022.
Marody starred in his final year with Michigan after he scored 16 goals and 51 points in just 40 contests. He followed that up with 19 goals and 64 points in 58 games during his rookie year with the Condors, which earned him a 6-game stint at the NHL level. He would then score 42 goals and 91 points in 91 games between 2020-21 and 2021-22 before joining the Flyers and subsequently the Phantoms.
Over his last 2 seasons, the 27-year-old has scored 34 goals and 96 points in 105 games, including an additional 8 points in 9 postseason contests. In terms of AHL production, Marody is as good as it comes and should he continue to thrive with the Phantoms, the Flyers could use his services at some point if injuries pile up.
Another player with tons of AHL experience is Anthony Richard. The 27-year-old who hails from Trois-Rivières, Québec has enjoyed a strong run in the minors over the last few seasons, which seemingly intrigued the Flyers’ brass enough to give him a shot. Playing for the Laval Rocket in 2022-23, Richard scored 30 goals and 67 points in 60 games and then added 25 goals and 55 points in 59 games last year for the Providence Bruins.
Richard has been an AHLer since the 2016-17 season while playing for the Nashville Predators’ AHL affiliate in the Milwaukee Admirals. He lasted within the organization until 2021-22 and has since played for 3 clubs over the last 3 years, including the Syracuse Crunch in 2021-22. He has 24 games of NHL experience with 2 games in Nashville, 13 games in Montréal, and 9 games in Boston, where he’s accumulated 4 goals and 8 points.
The former 4th round pick from the 2015 NHL Entry Draft will surely be depended upon by the Phantoms for his goal scoring this year and should be near the top of the pecking order in hopes of a call-up.
While the Flyers didn’t address their NHL depth this offseason, the hope remains with the crop of forwards to remaining as healthy as possible throughout the year. Deslauriers will more or less rotate on a consistent basis depending on matchups and players like Lycksell should be on standby if the Flyers need an extra body.
Nevertheless, Lycksell, Rizzo, and Tuomaala are the more skilled and creative options if the Flyers are looking for more than an able-body to simply eat fourth line minutes. They could role the dice with veterans like Ābols, Marody, and Richard, but it will all depend on they do individually for the Phantoms and if the Flyers are dealing with injuries at the NHL level.
