There is nothing to be reliably read into which teams interview which players at the annual NHL Combine. It is far from uncommon for a team to draft a player it did not interview -- a good case in point being the Flyers not interviewing Sean Couturier in 2011 -- or for teams to interview players out of their draft range as a matter of due diligence and potential short-term reference. Last year, all 30 teams interviewed Travis Sanheim. In some cases, this was probably in the event teams acquired additional picks.
The main reason teams interview players at the Combine is to get a little more comprehensive picture or to ask follow-up questions. Of course, if a team interviews a player, it does confirm there's at least a certain amount of interest in him. However, Flyers scouting director Chris Pryor noted in his Wednesday conference call with reporters that internal pre-draft rankings do not dramatically change based on anything that happens at the Combine. A player may move up or down a few slots but no one is likely to rocket upwards or fall precipitously.
With those caveats in mind, multiple sources have said the Flyers have spent considerable time interviewing Sarnia Sting center Pavel Zacha. From a practical standpoint, this should not be surprising. The 6-foot-3, 210 pound Czech is widely considered to possess an elite-caliber physical upside between his puck skills and size. However, there are also big question marks that make him one of the more high-risk, high-reward names in the draft pool this year.
Zacha's first season in North America did not go as hoped after he came over being hyped as a potential top three or four pick entering the 2014-15 season. His OHL season was limited to 37 games, between a pair of OHL suspensions -- two games for a slew-footing incident, six for a charging incident -- and an upper-body injury.
Spending much of the season on a line with Jordan Kyrou and overager Stephen Pierog, Zacha produced 16 goals and 34 points. In the playoffs, he had three points (two goals, one assist) in five games. While this is far from a disastrous season, it fell short of the lofty expectations some had on a player who has been hyped for several years and played against grown men the Czech Extraliga at age 16.
Nevertheless, it is tough for any player to get into a rhythm when his season is interrupted so frequently. It also needs to be noted that this season was Zacha's first in North America -- meaning his first year on the small rink, his first extensive exposure to speaking English and living with a billet family. Lastly, by most accounts, he made progress in a lot of areas that are not measured by statistics.
The Flyers, who own the seventh overall pick of the 2015 Draft, are not the only team that has been trying to do a little extra information gathering on Zacha on top of the homework they've already done. The stakes are very high here, and Zacha is the type of player who can be a game-changer if all goes well.