Quick Hits: May 5, 2023
1) USA Hockey announced on Thursday the Team USA roster for the 2023 IIHF World Championships in Tampere, Finland, and Riga, Latvia. In addition to Flyers 2022 first-round pick Cutter Gauthier representing Team USA, Phantoms/Flyers defenseman Ronnie Attard will also be on the team. Flyers center Scott Laughton will represent Team Canada.
2) The Flyers have a 44.4 percent chance of holding their default seventh overall pick in Monday's NHL Draft Lottery. They have a 36.5 percent chance of dropping to the eighth overall pick, which would mean one team behind them in the default draft order would win the first lottery drawing and jump ahead of Philly. There's a 5.6 percent chance that two teams leapfrog the Flyers and Philly drops to the 9th spot.
The Flyers have a 6.5 percent chance of winning the first overall pick (Connor Bedard). If they don't win the first drawing, whichever team wins will move up a maximum of 10 spots from their pre-Lottery default. That club will then be locked in regardless of what happens in the second lottery drawing.
Teams are re-seeded after the first drawing. There is then a second drawing for the second overall pick, with otherwise the same stipulations: the team wins the second drawing will move up a maximum of 10 spots. If there's a locked-in second overall pick, meaning that the No. 12 team in the lottery wins the first drawing, the second-lottery winner would get the third overall pick. From a Flyers standpoint, there is a 0.2 percent chance of this happening. Here's the combination of lottery results that'd make it happen:
* Ottawa wins the first lottery drawing. They would jump from 12th to 2nd and keep the already-traded pick rather transferring it to Arizona this year (it is top-5 lottery protected). Ottawa locks in at the second pick and Anaheim locks in at first.
* The Flyers win the lottery drawing for the second overall pick. However, because Ottawa's first-round win would block the Flyers from moving up to the second overall pick, the Flyers would get the third overall pick.
* It is ONLY this combination that would produce such a result. If the Flyers win the first drawing, of course, they'd get the first overall pick. The second drawing outcome would then be irrelevant from a Flyers' standpoint. Naturally, if the Flyers win neither the first nor second drawing, they will pick seventh, eighth or ninth.
There's a 99.8 percent chance the Flyers do NOT end up with the third pick but it's at least a mathematical possibility.
3) A few weeks before the Draft, I'll make my annual pre-draft sleeper pick. It doesn't necessarily correlate to a potential Flyers pick; just someone I think has a chance to jump up significantly from his pre-Draft public rankings (example: public rankings have a player in mid-second range but I think he could be first-round caliber, or he's projected early second round but I think could go offer the board in the middle first round if a team rates him highly enough).
Only once I have ever selected someone the Flyers ended up taking. In 2017, I chose Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds center Morgan Frost. At the time, the Flyers only had one first-round pick (second overall) so I wasn't even thinking about Frost as a Flyers possibility. He clearly wasn't going second overall. But when the Flyers, on the Draft floor, acquired the 27th overall pick from St. Louis as part of the Brayden Schenn deal (also netting the 2018 first-rounder used on Joel Farabee), it worked out the Flyers drafted Frost. The player took a big jump in his draft-plus-one season.
People have asked me why Frost has been a player I've focused on so much over the years. The reason is above: He was a prospect of particular interest in his Draft year, then it worked out that the Flyers actually selected him and he had huge Draft-plus-one and Draft-plus-two (and 2018-19 WJC) seasons. It's fun to re-read the original blog in hindsight, including how silly it looks now that Jayce Hawryluk and Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson were previous players I considered top sleeper candidates. I do, however, feel good in hindsight about Jordan Kyrou as the 2016 Draft sleeper.
Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I had Jay O'Brien as an honorable mention 2018 sleeper but not as my number one sleeper. In my 2018 mock draft for PhiladelphiaFlyers.com, I had Farabee off the board at 13, the Flyers picking K'Andre Miller at 14th and Isaac Lundeström at 18th. I considered O'Brien as a candidate in various spots in the latter end of the first round but ultimately pegged at 32nd to Buffalo after they used the no-brainer 1st overall pick on Rasmus Dahlin. Instead, they picked another defenseman (Mattias Samuelsson, whom I had at 29th overall in the mock).
My sleeper of the year that year, though, was another Soo player -- I was watching a lot of Greyhounds games at the time -- in defenseman Rasmus Sandin. I had him 24th to Minnesota in the mock and he went 29th in reality to Toronto.
For 2023, I'll do my No. 1 sleeper pick blog a couple weeks ahead of the Draft. I'm leaning toward a player from the silver medalist 2023 Team Sweden Under-18 Worlds roster.