In what is shaping up to be a race to the bottom in the battle for a roster spot on defense, injured Philadelphia Flyers prospect Oliver Bonk is, unfortunately, missing out on a big opportunity.
Players like Helge Grans and Noah Juulsen, two favorites for a roster spot due to their right-handedness, have largely flattered to deceive or played poorly outright in training camp and the preseason thus far.
Egor Zamula appears to have plateaued, and Emil Andrae has only appeared in one preseason game to this point; he’ll play against Boston on Monday night.
An underwhelming roster battle has left the Flyers in a precarious position with only a few preseason games left on the schedule, and you have to wonder what a healthy Bonk could have done for himself going against this group.
Bonk, 20, was deemed day-to-day by the Flyers with an upper-body injury on Thursday, along with forwards Lane Pederson and Karsen Dorwart, and has technically been day-to-day since the Flyers’ first announcement on Sept. 18.
Flyers Roster Battles Leaving Much to Be Desired Early in NHL Preseason
Through three NHL preseason games, several Philadelphia Flyers roster battles look far from being decided any time soon.
The 2023 first-round pick was meant to play in the rookie series games against the New York Rangers, too, only to be held out of those before training camp started.
Considering Bonk was also left off the ice during development camp in July to recover from a long season, he’s quietly missed a decent amount of on-ice development with NHL coaches and NHL-caliber players this year.
The timing of it all has been awful, frankly, as Rasmus Ristolainen is expected to miss time well into the start of the season (potentially as late as November as of now)
Given that Ristolainen will inevitably return at some point, this would have been an easy opportunity to see Bonk play a month or so’s worth of NHL games and how he holds up doing so.
The same premise applied to Grans, in a way, where the 23-year-old is no longer waivers-exempt. If the Flyers want to get a real good look at Grans, there was no better time to do so than while Ristolainen can’t play.
By all accounts, it would seem that Bonk is destined to start his 2025-26 campaign – his first as a professional player – in the AHL with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.
Most likely, he would’ve spent most of the season there anyway, but you can’t help but feel a healthy Bonk makes this Flyers team out of training camp to glean some valuable experience while Ristolainen is on the shelf.
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