BUFFALO, N.Y. — Sitting down with The Inquirer at the NHL scouting combine in Western New York earlier this month, assistant general manager Brent Flahr was asked what he thought was missing down the depth chart for the Flyers.
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“We have some younger D on the team. But besides Spencer Gill and Ty Murchison and Hunter McDonald, Oliver Bonk, the next layer of younger defenseman we would probably use,” he responded.
Oh, so the Flyers need defensive depth. How about a blueliner who is under 6 feet but has eye-popping offensive skills?
“Being a small player, a small defenseman, it’s getting harder and harder to play,” he added. Oh. Um. OK. So, that’s a no?
But speaking last week alongside general manager Danny Brière at their annual pre-draft presser, he then added: “If you’re drafting a small defenseman, they need to be dynamic, and there are a couple who could go into mid-to-later first round this year, but they are in the mix.”
Although not a single defenseman under 6 feet was drafted last year, it is guaranteed not to happen this year. Here are the three under 6-foot defensemen “in the mix” plus one big man that keeps getting mentioned as an option for the Flyers at No. 21.
Tommy Bleyl, RHD
Height and weight: 5-11¼, 170 pounds
Team: Moncton of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League for one more season and then off to Michigan State.
Stats: Broke a rookie points record that stood for 48 years in the QMJHL with 81 points — including 68 assists to lead the QMJHL — across 63 regular-season games. Added another 28 points in 21 playoff games.
Labeled the player people aren’t talking about enough by FloHockey’s NHL draft and prospects analyst Chris Peters on Flyers Gameday Central’s draft preview show, the Upstate New York native was our pick for the Flyers at No. 21 in the first mock draft, and he is a strong option for Friday.
Aside from his scoring prowess — notably on the power play — what makes Bleyl an intriguing prospect is his skating. Peters called him the best skater in the draft class; he is not alone in his thinking.
“The skating is the defining quality; he’s just really, really, really smooth,” The Athletic’s NHL draft and prospects reporter Scott Wheeler told The Inquirer. “One of those guys who just glides across the ice [and is] an effortless skater.”
A rink rat since he was nine years old, the now 18-year-old has always had an elite level of skating. Bleyl said he is “not too overly physical but pretty feisty and competitive” in the offensive zone. He called himself a two-way defenseman with good feet and hockey IQ. Ryan Haggerty, who worked with him for years with the youth hockey program, Mid Fairfield — Trevor Zegras played there too — thinks it’s his edge work that makes him special.
“Tommy’s dynamic,” said Haggerty. “His skating ability is high-end; he’s a high-end skater, and it all translates to his offense. … His skating ability separates him.
“When he was 8, 9, 10 years old, his edges were always better than everybody else,” he added. “It helps him defend, to be honest with you, because he doesn’t get beat. His feet are so strong [so] he never gets beat.”
Ryan Lin, RHD
Height and weight: 5-11¼, 180 pounds
Team: Suiting up for the University of Denver in September.
Stats: Led Vancouver of the Western Hockey League in points (57), assists (43), and power-play assists (21) despite missing time with a wrist injury and added another six points in five games at the U18 Men’s World Championship for Canada.
In all likelihood, Lin will be gone at pick No. 21, but if not, you’d have to think he’s the guy. Wheeler said that Lin is “the kid in the draft class that I’ve stuck my neck out on a little bit.” His assistant coach with the Giants, Wacey Rabbit, called him “a chameleon” who can adapt to his surroundings and is always improving. And Drew Bannister, who coached Lin and Canada at U18s this spring, told The Inquirer, “he was our best defenseman, there’s no question about that.”
Lin, 18, models his game after Winnipeg Jets blueliner Josh Morrissey and is a creative, puck-moving, high-compete, physical, two-way right-shot defenseman who could help bolster the Flyers’ power play. Bannister doesn’t have any concerns about his size because he doesn’t think he plays an undersized game. You would have to think part of that is because Lin, a British Columbia native and son of educators, considers his vision and his mind two of his biggest strengths.
And there’s a good chance Jaroslav “Yogi” Svejkovský has put a bug in the ear of Flyers brass. The two worked together from learn-to-skate out west until Lin was 12 or 13 years old. He credits the Flyers assistant coach for helping shape his game as a skills coach.
“I couldn’t thank him enough for the foundation and base he gave me through hockey,” Lin told The Inquirer at the combine, adding that his father keeps in touch with his former coach.
So, is there one skill Svejkovský taught him that he still uses?
“I think probably my inside edge, he calls it a tiptoe finish,” Lin said.
“It’s kind of like fake one way, go the other type of thing,” he added. “It’s not like a huge fake, it’s just kind of something that I use every shift, like it’s kind of there.”
Xavier Villeneuve, LHD
Height and weight: 5-10¾, 164 pounds
Team: He will be joining Flyers prospects Jack Murtagh and Carter Amico at Boston University in 2026-27.
Stats: Dropped 38 points in an injury-plagued season for Blainville-Boisbriand of the QMJHL before finishing with 14 points in 17 playoff games.
Flahr did say last week that the Flyers could use some depth on the left side of the blue line, and according to Wheeler, there isn’t a more dynamic defenseman in the draft class than the lefty Villeneuve.
“From a pure puck-on-your-stick perspective, with the puck on his stick, he’s fun to watch. He’s got that Lane Hutson, kind of like head-fake shimmies, make guys miss, that’s his game, and he does it at a very, very, very high level,” he said.
Villeneuve compares his game to Hutson, who was also a Terrier before he leapt to the NHL with the Montreal Canadiens. BU coach Jay Pandolfo sees the comparison, not just in both being smaller defensemen but also in Villeneuve’s playmaking ability and competitiveness. He also sees him as a power-play quarterback, which the Flyers desperately need.
“He moves the puck really quickly,” Pandolfo told The Inquirer. “A lot of times, he knows where it’s going to go before he gets it, and that’s a lot of times the QB on the power play. They usually have that ability, where they know where the puck needs to go next. And he certainly has that; he’s shown that, and I think he’s going to continue to develop that area of his game.”
A teammate of Spencer Gill’s with the Armada, Villeneuve is small and thin. Critics are worried about his defensive game and his compete level against bigger guys who will bring way more speed than he’s seen if he makes it to the NHL. Sometimes in games, he was seen bailing out of battles when opponents came at him hard.
There is no denying he is a confident kid who is deceptive with his skating, and maybe carries a slight chip on his shoulder from the doubters. His coach in the QMJHL, Alexandre Jacques, saw this first-hand at the start of the season when some players from the American Hockey League skated with the team. He hopes this is the version everyone sees.
“Xavier sometimes was getting beat physically by one of them, or by speed, outside speed, and he was getting back in line and taking out his teammate to make sure he was going back against that same guy against whom he just struggled, or he got beat,” Jacques said. “So I really like that side of him, the competitiveness he had in him.
Maksim Sokolovskii, LHD
Height and weight: 6-7¼, 240 pounds
Team: Committed to the University of Maine in 2027, Sokolovskii will head back to London of the Ontario Hockey League in a few months
Stats: He had eight points (two goals, six assists) in 44 regular-season games and did not get a point in five playoff games.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is the biggest guy in the draft class among defensemen, Sokolovskii. The Flyers like big players, with seven of nine draft picks last season, and 31 of the 50 players Flahr has drafted since 2019 coming in over 6 feet. They also know London, with Denver Barkey and Oliver Bonk coming from there, and, like many draft picks, Sokolovskii won’t be 18 till after the draft, with his birthday coming July 12.
It all makes sense, then, why someone told this reporter that the Flyers were very high on him at the combine and why Wheeler had them taking him in his final mock draft.
“When you’re huge, and you can skate, that’s often all that you need for NHL scouts to sort of perk up and start to pay attention,” Wheeler said in Buffalo. “He was much better in the second half; you could see him figuring it out. … You want that [big] guy to be mean and punishing, and he’s got a little bit of that.
“But it’s the skating. If he couldn’t skate, it would be a major red flag at that size, but because he can skate, teams get excited about that.”
The skating has always been there for Sokolovskii, who first came to North America from Russia at 16, skating for Atlantic Coast Academy. Mike Taylor, the owner and one of Sokolovskii’s coaches, had a power skating coach come in. He recalled during a recent phone interview that they couldn’t believe how good his edge work was for his size. But Taylor also thinks the Kazakhstan-born Sokolovskii hasn’t fully shown off his offensive game.
“Obviously playing 16U Triple-A hockey is a lot different than playing in the OHL, but I would have him go on shootouts. He had offense to his game — I’m sure you can see that by his points that he put up,” he said, pointing to his 84 points in 65 games at the program. Taylor said part of that was because he put him at the net-front on the power play.
For now, many consider Sokolovskii to be a shutdown defender. He told The Inquirer that he likes to hit and has a high hockey IQ but wants to keep working on his foot speed and make his feet quicker.
There are question marks surrounding his game in regard to his decision-making and puck play. Wheeler acknowledged he’s quite raw, “but when you’re that big and can skate, the hope is that if his puck play can get to like an average level, you’ve got a very interesting NHL defenseman.”
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