Flyers Prospects
What to do with Jett Luchanko
Flyers 2024 first-round pick Jett Luchanko might have played his last game in the OHL.
Luchanko’s junior team, Guelph Storm, ended its season on Sunday with a 2-0 shutout victory over the Kitchener Rangers. The team did not make the OHL playoffs, meaning Luchanko’s OHL season is over.
Now, the Flyers are faced with a decision. Luchanko is eligible to play next season in the OHL. However, that will not be the case. It’s more likely than not that Luchanko will join the Flyers organization in one way or another. The main question is, which part of Eastern Pennsylvania will Luchanko report to?
It’s a big decision for the Flyers. He can only play in the AHL this season because his OHL season is completely over. Next season, his only options are the OHL or the NHL because he will still be just 19 years old. That said, this may be his only chance to play in the AHL until the 2026/27 season.
Jett Luchanko this season: 21 goals, 35 assists, 56 points in 46 games played
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Where will Luchanko Go?
I still believe Luchanko will be with the Flyers for the full 2025/26 season, so why rush him back to the NHL? It’s not like the Flyers are playing for anything this season.
It’s not doing him any favors by keeping him Guelph, so the call to Pennsylvania should be almost certain.
Luchanko played four games in the NHL this season, so he can only play five of the remaining 10 games without canceling the slide rule. He could play every remaining AHL game, and it would not matter.
If the Flyers were to bring Jett to the NHL, that would be their final non-emergency call-up for the remainder of the season. Unless the Flyers do not have enough eligible skaters on their roster, they cannot make any more call-ups from the CHL or AHL.
If Luchanko were to go to the Phantoms, he would get the opportunity to join a team in the middle of a playoff hunt. He would get the chance to play in meaningful games in a league that’s a brief step up from the OHL.
It’s certainly a tough choice. On one hand, Luchanko would immediately be a top-nine center on an NHL team that has little depth at the position. He would make an impact and could help the Flyers win games in the final stretch.
On the other hand, why rush things with a top prospect? You would either waste time that he could be playing elsewhere, sitting him to save his ELC, or you burn a year off by playing him in each of the remaining 10 games. Or he could get valuable playing experience, but his Flyers return waits.
Where would you send Jett Luchanko?
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Writer’s Opinion
If it were up to me, I would let Jett Luchanko play the rest of the season in the AHL with the Phantoms.
I said it earlier: it’s not like the Flyers are playing for anything. What’s the point of wasting in wasting a year of his contract?
Instead, I would actually be entertained by watching Luchanko playing on a Calder Cup playoff team. With Luchanko, possible NCAA signings, and the newly acquired Nikita Grebenkin, the Phantoms would get some reinforcements and could actually make a run.
I think it would better benefit Luchanko to get meaningful time on a team in the hunt for a championship rather than a team playing to end the season. Playing in the AHL this season will not hurt his chances to make the Flyers next season. To me, it just makes more sense for him to report to Lehigh Valley.
The Flyers can officially assign Luchanko to either the NHL or AHL on Monday (March 24th), so look for an update soon.
Read More: PhHN Daily, Prospect Edition: Flyers Eyeing B1G Center, NCHC Awards, & More
If you enjoy hockey, Canadien junior and U.S. college tournaments are must watch. The recently completed NCHC featured some Flyers ties. Alex Bump was a complete standout. Zeev Buium was much talked about as NHL ready also. The Flyers passed over him to take Jett Luchanko. We will see how it plays out. I’m guessing both are winners.
I want to see how this is interpreted….but according to the NHL/CHL Agreement signed in 2005, does not look promising for Luchanko to suit up with the Phantoms. But the Flyers were able to void two years of the Michkov KHL contract so who knows with JettLu
“For an NHL draft prospect to leave the QMJHL, WHL or OHL to play minor-league hockey, he must be 20 years old (by Dec. 31 of that season) or have played four seasons in juniors. Junior players can still leave their junior team beginning at age 18 to play in the NHL. The agreement only prevents players from leaving early to play minor-league hockey. If a player is not going to be playing in the NHL, he must be sent back to his junior team. Juniors-eligible players may still play up to nine games in the NHL at the beginning of a season as a trial. After nine games, the NHL team can return the player to juniors with no effect on his contract. If a player is kept beyond nine games, his entry-level contract kicks in. If an NHL team keeps a player beyond nine games and later decides to return him to juniors, it can do so, but that still burns his entry-level contract. If a player is returned to juniors, he can’t return to the NHL team until his junior team’s season ends.”
The only amendment I see was in Nov 2024 – NCAA Eligibility ….. the NCAA voted to allow CHL players to be eligible to play NCAA hockey starting August 1, 2025.
A CHL prospect may play in the AHL as long as the team that they play for has their season concluded. In Jett’s case, since Guelph is eliminated, Jett is eligible to play in the AHL.
However, next season, his only two options are OHL or NHL. The CHL/AHL agreement is in place to prohibit CHL eligible players from leaving and playing in the AHL. If there is no active CHL season for that players team, they can play in the AHL.
Ok
I live in Allentown, and on Thursday I got an offer from the Phantoms for four complimentary tickets to Friday’s game. Naturally, I took advantage of the free tickets and watched the Phantoms go up against the Syracuse Crunch.
Syracuse has a similar record to the Phantoms, and should have been very beatable. Instead, the Phantoms ended up losing 3-0. As I sat there with the Shots on Goal at 16-4 Syracuse – midway through the second period (Yikes!) – I had a revelation.
The Flyers as an organization just aren’t that good. I was watching a Phantoms team where few playing will even get a sniff of an NHL game, and many on the team probably shouldn’t even be playing at the AHL level. There’s little coaching and player development going on at Lehigh Valley, and losing is obviously tolerated.
At games, the Phantoms organization seems to focus very little on the actual hockey and more on blasting music throughout the game and putting kids on the big screen as a substitute. Add that to “replays” that don’t actually show the play, and a noise gimmick that alerts the opposing team when OUR guy is getting out of the penalty box, and it’s not even a good product for the minor-league level. It was amateur hour all the way around.
So why send Jett down to Lehigh Valley? The Phantoms were 0-6 on the power play on Friday night and followed that up with an 0-4 effort the following night in a 3-1 home loss to Providence. He doesn’t need to spend time with the Phantoms to learn how to suck on the power play. He can get that directly from the Flyers.
While I understand the logic of your argument to send Jett to the AHL, the reality is all he’s going to do is learn bad habits and get bad coaching there. I realize the Flyers power play is equally powerless, but at least if he’d go to the Flyers he’d be playing against NHL-level talent, if not with it. While the Phantoms are technically a playoff team, they’re heading for a quick first-round exit so there’s no real Calder Cup chase going on there.
The whole experience Friday night left me more disillusioned with the entire Flyers organization than I’ve ever been. You would think that for as bad as the Flyers are, their much-heralded prospect pool would produce better results in the AHL. You would think that if this were actually a “New Era of Orange”, the Flyers would fire their coaching staff in the AHL and put someone down there who is hungry, can coach the players up, and above all, wants to win. I can’t believe that any of the Phantoms current coaches are improving their abilities and going to be moving up, so why would we want to keep them?
The Flyers might be in a rebuild, but so are teams like Anaheim, San Jose, Chicago, and Buffalo. Those are our peers, not the Capitals, Panthers, Stars or others. Saying we’re in a “rebuild” is what bad teams tell their fans to buy time. That might provide some cover for management, but we’re not getting better anytime soon. The organization accepts losing, and that only produces losers – whether you’re playing in the NHL or the AHL.
I say let Jett play on the big team. We’ve been told he’s at least a Top-9 prospect. Time to let us see if that’s actually true. Jett should be building familiarity with Michkov, not Grebenkin.
I paid NOTHING to see Friday night’s Phantoms game, and I left the arena feeling like I got ripped off. I can only imagine how people paying thousands for season tickets to watch an equally crappy Flyers team must feel. The organization needs an urgency to win from top to bottom.
Amazing that the Phantoms have resorted to giving away tix!! I live in Md but go to a handful of Phantoms games per season. The attendance is poor at best. One side of the arena is empty due to “corporate” seating. Obviously there is little to no corporate support. This season the Phantoms decided to join up with the evil and greedy Ticketmaster to sell tix, adding $ to the cost of the Tix. Idiotic move when attendance is low to begin with. Might want to look at the people in charge of running the show. Not good
ERED – Funny that you mention Ticketmaster.
Always seem to have a problem accessing the tickets since the change to Ticketmaster. Don’t know why they changed. It was so much easier last year (can’t remember who they used to use).
Have to 100% disagree. The best thing that can happen for the Flyers is for them to lose as many games as possible over their last 10 to increase the # of ping pong balls they get to improve their draft position. If they bring Jett back for his maximum of five games and the infusion of him back into the lineup increases the possibility of them getting any more points, that possibility is more of a detriment to the overall picture than any positives that would develop from him playing five more games.
Let him play for the Phantoms, put him on a line with Grebenkin and see if they develop any chemistry.
I seem to remember another team in Philly taking the same approach recently.
I don’t think it works.
If it did, NHL teams like Chicago and San Jose would be hoisting their cups already. Someone always gets the top pick. Rarely does that translate into a championship.
I know we like to think our front office is much smarter than all the other teams and will be the exception, but losing breeds losing. There’s always going to be a reason why things aren’t going perfectly and we need to lose again.
That’s how bad teams stay bad, and bad front offices keep their jobs.
Agree……also look at Oilers and Maple Leafs……they must have 7/8 world class players between the teams combined, who were top ten picks…….no Cups in the last ten years.
Flyers are a joke team anymore. I remember when I was a kid, cheering for the Flyers was actually a Privilege. The 70s, 80s and 90s. Even though they only had 2 Cups to their credit.. The Big Bad Flyers. Oh the memories. Now it’s PATHETIC!! You can thank Comcast for that. Hire some HOCKEY minded personell instead of EXECUTIVES!! GET SOME SCOUTS!!! A PP COACH ETC ETC.