This week, as a precursor to the start of the Flyers' full training camp, the organization will hold its first Rookie Camp in two calendar years. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no Rookie Camp held before the abbreviated 2020-21 NHL training camp.
Rookie Camp: 3 Storylines to Track
This week, as a precursor to the start of the Flyers' full training camp, the organization will hold its first Rookie Camp in two calendar years.
Two years ago, the buzz at Rookie Camp focused on three players: Joel Farabee, Morgan Frost and Isaac Ratcliffe.
A 19-year-old Farabee, the first Flyers player born in the 2000s, had recently turned pro after one collegiate season at Boston University and a solid performance for Team USA at the 2018-19 World Junior Championships. Frost was coming off of back-to-back stellar Ontario Hockey League seasons for the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds (112 points in 67 games in 2017-18 and 109 points in 58 games the next year) along with posting eight points in five games for Team Canada at the 2018-19 WJC. Ratcliffe was coming off seasons of 41 and 50 goals in the OHL for the Guelph Storm. In the latter season, he followed it up with 15 playoff goals and 30 postseason points for an underdog Storm team that won the OHL championship and a trip to the 2019 Memorial Cup.
Two years later, Frost and Ratcliffe are among the players on the Flyers' Rookie Camp roster.
Farabee is now an established regular in the Flyers' lineup.He recently signed a six-year contract extension that will take him through the 2026-27 season. Frost played in the American Hockey League All-Star Game as a rookie in 2019-20 and scored goals in each of his first two NHL games amid a somewhat uneven debut season. In 2020-21,Frost earned an opening-night NHL roster spot on the Flyers before being lost to a season-ending shoulder injury in the second period of his second game. Ratcliffe has struggled offensively at the AHL level through his first two professional seasons but improved in terms of his two-way game and board work. A fractured rib and collapsed lung limited his effectiveness in 2020-21.
This year, in addition to 2017 first-round pick Frost and 2017 second-rounder Ratcliffe, the Flyers Rookie Camp roster includes highly touted 2019 first-round selection Cam York (who made his NHL debut late last season), 2020 first-round pick Tyson Foerster and 2021 second-round pick Samu Tuomaala.
Here are three storylines to track over the course of Rookie Camp leading into the start of NHL camp.
1. Who will stand out from the pack?
Rookie Camp does not have a direct effect on a team's opening night NHL roster. Even if a youngster excels in Rookie Camp, the real test will come come when he's competing among NHL players and playing in preseason games to determine whether he will he will make a serious bid to crack the NHL roster to start the season or, at minimum, put himself in position to be one of the first callups.
Two years ago, Farabee did the latter. He started the 2019-20 regular season in Allentown with the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms but parlayed a strong showing in Rookie and NHL camp and a quick start to the AHL season into a quick callup to the NHL roster.
That same year, two training camp dark horses, Connor Bunnaman and Carsen Twarynski performed consistently well throughout September and ended up on the opening-night NHL roster. Mikhail Vorobyev did the same in 2018, opening the season in the NHL.
There's another lesson to be learned from these examples: sustainability. A strong September can springboard a young player to an NHL roster spot to begin the regular season. However, that level must be maintained if the player is to maintain his hold on an NHL roster spot. The bar will get raised even higher come October.
Former Flyers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky is an example of a player who came out of nowhere in his first NHL Rookie and full roster camp and went to prove that his standout performance was not an illusion: He was a bonafide NHL goalie.
Back in 2010, Bobrovsky entered the Flyers Rookie Camp with an organizational expectation that he'd spend a season in the AHL with the Phantoms after being signed out of the KHL as an undrafted rookie free agent. Instead, Bobrovsky had such eye-opening Rookie and NHL Camps that he made the NHL opening-night roster and ended up being the starting (and winning) goalie in the Flyers' opening game in Pittsburgh. He never played a game in the AHL.
Go back to 1998. The late Dmitri Tertyshny, a low-profile prospect drafted in the sixth round three years earlier and widely expected to spend a spend a full year in the AHL, impressed Bob Clarke and Roger Neilson in main camp to the point that he made the NHL team out of camp. He went on to spend the entire season in the NHL before the tragic offseason boating accident that took his life at age 22.
Surprises such as these do not happen every year or even most years. But part of the value of Rookie Camp is to provide opportunities such as these for players to stand out from the pack. Additionally, the transition from Rookie Camp to NHL Camp a week or so later is an eye-opener for many prospects about how much higher the bar gets elevated when they play among NHL players. Soon enough, they'll be doing drills and scrimmaging against more experienced and, in many cases, more physically mature players.
Wade Allison and Tanner Laczynski (who is close to receiving medical clearance following hip surgery) are both a little older and more experienced than the other Rookie Camp roster players. Both have four collegiate seasons plus one pro season split between the AHL and NHL levels under their belts.
Allison and Laczynski are both in the mix to potentially win NHL jobs out of camp with the Flyers. Salary cap constraints will likely limit the Flyers to carrying 13 forwards (rather than 14) on the opening night roster.
2. Samu Tuomaala and Tyson Foerster: AHL or OHL?
Selected by the Flyers with the 46th overall selection of the 2021 NHL Entry Draft, Finnish right wing Tuomaala has made no secret that his immediate ambition is to earn an American Hockey League spot with the Phantoms in 2021-22.
Because he was drafted from a European team (Finland's Kärpät Oulu), the 18-year-old Tuomaala is exempt from the CHL/AHL age rule. He'd be permitted to play in the AHL if Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher, assistant general manager Brent Flahr and senior advisor on player development Mike O'Connell feel that the player is ready for that jump.
If not, the player will be assigned to play for the OHL's Sudbury Wolves. Sudbury selected Tuomaala in the first round of the 2020 CHL Import Draft.
Most likely, Tuomaala faces an uphill climb in Rookie and NHL Camps to earn an assignment to the Phantoms. Although he starred for Finland at the 2021 Under-18 World Championships in Frisco, Texas, he played sparingly for Kärpät in five games last season in Liiga (Finland's top professional league). The teenage player is still physically immature and has work to do on his all-around game. That said, his pure speed and hands made him a standout during the Flyers' recent Development Camp.
The American Hockey League shapes up as a tougher test for young players in 2021-22 than it was last year. In 2020-21, teenagers such as Folerster were able to hold their own and then some while being permitted to play in the league due to the pandemic-driven delay (and eventual cancellation) of the OHL season. This time around, there are no NHL Taxi Squads to subtract veteran various AHL/NHL "tweener" talents from AHL rosters during the season.
Foerster will not turn 20 until January 18, 2022. Most likely, the Flyers' 2020 first-round pick will be back with the Phantoms in 2021-22. There will be a CHL/AHL age rule exemption for the upcoming granted to players who were in the AHL last season. Foerster fared well enough in the AHL last season and during Development Camp to have an inside track at a spot on the Phantoms.
Nothing is set in stone, however. Foerster will still have to earn his spot with the Phantoms during Rookie and NHL Camps. Tuomaala will get the chance to show that he seems ready to handle a pro league, both on the ice and in terms of adjusting to day-to-day life off-the-ice in a new country.
Both Foerster and Tuomaala are slide-rule eligible this season. That means they would not burn a year off their NHL entry-level contracts if they play at the AHL (or OHL) level in 2020-21.
Defenseman Mason Millman also played in the AHL last year for the Phantoms. However, he turned 20 in July, so he is no longer slide-rule eligible. Millman enters the Rookie and NHL Camps aiming to prove that he's ready to be an AHL regular under new Phantoms head coach Ian Laperriere and assistant coaches Jason Smith and Riley Armstrong. He dressed in 13 games for the Phantoms last season.
Off-season shoulder surgery will shelve 19-year-old right wing Zayde Wisdom for most or all of the first half of the 2021-22 season. When he's cleared to play, the organization will have to make a decision whether to assign him to the Phantoms (for whom he played well last season) or to the OHL's Kingston Frontenacs. Given the length of time that Wisdom will have missed by he returns, a half-season step back to the major junior level may be in order.
3) Rookie Free Agents: Will Any Earn an ELC?
Prospects who go unselected in the NHL Entry Draft can get a second chance at catching on with an NHL organization as free agent invitees to an NHL Rookie Camp. In order to gain such a player's NHL rights, the NHL organization must sign him to an entry-level contract. Otherwise, the player goes back into the NHL Draft pool for the next year.
Note: This applies to players who went through either one or two NHL Entry Draft cycles without being selected. At age 20, the player is no longer eligible for the Entry Draft but can sign an NHL or minor-league contract to turn pro immediately or may go back to play an over-age season of junior hockey and try again one final time the next offseason.
Standing out in Flyers Rookie Camp as a free agent invitee after going unselected in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft is how ex-Flyer Phil Myers earned an entry-level NHL contract in 2015. This was also the path that current Philadelphia prospect Egor Zamula took in 2018 to land a contract with the Flyers after no team selected him in the Entry Draft a few months earlier. In 2020-21, Zamula made his AHL debut with the Phantoms and appeared in two NHL games with the Flyers. He will be a player to watch in 2021 Rookie Camp and the preseason camp with the Flyers. Even if he returns to the AHL for the regular season, Zamula is an NHL callup candidate for the upcoming season and a longer-term candidate for a full-time NHL spot if he continues to develop as hoped.
Sometimes, a free agent invitee may not do quite enough in Rookie/main camp to earn an immediate NHL contract but it's a building block for his future. Back in 2008, QMJHL forward Mike Hoffman did not get selected in the NHL Entry Draft but earned a free agent invite to the Flyers Rookie Camp in September. He did not receive a contract offer but had a breakout year in the Q during the 2008-09 season and was selected by the Ottawa Senators in the fifth round of the 2019 NHL Entry Draft. Hoffman has gone on to have a solid NHL career as a goal-scoring right winger.
The free invitees to the Flyers' 2021 Rookie Camp got their feet wet at the team's Development Camp in late August. The players: forwards J-R Avon, Ethan Burroughs, and Nolan Ritchie along with defensemen Quinn Schmiemann and Jackson van de Leest.
The 20-year-old Schimemann was originally drafted by Tampa Bay in the sixth round of the 2019 Entry Draft. However, he was never signed by the Lightning and became a free agent this summer. Fellow defenseman van de Leest is also 20. As such, either player would be eligible for an AHL (Phantoms) or ECHL (Reading Royals) contract if they do not receive an NHL entry-level deal. The Flyers would not own such a player's NHL rights unless signed to an ELC. In the cases of the 18-year-old Avon (Peterborough Petes, OHL) and Burroughs (Owen Sound Attack, OHL) and the 19-year-old Ritchie (Brandon Wheat Kings, WHL), the players would become eligible for the 2022 NHL Entry Draft if they are not signed to an ELC but the Flyers.
