The Philadelphia Flyers will have plenty of interesting prospects to keep an eye on during Rookie Camp.
Hockey is finally here, Philadelphia Flyers fans. While it doesn’t hold a candle to the regular season or Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Rookie Camp and Game are still exciting in their own right as we get to watch future Flyers train and eventually compete against the New York Islanders prospects in an exhibition contest.
Philadelphia will have 28 players participating in this years’ camp, with 16 of them being forwards, nine being defensemen, and three guarding the crease. All of them will be worth watching, with some more than others. I’m going to highlight a couple I’m going to monitor through the next five days, beginning with the more obvious candidates.
Morgan Frost, Joel Farabee, German Rubtsov, and Isaac Ratcliffe lead the way amongst the forwards. The Flyers currently have a spot open on the third line for somebody to take and a strong rookie camp showing would be a tremendous start for each of them. They’ll all have to do more during the full training camp and preseason, as they’ll be battling veterans currently on the roster and an invite or two throughout the month of September. Making the jump from Canadian Juniors, the NCAA, or a few games in the AHL won’t be easy, but you can’t deny that each of the guys in contention possesses the talent to do so.
Another round of players I’ll be watching are two of the elders in this year’s group are Philippe Myers and Mikhail Vorobyev, who will need to shine over these next couple of days. Though a third-pairing role on the Flyers blue-line is basically Myers to lose at this point, he still has to earn it with excellent performances through early fall. Vorobyev, on the other hand, needs to avenge a disappointing 2018-19 season and stand out against the younger talents.
After back-to-back solid efforts in the first two games of the year, the 22-year-old centerman didn’t look at all like the player who won the third-line center role out of camp while also regressing a bit in the AHL. He won’t have to obtain a position with Philadelphia straight away in October but does need to resemble the guy fans saw and got excited about a year ago.
I’ll be keeping tabs on some of the camp invites like Mika Cyr and Sean Comrie to see if one of them can earn a contract with the Flyers as Yegor Zamula did last season. Rookie Camp gets underway on Saturday, September 7th at 9:30 EST and is open to the public at the Flyers Skate Zone.