An Early Look at Possible Flyers Picks at 6th Overall

“With the sixth overall selection in the 2025 NHL Draft, the Philadelphia Flyers select…”

Those will be the words uttered by GM Danny Briere in June, when the Flyers draft their first of three potential players in the first round of the 2025 NHL Draft. The only question that remains, is how will that statement end? 

Briere and the Flyers learned their fate on Monday night from the NHL Draft Lottery, as they watched the ping pong balls bounce the wrong way for their draft hopes to try and climb up to first or second overall. Fate again, in this case the ping pong balls, had other ideas, as both the New York Islanders and the Utah Mammoth jumped dramatically in the draft lottery. The Islanders jumped from 10th overall to first, and Utah from 14th overall to fourth. 

The Flyers scouting department were more than likely looking at the possibility of drafting one of the top center or forward options in this draft, be it James Hagens, Porter Martone, Caleb Desnoyers or Anton Frondell without any worries. Now instead of having the option to pick and choose their favorite – assuming Matthew Schaefer and Michael Misa go with the first two picks – they would have had an extremely high chance of getting one of their top two picks. 

Now, it’s anybody’s guess as to who the Orange and Black could draft next month. Some of the players mentioned above are potentially available (except for Martone given his stature and ability) at sixth overall, so it is time to review the top options for who may become the newest Flyer in this year’s draft. 

To make it more simple, we need to break it down into tiers to really determine the strength of this draft class.

Tier 1: Matthew Schaefer, Michael Misa

Tier 2: Porter Martone, Caleb Desnoyers, James Hagens, Anton Frondell

Tier 3: Jake O’Brien, Victor Eklund, Roger McQueen

The question mark is what teams need a center who drafts in front of the Flyers? The first three picks should be relatively obvious in the order somewhat looking like Schaefer, Misa, and most likely Martone unless the Chicago Blackhawks go off the board. 

After that the draft really starts at fourth overall with Utah. They took center Tij Iginla in the 2024 NHL Draft, but you can never have too many centers. They are the biggest wildcard team in the first 10 picks of the draft. They could continue to build the forward core or maybe surprise everyone by taking a defenseman. 

With that out of the way, let’s see who the Flyers realistically can draft. Philadelphia may certainly still get one of the players in the second tier of best players available. 

Anton Frondell 

In one’s own opinion, Frondell is an exciting player, who displays a strong defensive game, and can absolutely blast the puck into the net. The 6’1”, 198-pound Swedish center scored 11 goals and 14 assists in 29 games, just under a point per game. 

One of the younger prospects in the draft – he just turned 18 on May 7 – has room to improve on his skating and strength, but there is always room for improvement. While watching clips of Frondell, his skating starts off slow but once he starts to get his motor going, he can pick up some pretty serious speed. He doesn’t have that first explosive step, but with the right type of conditioning, he can hopefully work on getting faster over time. 

Frondell would certainly become one of the Flyers top prospects and instantly improve their center pipeline. 

Caleb Desnoyers 

Yes, this name should sound familiar to Philadelphia scouts and fans. Desnoyers is the younger brother of current prospect Elliot Desnoyers, who is currently in the AHL with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. 

Fans seem to be worried about the younger Desnoyers for some reason, but it may be due to the fact that Elliot has just been okay in the AHL and not like providing the explosiveness he displayed in the QMJHL. 

Caleb, on the other hand, isn’t your typical goal scorer like Elliot was in juniors. Despite showing some impressive numbers this year with 35 goals and 49 assists for 84 points in 56 games, he has been more of a two-way center, utilizing his hockey IQ and playmaking ability as his strengths. He does need to work on his overall strength and physicality, along with skating, but once he gets drafted and attends development camp, he’ll learn the proper ways to train and become a legitimate center in the top six of the lineup. 

Imagine a center with Desnoyers size at 6’2”, 178 pounds with off the charts IQ passing to Matvei Michkov? Now that would be a fun site to see. Corey Pronman from The Athletic describes Desnoyers’ game stating that he “can be trusted to check top players as he has a physical edge in his game and gives a high effort every game. He has the potential to be a No. 1 center who can play in any situation.”

James Hagens 

You’ve heard the saying “save the best for last?” Well, that is what could potentially happen here for the Flyers out of the remaining players available. Hagens is another player who has a slim chance of falling to Philadelphia, but I would not rule out the possibility of that actually happening. 

Remember Shane Wright, who was projected to go first overall in the 2022 NHL Draft for years leading up to his draft class? He was supposed to go to the Montreal Canadiens, who then surprised many by drafting Juraj Slafkovsky instead. Unfortunately, the same could happen to Hagens, and he falls more than he was projected. 

Leading up to this draft, ever since his name became known to hockey fans, scouts, and analysts across the world, Hagens was the projected first overall pick in this year’s draft. Now, there is certainly the possibility the Islanders could shock everybody and take the well-known player from Long Island who grew up being an Islanders fan, but assuming they take one of Schaefer or Misa, he could slip. 

Hagens’ game has been studied, broken down, and picked apart in every way imaginable, just like what happened with Wright. News flash: there is nothing wrong with the player. He is a great player, but when scouts and analysts have the time to really study a player year after year leading up to his draft, there won’t be anything left to study except for his draft year season. 

While only appearing in 37 games, Hagens was exactly a point-per-game player with 37 points, including 11 goals and a plus-21 for the Boston College Eagles.

Now Flyers fans might wince at the name Boston College, solely due to the Cutter Gauthier situation, but let’s stop there. Briere and his scouts cannot worry about one player who did not want to play for their organization, who happened to play for Boston College. What they do need to do, assuming that they interview Hagens, is ask the right questions to ensure the prospect wants to play in Philadelphia. They need to do their homework to make sure that there are absolutely no red flags with Hagens. 

I do not think that Hagens has any character issues compared to Gauthier, but it may not even be character issues. Within this season alone, we’ve seen two other organizations lose out on top prospects because they did not want to play for that specific organization and forced their way out. The Winnipeg Jets traded top prospect Rutger McGroarty to the Pittsburgh Penguins and, most recently, Tampa Bay Lightning GM Julien BriseBois announced that Isaac Howard does not want to play for the organization. With college players, there is always going to be a risk of not having that player want to sign with your organization, but I believe Hagens would have no problem signing an entry level contract no matter where he signs, even if that is in Philadelphia.

The good news is that there are plenty of centers in this draft for the Flyers, whose center prospect pool is extremely weak at the moment. At the same time, Briere may draft the best player available, and might not focus on just organizational needs. 

So, let’s try this again. “With the sixth overall selection in the 2025 NHL Draft, the Philadelphia Flyers select…”