Author: Gabriela Carroll

On Wednesday, David Jiříček and Oliver Bonk both skated with the NHL group, cementing them as the top two contenders for the final spot on the Flyers’ opening-night defense, next to veteran Nick Seeler.

The Flyers want their young players to learn from playing big minutes. They’re unlikely to keep Bonk up to be the seventh defenseman, as opposed to being on the top pair in Lehigh Valley.

But Jiříček, who the Flyers acquired at last year’s trade deadline from Minnesota, is the only one of the Flyers’ young defensemen who is not waiver-exempt, meaning the Flyers can’t send him down without risking losing him for nothing.

The final cut days of training camp are a busy time on waivers, which could increase the odds of Jiříček slipping by unclaimed. But it’s more likely that the Flyers would keep Jiříček up even if he doesn’t win the job, just to continue to get him reps and practice without risking losing the talented blueliner.

“Offense is there, so I just have to play defense, sounds easy, right?” the 22-year-old joked. “Be good on defense, don’t make mistakes — obviously everyone makes mistakes, but try to do it as little as you can, and everything is going to be fine.”

In practice, Jiříček got reps running the point on the Flyers’ second power-play unit, with Travis Konecny, Noah Cates, Owen Tippett, and Alex Bump.

After Monday’s preseason loss to Washington, Tocchet said he wanted to see the 6-foot-4, 204-pound Jiříček be more aggressive with his shot, something Tocchet believes he’s held back on in practice to avoid hurting his teammates.

“Guys get that way, they want to endear themselves to their teammates,” Tocchet said. “They want to give them passes and stuff, but he’s got a gifted shot. I think he took it one time and it was a heater. I want to see three of those a game.”

Tocchet said that another one of Jiříček’s biggest strengths is his patience with the puck and ability to slow the play down. But “when there’s chaos,” Jiříček begins to struggle, so the Flyers worked to develop his abilities reading the game and learning how to shut down plays in the corner during his 15-game stint to end the year with Lehigh Valley of the American Hockey League.

The former No. 6 overall pick has struggled to stick in the NHL since his draft year in 2022, mostly due to challenges adapting defensively and with his skating. Tocchet said it was fair to say Jiříček’s strides are still a bit clunky, but joked that he too played “ugly” during his time in the NHL.

“Don’t get me wrong, we all work on our skating, we work on all sorts of stuff,” Tocchet said. “But it might not look pretty sometimes, but he does get the job done.”

Jiříček racked up 13 points (two goals, 11 assists) in 15 games with the Phantoms to end last season. Both of these goals came on the power play, earning him a call-up for the final regular-season game. Tocchet said he’s seen significant progression from Jiříček since he first came to the organization at last year’s trade deadline, but there’s still more room to grow.

“It’s up to me. Everyone is watching,” Jiříček said. ”…Try to make them feel like I’m ready and I’m here to take a spot.”

Breakaways

Denver Barkey, who Tocchet described as “day to day” on Tuesday, skated with the Phantoms group and skated on the ice alone between practices in a non-contact jersey. … Jett Luchanko and Cole Knuble sat out Wednesday’s practice after playing in back-to-back preseason games. … Nikita Grebenkin (upper body) is full-contact in practice and Tocchet expects him to play in Thursday’s preseason game against the Boston Bruins. “The guys won’t hit him. He wants to be hit,” Tocchet joked. … The Flyers placed forwards Carl Grundström, Jack Studnicka, Nolan Foote, Danila Klimovich, and Zach Aston-Reese, and defenseman Cam Dineen on waivers Wednesday. … The team also assigned forwards Noah Powell and Riley Thompson, defensemen Spencer Gill, Hunter McDonald, Ty Murchison, and goaltender Carson Bjarnason to Lehigh Valley. Meanwhile, forward Matthew Gard was returned to the Seattle Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey League.

The Flyers know their power play needs to be better this season.

During Saturday’s scrimmage, the team tested out the power play for the first time in camp, and it went about as well as last season.

The first unit, playing for the orange team, included Jamie Drysdale at the point, with Trevor Zegras, Owen Tippett, Denver Barkey, and Matvei Michkov.

It was hard to tell exactly where each player was positioned because they struggled to enter the zone and get set. No one on the unit is a strong faceoff man, which contributed to their difficulties getting into formation to generate chances.

Zegras and Michkov generally prefer playing on the right, which means the unit will be pretty fluid with motion against some opponents.

“They’re going to have the puck most of the time, right?” coach Rick Tocchet said. “Can they manipulate the structure that’s in front of them? That’s going to be video; it’s going to [be] spend[ing] some time with them, and they have to have that sixth sense themselves. We can’t tell them everything. It’s not a robotic game, and they’re going to have to figure it out.”

The second unit featured David Jiříček, Travis Konecny, Porter Martone, Tyson Foerster, and Noah Cates. It’s a vote of confidence in Jiříček, who played most of the scrimmage on a pair with Nick Seeler, and seems to be the clear frontrunner for the final open spot on the Flyers’ defense.

Tocchet praised Jiříček’s patience and passing on the man advantage, but joked that he’s afraid to use his booming shot to avoid hurting his teammates, which makes it challenging to practice.

“In a game, you don’t care, you tee it up, but that’s the hardest thing, and then guys don’t shoot it [in practice],” Tocchet said. “Can anybody make a puck that is an actual puck that, if you get hit, it doesn’t hurt you? It’s 2026. If somebody can do that, they’d make a lot of money.”

That second unit looked a bit stronger, and Martone got a solid look on goal in their two-minute opportunity.

Tocchet didn’t want to evaluate the units heavily after the scrimmage. Each group had just about two minutes to practice together. Plus, even with a shortened training camp, more opportunities remain to run the power play.

Last season, the Flyers converted just 15.7% of their opportunities, which ranked last in the league. There’s some reason for confidence that their trajectory is headed upward, since the underlying numbers looked slightly better. The Flyers’ five-on-four expected goals percentage was 92.26%, according to Natural Stat Trick, ninth in the league.

“There’s all the stuff with numbers and expected goals vs. actually what happened,” Drysdale said. “You look at those, and we’re in a pretty good freaking spot. It’s just a matter of capitalizing, getting into the right spots, but at the end of the day, those numbers don’t matter. The only ones that matter are the ones that go in the net.”

Near the end of a two-on-two training camp drill on Thursday, Tyson Foerster beat Travis Konecny and ripped a shot top-shelf past Joseph Woll.

That shot sparked a playful argument — had Foerster tied the score, 3-3? Was it still 3-2, as Konecny insisted?

After a bit of chirping, Woll, who was acquired in a trade from the Toronto Maple Leafs over the summer, finally gestured that Konecny was right, he’d only allowed the two goals.

“We were talking about a couple camps ago when I was a rookie, I blew him up out there,” Foerster said jokingly. “So he said it was going to be a hard camp. And we’re going against each other out there, we’re trying to make each other better, so we always have good competition, and it’s a lot of fun.”

There’s a new energy around the Flyers following the team’s first playoff berth in five seasons. On the walls of the practice facility, a new poster reading “be here for the rise” looked down on the first official training camp practice of 2026-27, the first season in a while in which the Flyers will have serious expectations from the beginning.

Winning a playoff series and losing to the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes in the second round was a big step forward for a young group of Flyers, many of whom had never played in a postseason game before.

But general manager Danny Brière said the fear that “keeps [him] up at night” is that his team will grow complacent following the progress made last season and stagnate. On the ice, Konecny said the hunger to keep achieving is already evident.

“Coming back, we’re still talking about it,” Konecny said. “It tells me that guys kept that in the back of their heads all summer, stayed hungry. They want more of it.”

Coach Rick Tocchet said even on the first day, it was clear just how much that playoff experience helped the development of the Flyers’ young players, with notable improvements in terms of their patience with the puck.

Winger Owen Tippett also said the team got significantly closer during the playoff push and subsequent run. Having so many returnees this season built the excitement and the internal competition over the summer.

After winning a playoff round, the Flyers won’t sneak up on teams the way they did last year. They conceded the first goal 31 times in the regular season, and managed to win 22 games in which they were down by at least one goal, including seven games where they trailed by a goal in the third period.

The Flyers won’t be able to rely on those types of comebacks this year, but Tocchet said that the playoff experience helped to teach the team how to lock a game down and when to push the pace. Tippett agreed that the new year will force the Flyers to start on the front foot.

“It’s nice to go in and surprise teams, but at the same time, you want teams to come at you right away,” Tippett said. “It pushes us to be better as well. We need to take that next step and be prepared and know that teams are going to come at us right away and challenge us early. That’s the next step for us too, to take it head on and start on time.”

Breakaways

Eleven players were added to the team’s training camp roster ahead of opening day on Thursday: Forwards Brady Berard, Alex Čiernik, Matthew Gard, Owen McLaughlin, Ilya Pautov, Nathan Quinn, and KJ Sauer; defensemen Brek Liske and Luke Vlooswyk; and goaltenders Martin Psohlavec and Marek Sklenička.

Ty Murchison’s 2025-26 season ended in January with a shoulder injury he suffered in the middle of a scrum while playing for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.

On Saturday, after seven months out, he jumped right back into the fray, ending the Flyers’ Rookie Series game by dropping the gloves with 6-foot-7 New York Rangers prospect Dylan Roobroeck.

“The fight at the end was great for my mindset, personally,” the 6-2, 212-pound Murchison said. “That’s how I got hurt last time, so to be able to get one out of the way early, especially against a 6-foot-7 guy, and know that my shoulder felt good and felt ready, it was a great way to start.”

Murchison, 23, made an impressive NHL debut last season, playing in three December games and averaging 15minutes a night and impressing coach Rick Tocchet. But just as the 2021 fifth-round pick was starting to really push for more consideration at the NHL level, that injury ended his season. Murchison spent the rest of the spring rehabbing and said he was full-go starting in May, allowing him to have a full summer of training heading into the 2026-27 season.

In the AHL last year, his first full pro season — the Californian played four games after finishing up his career at Arizona State the year prior — he scored two goals and added four assists for six points in 29 games. He said he spent the summer working on developing the offensive side of his game, in hopes of contributing a bit more on the scoresheet in his second pro season.

In order to earn a full-time spot out of camp, Murchison will likely have to beat out former No. 6 overall pick David Jiříček, former No. 21 overall pick Oliver Bonk, and Hunter McDonald, among others. Bonk and Jiříček project to have more offensive upside, but in a third-pairing role, Murchison could prove he is a better fit with his defensive versatility, physicality, and penalty-killing upside. Murchison said he wants to prove he can be trusted in “big situations” and show off his impact regardless of how many minutes he gets.

If he doesn’t make it, he’ll return to playing big minutes for the Phantoms in the American Hockey League and await a potential call-up down the line.

He’s already setting himself up well with his performance in rookie camp. Murchison wore the “C” in the first Rookie Series game and popped with his skating and steadiness on the back end, in addition to that fight.

“I didn’t want to force anything in the first game back,” Murchison said. “I was still feeling it out a little bit with some of the physicality. I just didn’t want to get caught in the wrong spots, but I thought it was a good game, good first game back.”

General manager Danny Brière lauded Murchison’s performance in the Rookie Series on Tuesday, pointing to him as an example of a player who is pushing for an NHL role this season and already impressing in a shortened camp.

“Guys might have one chance, they might have one game to prove themselves,” Brière said. “The message is, get noticed. That’s why I mentioned Ty Murchison and Noah Powell, that’s what they did on the weekend.”

Breakaways

Forwards Denver Barkey and Jett Luchanko returned to the ice for the final day of rookie camp practice after taking a maintenance day on Monday. … The TNT crew will be on-site for the Flyers’ home opener on Sept. 30 for a special pregame show at Stateside Live!, featuring panelists Wayne Gretzky, Paul Bissonnette, Anson Carter, and Henrik Lundqvist. … The Flyers announced their 2026-27 promo schedule, including Gritty blanket and Flyers goalie glove oven mitt giveaways, not to mention a Peanuts Halloween Spooktacular on Oct. 27. The full schedule can be found here.

For the first time, Oliver Bonk is entering training camp with a bit of NHL experience.

He made his NHL debut in the Flyers’ final regular-season game of the year, scoring his first NHL goal against Montreal a night after the Flyers clinched a playoff berth. He spent the playoffs practicing with the big club and returned to the lineup for Game 4 against Carolina, in the game where the Flyers were eliminated from the postseason.

That experience is a “confidence booster” heading into this year’s training camp, but it hasn’t changed the 21-year-old’s approach as he looks to make the opening night roster for the first time.

“You can’t just come out saying, ‘Oh, I played one game in the NHL last year, I’m good. I can take this rookie camp off,’” said Bonk, whose hopes to make last year’s team were derailed by a preseason injury. “I think every game has been my best, and I’ve got to keep building on it.”

Bonk joked that he attempted to improve “everything” this summer, but said he spent significant time working on his skating. Lehigh Valley Phantoms head coach John Snowden praised Bonk for his transition game and ability to jump into the play at the right time.

With Rasmus Ristolainen still with the organization despite persistent trade rumors, there’s only one spot on the Flyers defense that doesn’t return an NHL regular from last year. Bonk, along with David Jiříček and newcomer lefty Simon Benoit, who was acquired in the Joseph Woll trade, will be among the biggest contenders.

“Where he ends up is up to Bonker,” Snowden said. “I think he’s done everything to put himself in a great situation to fight for a spot on that team.”

The NHL season is now 84 games, which means a shortened training camp for all players. Snowden said that at the start of rookie camp, he told the Flyers prospects to treat rookie camp like their training camp. There will be limited runway to make an impression in main camp and in the four preseason games.

That’s why the Rookie Series games took on increased importance. Bonk assisted Denver Barkey on the first goal of the Flyers’ 4-1 win over the New York Rangers’ rookies on Sunday. He also was in the bumper spot on the power play.

“In the rookie games, it’s that time to test yourself and see how far you can go, see how many plays you can make, see how well you can do,” Bonk said. “It’s kind of like the test before the big dance.”

If Bonk doesn’t earn that third-pairing spot out of camp, which begins Thursday in Voorhees, he’s likely to return to Lehigh Valley to play every night. He’d likely be one of the first AHL call-ups in case of injury or a trade.

“It’s just continuing to teach and find the moments that are going to help him be an everyday NHL player,” Snowden said. “He’s got the right mindset, he’s got the right attitude, and he works the right way to give himself a chance for that.”

Breakaways

Denver Barkey and Jett Luchanko were not on the ice for skate Monday. Snowden said it was “maintenance” and that both players will be back on the ice Tuesday for the final day of rookie camp. Luchanko played in both Rookie Series games, while Barkey only played Sunday.