1) On Tuesday at the IIHF World Championships, France pulled off a second straight upset win, albeit a milder one than than their victory against Finland, as they defeated Switzerland via shootout, 4-3, on Tuesday. Flyers center Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, who did not figure in the scoring or convert his shootout opportunity, nevertheless logged 23:27 of ice time over 36 shifts and continued to be a key reason for his team's competitiveness. Additionally, Bellemare has won about 60 percent of his faceoffs (35 of 58) in the tourney thus far.
2) The lone Wednesday game at the Worlds involving a Flyers player pits Valtteri Filppula and what has been a disappointing Team Finland thus far against underdog Slovenia.
3) On the Flyers official website, I have written a series of articles looking at the top second overall picks in NHL Draft history, broken down decade-by-decade. Part 1, published today looks back at the 1960s and 1970s.
4) Flyers general manager Ron Hextall sat down recently with radio play-by-play broadcaster Tim Saunders to discuss the upcoming Draft. In addition to generically talking about the overall caliber of players in the 2017 NHL Draft -- and saying that he, Chris Pryor and the Flyers' scouts will come to their own consensus about the best available player with the second overall pick. Hextall said that it dangerous to simply look at pre-draft public opinion and automatically declare one or two players (i.e., Nolan Patrick and Nico Hischier this year) the best in the draft class. However, he also said that the organization is well aware of the skills of the two players most often mentioned, and reiterated yet again that he does not anticipate trading the pick.
Saunders also asked Hextall if, philosophically, the team's consensus best-available player is a defenseman whether the organization would take the defenseman or take someone else based on positional depth within the current pipeline. The GM said if it was clear-cut in their minds, they'd still draft the defenseman. If it was a matter of a few players rated about the same, however, they might trade down in that instance to pick up an additional asset and hope to still be able to draft one of the players they'd ranked roughly on par.
Realistically, this scenario might have come into play with the 13th overall pick but is unlikely to play out with the second pick. The gut feeling here is that, after the Flyers will have all of their scouts chime in on whether they see higher long-term upside in Patrick/Hischier or in alternative such as Gabriel Vilardi, Cody Glass or Swedish forward Elias Pettersson (who more than held his own this season at the Swedish minor league Allsvenskan level at age 17/18 against grown men and will play in the SHL next season for the Và¤xjö Lakers), they still take either Patrick or Hischier.